De raadsheer-commissaris houdt toezicht op de procesmatige kant van het onderzoek door middel van het geven van aanwijzingen aan de onderzoeker respectievelijk het geven van bevelen aan de rechtspersoon of belanghebbenden. Sinds de introductie in 2013 is de raadsheer-commissaris minstens twintig keer in actie gekomen in vijftien verschillende enquêtes.

De auteurs hebben de raden en twee raadsheren van de Ondernemingskamer geïnterviewd over de toegevoegde waarde van de raden en hun persoonlijke ervaringen. Hieruit volgt dat de raden van de Ondernemingskamer met hun brede ervaring in de top van het bedrijfsleven een waardevolle bijdrage aan het oordeelvormende vermogen van de Ondernemingskamer leveren.

Deze bijdrage biedt een introductie op het themanummer ‘actoren in het enquêterecht’ ter gelegenheid van het vijftigjarig bestaan van de Ondernemingskamer. Het nummer bevat bijdragen over raden, de raadsheer-commissaris, onderzoekers, tijdelijke bestuurders en commissarissen, tijdelijke beheerders van aandelen en belanghebbenden. Het nummer opent met een column van de voorzitter van de Ondernemingskamer en wordt afgesloten met een praktijkbijdrage van een OK-functionaris.

In deze bijdrage doen wij onderzoek naar de vraag hoe preventief politieoptreden op basis van datakoppeling zou moeten worden genormeerd. Onze analyse is gebaseerd op het Sensingproject Outlet Roermond. Wij stellen dat bestaande wetgeving onvoldoende in staat is de privacy van burgers te beschermen als die burgers ten behoeve van preventief politieoptreden in een algoritmische risicogroep worden geplaatst. Om die reden moet nieuwe regelgeving mede worden gebaseerd op een nieuw concept: group privacy. Ook stellen wij dat een nieuwe wettelijke grondslag recht zal moeten doen aan strafvorderlijke basisbeginselen nu preventief optreden op grond van datakoppeling moet worden gezien als opsporing.

Op 5 juni 2019 werd de Richtlijn betreffende de vermindering van de effecten van bepaalde kunststofproducten op het milieu vastgesteld. De auteur onderzoekt in deze bijdrage welke verplichtingen deze richtlijn in het leven roept en hoe daaraan gehoor wordt gegeven in Nederland.
Richtlijn (EU) 2019/904 van het Europees Parlement en de Raad van 5 juni 2019 betreffende de vermindering van de effecten van bepaalde kunststofproducten op het milieu (PbEU 2019, L 155/1-19).

This year, 2021, TMD has reached a milestone: its 25th volume. To celebrate this event, the issues to be published this year will highlight what has been achieved over the past 25 years, in mediation practice, and in respect of scientific knowledge on the various modes of dispute resolution. The question which targets to set for the future, will equally be addressed.
Geographically, the focus of this first issue is on the Netherlands, whereas the third issue will be addressing developments in Belgium. The fourth issue this year will highlight international developments, ranging from the USA to China. The second issue will be a special surprise for our subscribers.
The present issue, dealing with the Netherlands, starts with a tribute to the pioneer of family mediation in this country, the late professor Peter Hoefnagels. His original article, published in the very first volume of TMD (1997) and reproduced here in its entirety, describes his own experience when pioneering divorce mediation from 1974 onwards. In 1997, the year of original publication, mediation was not yet widely acknowledged nor embraced. Brigitte Chin-A-Fat responds to Peter Hoefnagels through a personal letter following his article, reassuring the great pioneer that 25 years further on, mediation has become well established in the family domain.
The issue continues with three interviews, organized by editors Roger Ritzen and/or Rob Jagtenberg, with individuals who have (sometimes inadvertently) become leading authorities in the field.
Steve Whittaker, an English solicitor who moved to the Netherlands in 1988 to work in the construction industry and became inspired by the use of ADR in Hongkong, became the founder of the Netherlands Mediation Institute (NMI), in the mid 1990s. For 20 years, NMI was the umbrella structure for (almost) all mediators in the Netherlands and the interface between the mediation community and government. Compared with those early years, today, interests seem to diverge increasingly, at the risk of fragmentation.
The second interview is with former President of the Court of Appeal in Arnhem, Ms. Machteld Pel. For many years, she spearheaded the Dutch national research program on court-referred mediation, thereby acting as the trait-d’union between the judiciary and the mediation community. Judges who were sceptics at first, often became interested after having taken the special training courses co-designed by Machteld Pel. Her book ‘Referral to Mediation’, which is packed with checklists and practical tips for formulating questions, has become a genuine classic.
The interview with Fred Schonewille takes the reader to the past decade in particular. Fred Schonewille has been the driving force behind various proposals for mediation legislation, aiming to secure a more prominent place for mediation, while improving professional quality standards. The Netherlands and Belgium constitute contrasting cases, where in the Netherlands legislation proposals were hitherto torpedoed, whereas Belgium has comprehensive legislation in place for some time now.
Fred Schonewille has also pioneered premarital mediation and new varieties of mediation in the domain of family-owned companies. Some fascinating insights gained in these areas are also shared in this third interview.
This first issue in the special year 2021 is concluded by two smaller contributions; in the first of these, Médiation à la française, Paris-based Dutch lawyer-mediators Marinka Schillings and Thom Verkuilen provide an overview of recent developments in France. Legislative action as well as some recent research outcomes are addressed. The second of the smaller contributions highlights a conference organized by a professorial team from the Radboud University in Nijmegen, addressing the position of the judge vis-a-vis various modes of dispute resolution. The proceedings of the conference will be published as a book later this year.

This article examines why literary fiction (based on extensive research and cooperation with inmates) allows us to understand the reality of being incarcerated sometimes better than non-fictional work or scientific research. Based on her long-term experiences as a creative writing coach in a Dutch prison the author explains why literature is such a great tool for empowerment and developing the talent of inmates, because it creates a ‘free space in prison’, where inmates are (aspired) writers instead of prisoners. She describes in detail how equivalent working relations between her as an ‘outsider’ and inmates have allowed her to create the novel Een van ons (One of us), an intimate story told from the perspective of a prisoner sentenced to life and a writing coach, and how she avoided the clichés of the questions of guilt and stigmatization. Otten explores the ‘unique power’ of fiction as a tool for opening up the closed world of incarceration.

In the second half of the last century, the position of detainees in the Netherlands improved considerably. As far as is possible in the case of persons deprived of their freedom, there has been a certain emancipation of detainees. A well-functioning right of complaint and appeal has been created, for example, that offers detainees the possibility to have decisions of the government, in particular those of the director of the institution and the selection official, that are unfavourable to them, reviewed by an independent judicial authority. Their living conditions have also improved during this period. However, in recent years there has also been a tendency for the government to make ever greater demands on the behaviour of detainees, in return for fewer opportunities for activities and freedoms aimed at resocialisation. Since last year, the corona pandemic and the way in which it is dealt with in prisons have put further pressure on the already vulnerable position of detainees. Since March 2020, prisoners have had their opportunities for phasing in and resocialising further reduced by the virtual prohibition of leave. Furthermore, the visiting possibilities and the activity programmes within the penitentiary institutions have been minimal for over a year.

Scientific studies have shown the effect of social crises on the nature and magnitude of domestic violence. Since the beginning of 2020 we are facing a worldwide corona pandemic. There is a widespread fear that the measures as a consequence of this pandemic have led to a significant increase in domestic violence. In this study news reports on the assumptions about the effect of the pandemic on domestic violence were inventoried. Subsequently, an overview was made of current empirical research projects on the assumed effect on domestic violence. The methodological aspects and the preliminary results of these studies are discussed.

De lengte van procedures en de onvoorspelbaarheid daarvan vormen een structurele zwakte van de Nederlandse rechtspraak. De verkorting van doorlooptijden istopprioriteit van de Rechtspraak. Ruim een jaar geleden verscheen het eindrapport van het project doorlooptijden Rechtspraak. Het bevat veel suggesties om dit probleem aan te pakken. In deze bijdrage wordt een aanzet gegeven voor een uitwerking van de meest veelbelovende oplossingsrichtingen. Conclusie is dat die oplossing gezocht moet worden in een stappenplan aan het begin van de procedure, regie van begin tot einde door de zaaksrechter, het houden van een zitting in iedere zaak en het direct inroosteren van schrijftijd voor de uitspraak.

It has been proposed that when people perceive their treatment by criminal justice actors as more procedurally just, they will be more likely to comply with the law. Existing research mainly focused on the police or the judge. This longitudinal study examined how prisoners experienced their treatment by five different criminal justice actors using data from the Prison Project. The prisoners were most positive about the procedurally fair treatment by their lawyer and least positive about the treatment by the police. Additionally, the perceived treatment by the police was associated with the treatment by other actors at subsequent moments.

The Russian avant-garde world serves as an empirical example of the embeddedness of criminal actors (fraudsters, smugglers, thieves) in the legal art market of curators, collectors and museum directors. The article discusses various dilemmas regarding the interpretation of criminal activities in the art world. Is the smuggling of ‘forbidden art’ from the Soviet Union a patriotic act or a crime? Why do world-famous museums exhibit forgeries? What are the financial and judicial consequences of a lack of consensus between art experts?

This article analyses political discourses in the light of the vocabulary and suggestions contained in the parliamentary resolutions proposed in 2019 dealing with the restitution. It appears that the discourses are committed but the developed suggestions are mild. This apparent contradiction can be explained through Hanna Pitkin’s work on political representation. Using this analysis, two reflections are proposed in the conclusion: one on the Belgian case with regards to the European context and the other on the current expectations of society.

In this article you will be introduced to Martha. Martha will turn eighteen in a couple of weeks and is afraid of losing her foster family when she becomes an adult (I). You will be taken on a journey through the Dutch child protection system and recent research on the desirability of forging an additional legal instrument, such as the introduction of simple adoption, for children like Martha and her two families. The following questions will be answered: How do children like Martha end up in a foster family (II)? Who is responsible or who makes decisions about Martha’s care and future and what problems may occur? Five possible situations in long-term foster care will be discussed in this context on the basis of current law and research (III). Would simple adoption (eenvoudige adoptie) solve some of the problems discussed in the earlier section and thus be a feasible and desirable option for long-term foster children and their foster parents (IV)? At the end of this journey you will be invited to take a brief glance into the future in the hope that Martha’s voice will be heard (V).
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In dit artikel stellen we u voor aan Martha. Martha wordt over een paar weken achttien en is bang haar pleeggezin kwijt te raken als ze meerderjarig wordt. Aan de hand van het verhaal van Martha nemen we u mee op een reis langs het Nederlandse jeugdbeschermingsstelstel en langs recent onderzoek naar de wenselijkheid van de introductie van een nieuwe juridische mogelijkheid waarmee een band tussen Martha en haar beide families kan worden gevestigd: eenvoudige adoptie. De volgende vragen worden daarbij beantwoord: Hoe komen kinderen zoals Martha in een pleeggezin terecht? Wie is verantwoordelijk voor of mag beslissingen nemen over Martha’s opvoeding en toekomst en wat voor problemen kunnen zich daarbij voordoen? Zou eenvoudige adoptie een oplossing bieden voor een aantal van de problemen die worden besproken en daarmee een wenselijke oplossing zijn voor langdurige pleegkinderen en hun pleeggezinnen? Aan het einde van deze reis werpen we een korte blik op de toekomst in de hoop dat de stem van Martha gehoord zal worden.

Langlopende letselschadezaken kunnen om meerdere redenen nog openstaan. Het is niet mogelijk om één dominante omstandigheid te benoemen als hét kenmerk van een langlopend letselschadedossier. In dit artikel worden de belangrijkste bevindingen uit het onderzoek gepresenteerd.