Legal arrangements rest on behavioural, cognitive, social, and other assumptions regarding their role and function in society and the legal system. The identification and subsequent evaluation of these assumptions is an important task for legal scholarship. In this article, we focus on the identification and categorisation of these assumptions, providing conceptual distinctions and methodological guidance. We distinguish between assumptions about the value(s), norm(s), or interest(s) underlying a legal arrangement, which can be legal or non-legal, and assumptions about the relationship between the legal arrangement and its underlying value(s), norm(s), or interest(s), which can be logical, causal, or contributory. Regarding the identification, we consider explicit references and inference to the best explanation and theory-driven evaluations as possible methods. Inference to the best explanation, we posit, functions as a manner of reconstructing the theory that the person(s) creating a legal arrangement had in mind regarding the place and function of that legal arrangement in society. Given this, we offer a step-by-step approach to reconstructing this theory in use, drawing from theory-driven evaluations and its sources in the social sciences. These distinctions and guidelines can contribute to understanding the context and untangling the complexities involved in identifying the assumptions that underlie legal arrangements.

In this article we introduce the main principles of the Polish dismissal protection regulation. Issues addressed include the underlying principles for the system of dismissal protection, notice periods, justifiable reasons for dismissal, consultation of trade unions and how to remedy unfair or defective dismissals. We also very briefly touch upon dismissal protection of civil servants.

Maar liefst dertien jaar na dato verklaart het Gerecht de beschikking waarbij de Commissie aan Intel een boete van € 1,06 miljard heeft opgelegd, gedeeltelijk nietig. De analyse die de Commissie heeft verricht is volgens het Gerecht onvolledig en niet geschikt om aan te tonen dat de omstreden kortingen mededingingsbeperkende gevolgen konden hebben of waarschijnlijk dergelijke gevolgen hadden. Uit het arrest blijkt op welke wijze juridische vermoedens bij misbruik van machtpositie kunnen worden weerlegd. Het maakt handhaving van het verbod op misbruik van machtspositie er niet makkelijker op, wat de vlucht naar het alternatief van de recent aangenomen Digital Markets Act mogelijk des te groter maakt.

Verslag van de najaarsvergadering van de Vereniging voor Gezondheidsrecht van 19 november 2021 met als hoofdthema euthanasie. Sprekers waren mr. dr. J.H.H.M. (Jo) Dorscheidt, S.M.P. (Sisco) van Veen en mr. J. (Josine) Janson.

Op verzoek van de politiek is twee jaar na inwerkingtreding van de Wet zorg en dwang (Wzd) en de Wet verplichte ggz (Wvggz) de eerste wetsevaluatie uitgevoerd. In dit artikel ligt de focus op de Wet zorg en dwang. De auteur staat in het bijzonder stil bij de betekenis van de uitkomsten voor de rechtspositie van cliënten met een verstandelijke beperking of een psychogeriatrische aandoening. Het artikel wordt afgesloten met een blik vooruit: welke partijen zijn nu aan zet?

Na de gestrande pogingen van 2013 en 2016-2018 doet het Europees Parlement een nieuwe poging de Europese Commissie zover te krijgen dat zij een wetsvoorstel rond algemene regels van bestuursrecht initieert. Er zijn namelijk voortschrijdende inzichten rond de effecten die digitalisering van overheidsbestuur en de inzet van artificiële intelligentie (AI) daarbij hebben op burgers en organisaties. Daarom is het tijd om na te denken over de beste manier om de betekenis daarvan voor de normering van bestuurlijk handelen zo duidelijk mogelijk te maken voor burgers, organisaties en het bestuur zelf.

The subject of this article is constitutional transformations in Sub-Saharan Africa upon and after the region’s encounter with the third wave of democratization in Africa (TWD) that took place between 1989 and 1994. Since failure in democratic rule in the region was associated with the ease with which political elites amended formal constitutions to subvert democracy, anti-authoritarian factions perceived the solution to the problems bedevilling democratic governance in Africa to lie in formal constitutional rewriting. Hence, virtually all countries ventured into constitutional change – amendment or substitution – in the early 1990s. Inasmuch as different countries changed different formal aspects of their constitutions, they largely recognized multiparty democracy and obliterated the hitherto formulations that either allowed or endorsed single-party political regimes. Yet, on the ground different transitional outcomes were achieved, with a majority of countries either failing to transform at all from de facto authoritarianism or simply making partial transitions into semi-authoritarian or rather hybrid regimes. Using Cameroon, Kenya and Benin, this article contends that disestablishment of authoritarian rule depends on certain enabling factors, which seem to go beyond textual formulation and which may account for both the present conditions of these countries and the different transitional outcomes that were realized after these countries changed their formal constitutions in the early 1990s.

In this article, the author reflects on the impact of COVID-19 on policing, the relations among police officers and the interactions between police and citizens based on systematic social observations in small to semi-sized local police forces during the pandemic. The article discusses the nature of police work during the crisis and new types of interventions that police officers are confronted with (e.g. curfew controls). Additionally, the impact of the pandemic on the internal and external relations is discussed. Internally, the COVID-19 measures may have an impact on police officers’ possibilities for personal, social interactions among colleagues, which may potentially challenge the solidarity within the police force. Externally, tensions may arise in relations with citizens, partly because of unclear regulations or variable interpretations of those regulations. Those unclear regulations, but also uncertainties concerning one’s own competences and questions regarding the police’s role in enforcing the pandemic regulations, put pressure on the police’s (self-)legitimacy.

This article examines the use of citizen participation in urgent missing person cases. The Theory of Planned Behavior was used to examine which specific considerations investigators have in this regard and which have the greatest influence on the choice of whether or not to involve citizens. The findings suggest that this choice is primarily attitude-driven. Detectives are predominantly positive about participation, but see harm to the investigation as the main risk. A practical implication is to focus collaboration primarily on professionally organized groups of citizens to reduce (perceived) risks.

Based on a scoping review regarding international policy recommendations, the authors of this article explore the most important aspects concerning bodycam policies for police services. Even though most literature on the shortlist is situated in the United States, important issues are discussed for a Belgian bodycam policy. Examples are a clear activation policy and regulations regarding warnings. These recommendations are compared to the legal regulations on bodycams in Belgium, such as the individual discretion Belgian police officers have when activating the camera. Throughout the article, the use of bodycams is linked to procedural justice. Because of the scarcity of Belgian bodycam research, we also give some recommendations for further research on this topic.

The rise of the internet and social media has important consequences for the way we interact, communicate and access information. This has repercussions for the police organization and also for the cooperation between police and citizens. One of these forms of cooperation between police and citizens are neighborhood watch (NW) projects (also known as ‘BINs’ in Belgium and ‘burgerwachten’ in the Netherlands). This study uses semi-structured interviews (n=380) in Belgium to examine how NW members and non-NW members perceive the effectiveness of both formal and informal NW projects and how the two relate to each other. The perceived effectiveness is assessed based on several criteria, including impact on crime, fear of crime, policing, and the relationship between police and citizens.

In dit artikel onderzoeken de auteurs de bestaande wettelijke regeling over de in control-verklaring in de Verenigde Staten. Na een bespreking van de relevante bepalingen volgt een analyse van de kritiek op deze regeling en de nadelen en voordelen ervan. De auteurs sluiten af met enkele conclusies.

Developing the capacity for moral judgment is an essential professional competence for lawyers. What teaching and learning activities in the law curriculum can be used in order to contribute to students’ moral reasoning and moral judgment? Four teaching methods were tried out in the period 2019 to 2021 at the Utrecht University School of Law: teaching methods that either work with (hypothetical) dilemmas (I); in-class reflection papers (II); experiential learning based on own experiences in a simulation situation (III); or clinical teaching in a real law firm (IV). The effects of these methods on the development of moral reasoning were measured using the Defining Issues Test (DIT). Additional information on the effectiveness and utility of the method was gathered using semi-structured interviews with teachers. The DIT results were compared at the beginning and at the end of the courses and related to the teaching methods. This article presents the outcomes of this study and formulates some recommendations for further research on the topic.

In zijn arrest in de zaak Altice heeft het Gerecht (op een kleine vermindering na) de boete in stand gelaten die de Commissie aan Altice had opgelegd nadat deze vóór aanmelding en goedkeuring zeggenschap had verworven over PT Portugal. Het arrest is met name van belang voor de mogelijkheid om in de fusie- en overnamepraktijk Normal Conduct of Business-clausules overeen te komen ter bescherming van de waarde van de doelwitonderneming tussen ondertekening en levering.
Gerecht 22 september 2021, T-425/18, ECLI:EU:T:2021:607 (Altice Europe/Commissie), bij het ter perse gaan niet beschikbaar in het Nederlands.

De Handels- en samenwerkingsovereenkomst tussen de Europese Unie (en Euratom) en het Verenigd Koninkrijk is ondertekend op 30 december 2020 en op 1 mei 2021 formeel in werking getreden. Terwijl het Terugtrekkingsakkoord tussen de Europese Unie en het Verenigd Koninkrijk kan worden gezien als de ‘echtscheidingsovereenkomst’, die voornamelijk alle kwesties behandelt die verband houden met een ordelijke uittreding van het Verenigd Koninkrijk, legt de Handels- en samenwerkingsovereenkomst de basis voor een nieuwe relatie tussen de twee partijen. Deze relatie is niet langer gebaseerd op een lidmaatschap dat wordt bepaald door de supranationale rechtsorde van de Europese Unie, maar op een pragmatisch partnerschap op basis van internationaal publiekrecht, of, zoals sommige Britse vertegenwoordigers blijven benadrukken, een relatie tussen ‘soevereine gelijken’.
Handels- en Samenwerkingsovereenkomst tussen de Europese Unie en de Europese Gemeenschap voor Atoomenergie, enerzijds, en het Verenigd Koninkrijk van Groot-Brittannië en Noord-Ierland, anderzijds (PbEU 2021, L 149/10). Besluit (EU) 2021/689 van de Raad van 29 april 2021 betreffende de sluiting, namens de Unie, van de Handels- en samenwerkingsovereenkomst tussen de Europese Unie en de Europese Gemeenschap voor Atoomenergie, enerzijds, en het Verenigd Koninkrijk van Groot-Brittannië en Noord-Ierland, anderzijds, en van de Overeenkomst tussen de Europese Unie en het Verenigd Koninkrijk van Groot-Brittannië en Noord-Ierland inzake beveiligingsprocedures voor de uitwisseling en bescherming van gerubriceerde gegevens (PbEU 2021, L 149/2).

This article reports several findings from a qualitative case study of six mosques in the Netherlands. In recent years, media, government, and society have paid increasing attention to their role, in part in relation to growing concerns of Salafist influences in the Dutch landscape. There are two major changes that can be witnessed. First, the role of the mosque as solely a religious institution is gradually shifting towards a broader interpretation. Second, there is a shift in the role of religious authority. These changes have the potential to create conflict.

Between 1964 and 1976, roughly the heydays of dechurching in the Netherlands, the Dutch government contributed to the construction of 788 church buildings and one mosque through the Church Building Premium Act. After 1976, however, there was no longer any political basis for similar support of religious newcomers – apart from a few temporary subsidies to specific Muslim communities. In this article I argue that to understand developments in Dutch church-state relations it is not enough to study cultural-ideological shifts as visible in in media-outlets and parliamentary deliberations. The case of direct funding for houses of worship illustrates that dynamics of church and state relations can only fully assessed by delving into the politico-institutional context in which policy deliberations took place. This shows that political decisions about policies on religious accommodation were highly influenced by the way the trajectory of decision making was organized. Both the amount of access of faith-based organisations to the negotiation tables and the extent to which policy-debates were linked to or decoupled from concurrent policy issues mattered greatly for the outcome of policy deliberations.

Belgium and the Netherlands legalized voluntary termination of pregnancy a few decades ago under certain conditions. In both legislations the abortion doctor must also investigate whether other possibilities exist to meet the woman’s request for help. In this contribution the author examines to what extent adoption can be a reasonable alternative to an abortion. It appears that adoption is often not considered in the abortion request, with the result that opportunities are lost for the woman, the unborn child and society to avoid a termination of pregnancy after all.

The fact that Spanish clubs/Sociedades Anónimas Deportivas (SADs) were spending beyond their means led LaLiga to impose a set of restrictive measures to ensure a fair balance between income and expenditure, always focusing on the long-term economic sustainability of these entities. One of these measures affects the amount clubs/SADs can use to pay their players’ salaries. The LaLiga regulations are comprehensive and complex. This article uses the example of Leo Messi and FC Barcelona to provide some practical clarifications.

In deze bijdrage wordt getracht antwoord te geven op de vraag of makingen beschouwd kunnen worden als de nakoming van een natuurlijke verbintenis. Zo dat het geval is, heeft dat tot gevolg dat de inkorting respectievelijk vermindering van die makingen (bij de legitieme portie en andere wettelijke rechten respectievelijk bij een ontoereikende nalatenschap) pas na andere makingen in aanmerking komt. De conclusie luidt dat een dergelijke making als zodanig moeilijk is in te passen in het systeem van de wet, maar bij wijze van inperking van de testeervrijheid, als fictie of als toepassing van de redelijkheid en billijkheid, niettemin als mogelijkheid moet worden erkend.