The Supreme Court has decided that the summary dismissal of an employee for violating a Covid-19 quarantine order by appearing at work is effective and justified.

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.

Hoe lang moet een Unieburger wiens verblijfsrecht door zijn gastlidstaat is beëindigd op grond van artikel 15 lid 1 Verblijfsrichtlijn, buiten het grondgebied van die lidstaat verblijven voordat hij weer een verblijfsrecht aan het Unierecht ontleent? Het Hof van Justitie introduceert in het FS-arrest het begrip ‘daadwerkelijk en effectief beëindigen van het verblijfsrecht’ als voorwaarde om een nieuw verblijfsrecht in de verwijderende lidstaat te verkrijgen en geeft een niet-limitatieve opsomming van omstandigheden om vast te stellen of het verblijfsrecht ‘daadwerkelijk en effectief’ is beëindigd. Zal dit criterium het beoogde evenwicht tussen de belangen van Unieburgers en lidstaten waarborgen?

HvJ 22 juni 2021, zaak C-719/19, ECLI:EU:C:2021:586 (FS/Staatssecretaris van Justitie en Veiligheid); Rb. Den Haag (zittingsplaats ’s-Hertogenbosch) 16 augustus 2021, ECLI:NL:RBOBR:2021:4374.

Some of the existential threats we currently face are global in the sense that they affect us all, and thus matter of global concern and trigger duties of moral global solidarity. But some of these global threats, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, are global in a second, additional, sense: discharging them requires joint, coordinated global action. For that reason, these twofold global threats trigger political – not merely moral – duties of global solidarity. This article explores the contrast between these two types of global threats with the purpose of clarifying the distinction between moral and political duties of global solidarity. And, in the absence of a fully developed global democratic institutional system, the article also explores some promising ways to fulfill our global political duties, especially those based on mechanisms of collective intelligence such as CrowdLaw, which might provide effective solutions to these global threats while enhancing the democratic legitimacy of public decision-making.

During the COVID-19 crisis a risk of ‘code black’ emerged in the Netherlands. Doctors mentioned that in case of code black, very senior citizens might not receive intensive care treatment for COVID-19 due to shortages. Sociologist Ulrich Beck argued that palpable risks lead to the creation of new networks of solidarity. In this article this assumption is investigated by analyzing the different storylines prevalent in the public discussion about ‘code black’. Initially, storylines showing sympathy with the plight of the elderly came to the fore. However, storylines brought forward by medical organizations eventually dominated, giving them the opportunity to determine health care policy to a large extent. Their sway over policymaking led to a distribution scheme of vaccines that was favourable for medical personnel, but unfavourable for the elderly. The discursive process on code black taken as a whole displayed a struggle over favourable risk positions, instead of the formation of risk solidarity.

This contribution explores the meaning and scope of solidarity with the emergence of the coronavirus discourse as formulated by politicians in order to make sense of the virus. It offers a poststructuralist account drawing on discourse theory together with insights from Levinas and Derrida. This leads to a critical reflection on the prevailing view of solidarity as secondary and derivative to corona policies, because solidarity is often subjugated to hegemonic meanings of efficiency. Instead, the argument is made that solidarity refers to the unique responsibility to which the other as wholly other commands me. This appeal for responsibility, that is presented in the face of the other, is to be assumed in the distance between the rules and the singularity of the situation. Accordingly, solidarity is described as a paradox of dependence (calculability) and independence (beyond calculation), that appears in a moment of undecidability, for it can never be overcome.

In times of crisis, we witness exceptional expressions of solidarity. Why does solidarity spring in times of crisis when it wanes in normal times? An inquiry into what may explain the differences between the expression of solidarity in crisis vs. normalcy provides, as I will argue in this article, important insights into the conditions and nature of solidarity. Solidarity requires, I will contend, an egalitarian ethos and state action within and beyond the state. It is neither a momentary political ideal, nor an exclusionary one, which depends for its sustainment on formal, legal, structures. Transient, sectarian, and informal conceptions of solidarity unduly curtail the demands of solidarity by restricting its reach to times of crisis, to in-group recipients, and to the social rather than the legal sphere. The article concludes by discussing some aspects of the dynamics of solidarity and its inherent risks that the analysis of the exceptionality of solidarity helps bring into focus.

The article discusses the tension between social solidarity and religious freedom as demonstrated by the refusal of the ultra-Orthodox sects in Israel to comply with COVID-19 regulations. The article provides a detailed description of the refusal to comply with the regulations restricting mass prayer services in synagogues and studying Torah in the yeshivas, thus interfering with the ultra-Orthodox religious life. The article suggests possible explanations for that refusal, based on either religious beliefs or a socio-political claim to autonomy, and discusses whether the polity should be willing to tolerate such a refusal on the basis of the cultural defence. The article concludes that despite the drastic restrictions on religious life caused by the social distancing regulations, and the special importance of freedom of religion, reducing the pandemic’s spread called for awarding priority to solidarity over religious freedom, and the enforcement of social solidarity legal duties – the social distancing regulations – on all.

What is at stake in invoking solidarity in legal-political contexts? The guiding hypothesis of this article is that solidarity is always and necessarily linked to the concept of community. A plea for solidarity will, in other words, directly lead one to the question: solidarity with whom? On the one hand, solidarity may be understood as extending only to those who belong to the same community as us. In this reading, solidarity builds upon an already existing community and applies to members only. On the other hand, invoked by those who aim to question the status quo, solidarity also plays a key role in practices of contestation. In these contexts, it focuses on collective action and the reimagination of political community. The article ends by articulating how this second interpretation of solidarity might prove helpful in making sense of our current predicament of a global pandemic.

Coercion plays two essential roles in theories of justice. First, in assuring those who comply with the demands of justice that they are not being exploited by others who do not do so. Second, in responding to, and managing, those who are unreasonable. With respect to the first, responses to the pandemic have potentially undermined this assurance. This is true in the distributions of vaccines internationally, and in some domestic contexts in which the rich and powerful have avoided public health guidance not to travel, to isolate, and so on. With respect to the second, the article considers whether those who refuse to be vaccinated are unreasonable, and if so, what follows for how they ought to be treated.

The article discusses a range of important normative questions raised by anti-COVID-19 measures and policies. Do governments have the right to impose such severe restrictions on individual freedom and furthermore do citizens have obligations vis-à-vis the state, others and themselves to accept such restrictions? I will argue that a democratic state may legitimately enforce publicly discussed, properly enacted and constitutionally tested laws and policies in order to protect its citizens from risks to life and limb. Even so, there is a natural limit, factual and normative, to what the state or a government can do in this respect. Citizens will also need to take it upon themselves not to harm and to protect others and in the context of a pandemic this means that endorsement of restrictions or other mandatory measures, notably vaccination, is not to be seen as a matter of personal preference concerning the supposedly inviolable sovereignty of one’s own body.

The article uses three prominent examples from the Dutch context to problematize the relationship between contractual and social solidarity during the coronavirus crisis. The social science ideal types of ‘mechanical’ and ‘organic’ solidarity, and their typified correspondence with legal modes of punishment and compensation, are used to illuminate the way in which solidarity language in private relationships can convey and normalize assumptions about the public interest and economic order.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, most governments in Europe have imposed disciplinary and controlling mechanisms on their populations. In the name of solidarity, citizens are pressed to submit to lockdowns, social distancing or corona apps. Building on the historical-philosophical studies of Michel Foucault, this article shows that these mechanisms are spin-offs of health regimes that have evolved since the seventeenth century. In case of COVID-19, these regimes decreased the infection, morbidity and mortality rates. But, as a side-effect, they limited the opportunities to act together and practice solidarity. This negatively affected the social cohesion and public sphere in already highly individualistic societies. To prevent the further disappearing of solidarity – understood as something that is enacted rather than as a moral value or political principle – governments and citizens need to invest in the restoral of the social conditions that enable and facilitate the practicing of solidarity after the epidemic.

The COVID-19 crisis has produced or amplified disruptive processes in societies. This article wants to argue for the fact that we understand the meaning of the COVID-19 crisis only if we relate it to the fundamental vulnerability of modern life and the awareness of vulnerability of whole societies. Vulnerability in modernity are expressions of a reality of freedom that is to some extent considered contingent and therefore unsecured. It is true that law is understood today as the protective power of freedom. The thesis of the article, however, boils down to the fact that the COVID-19 crisis has resulted in a new way of thinking about the protection of freedom. This also means that the principle of solidarity must be assigned a new social role. Individual and societal vulnerability refer thereafter to an interconnectedness, dependency, and a future perspective of freedom margins that, in addition to the moral one, can also indicate a need for legal protection. In this respect, law has not only a function of delimitation, but also one of inclusion.

The Chilean government called upon ideas of social solidarity to fight the pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 and it relied heavily on the criminal law in order to secure compliance with sanitary restrictions. However, because restrictions and prosecutorial policy did not take into account social background and people’s ability to comply with the law, prosecutions soon created groups of people who were being both over-exposed to disease and death, and over-exposed to control, blame and punishment. The configuration of this overpoliced and underprotected group became so visibly unjust that appealing to social solidarity to justify the criminal enforcement of sanitary restrictions became almost insulting. This forced the Fiscal Nacional to develop a ‘socially sensitive’ prosecutorial strategy, something that we have not often seen despite Chile’s inequalities. The changes in policy by the Fiscal Nacional suggest that perhaps, at times, penal institutions can be made accountable for acting in ways that create estrangement rather than cohesion.

Verschillende internationale sportbonden voorzien in mogelijkheden voor geschilbeslechting voor hun leden. FIFA heeft in 2001 de FIFA Dispute Resolution Chamber (FIFA DRC) in het leven geroepen en voorziet haar leden via die instantie in de mogelijkheid voor interne geschilbeslechting. Er worden jaarlijks zo’n 2.000 zaken per jaar aan de FIFA DRC voorgelegd. Deze zaken betreffen arbeidsrechtelijke geschillen met een internationale dimensie, geschillen rondom het afgeven van een internationaal transfercertificaat of geschillen met betrekking tot te betalen opleidingsvergoedingen en solidariteitsbijdragen. In deze bijdrage gaat de auteur kort in op de organisatie van het nieuw opgerichte FIFA Football Tribunal en de belangrijkste procedurele aspecten onder de nieuwe reglementen.

This article presents an interdisciplinary comparison of British and German legal arguments concerning the justification of the use of force against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). It is situated in the broader framework of research on strategic culture and the use of international law as a tool for justifying state behaviour. Thus, a gap in political science research is analysed: addressing legal arguments as essentially political in their usage. The present work questions whether differing strategic cultures will lead to a different use of legal arguments. International legal theory and content analysis are combined to sort arguments into the categories of instrumentalism, formalism and natural law. To do so, a data set consisting of all speeches with regard to the fight against ISIS made in both parliaments until the end of 2018 is analysed. It is shown that Germany and the UK, despite their varying strategic cultures, rely on similar legal justifications to a surprisingly large extent.