Long before the coming of the Bill of Rights in written Constitutions, the common law has had the greatest regard for the personal liberty of the individual. In order to safeguard that liberty, the remedy of habeas corpus was always available to persons deprived of their liberty unlawfully. This ancient writ has been incorporated into the modern Constitution as a fundamental right and enforceable as other rights protected by virtue of their entrenchment in those Constitutions. This article aims to bring together the various understanding of habeas corpus at common law and the principles governing the writ in common law jurisdictions. The discussion is approached through a twelve-point construct thus providing a brief conspectus of the subject matter, such that one could have a better understanding of the subject as applied in most common law jurisdictions.

This article seeks to examine the development of positive obligations under European law in the specific context of the rights of sexual minorities. It is clear that the law should respect and protect all sexualities and diverse intimate relationships without discrimination, and for this purpose it needs to ensure that sexual minorities can not only be free from state interference when expressing their sexuality in private, but that they should be given the right to express their sexuality in public and to have their intimate relationships legally recognised. In addition, sexual minorities should be protected from the actions of other individuals, when these violate their legal and fundamental human rights. Accordingly, in addition to negative obligations, European law must impose positive obligations towards sexual minorities in order to achieve substantive equality for them. The article explains that, to date, European law has imposed a number of such positive obligations; nonetheless, there is definitely scope for more. It is suggested that European law should not wait for hearts and minds to change before imposing additional positive obligations, especially since this gives the impression that the EU and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) are condoning or disregarding persistent discrimination against sexual minorities.

The article analyses the jurisprudence of international tribunals on the education and housing of Roma and Travellers to understand whether positive obligations can change the hearts and minds of the majority and promote minority identities. Case law on education deals with integration rather than cultural specificities, while in the context of housing it accommodates minority needs. Positive obligations have achieved a higher level of compliance in the latter context by requiring majorities to tolerate the minority way of life in overwhelmingly segregated settings. Conversely, little seems to have changed in education, where legal and institutional reform, as well as a shift in both majority and minority attitudes, would be necessary to dismantle social distance and generate mutual trust. The interlocking factors of accessibility, judicial activism, European politics, expectations of political allegiance and community resources explain jurisprudential developments. The weak justiciability of minority rights, the lack of resources internal to the community and dual identities among the Eastern Roma impede legal claims for culture-specific accommodation in education. Conversely, the protection of minority identity and community ties is of paramount importance in the housing context, subsumed under the right to private and family life.

The entry into force of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) pushed state obligations to counter prejudice and stereotypes concerning people with disabilities to the forefront of international human rights law. The CRPD is underpinned by a model of inclusive equality, which views disability as a social construct that results from the interaction between persons with impairments and barriers, including attitudinal barriers, that hinder their participation in society. The recognition dimension of inclusive equality, together with the CRPD’s provisions on awareness raising, mandates that states parties target prejudice and stereotypes about the capabilities and contributions of persons with disabilities to society. Certain human rights treaty bodies, including the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and, to a much lesser extent, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, require states to eradicate harmful stereotypes and prejudice about people with disabilities in various forms of interpersonal relationships. This trend is also reflected, to a certain extent, in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. This article assesses the extent to which the aforementioned human rights bodies have elaborated positive obligations requiring states to endeavour to change ‘hearts and minds’ about the inherent capabilities and contributions of people with disabilities. It analyses whether these bodies have struck the right balance in elaborating positive obligations to eliminate prejudice and stereotypes in interpersonal relationships. Furthermore, it highlights the convergences or divergences that are evident in the bodies’ approaches to those obligations.

Islamophobia, like xenophobia, points to deep-seated, ingrained discrimination against a particular group, whose effective enjoyment of fundamental rights is impaired. This in turn triggers the human rights obligations of liberal democratic states, more particularly states’ positive obligations (informed by reasonability considerations) to ensure that fundamental rights are effectively enjoyed, and thus also respected in interpersonal relationships. This article identifies and compares the fault lines in the practice of three international human rights supervisory mechanisms in relation to Islamophobia, namely the Human Rights Committee (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights), the European Court of Human Rights (European Convention on Human Rights) and the Advisory Committee of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. The supervisory practice is analysed in two steps: The analysis of each international supervisory mechanism’s jurisprudence, in itself, is followed by the comparison of the fault lines. The latter comparison is structured around the two main strands of strategies that states could adopt in order to counter intolerance: On the one hand, the active promotion of tolerance, inter alia through education, awareness-raising campaigns and the stimulation of intercultural dialogue; on the other, countering acts informed by intolerance, in terms of the prohibition of discrimination (and/or the effective enjoyment of substantive fundamental rights). Having regard to the respective strengths and weaknesses of the supervisory practice of these three international supervisory mechanisms, the article concludes with some overarching recommendations.

Patiënten in de leeftijd van 12 tot 16 jaar moeten, naast hun ouders, op basis van de Wet op de Geneeskundige Behandelingsovereenkomst (WGBO) toestemming geven voor hun medische behandelingsovereenkomst. Maar dit houdt niet in dat de jeugdige tussen de 12 en 16 jaar een zelfstandige toegang tot de rechter toekomt in geval van niet-nakoming van de behandelingsovereenkomst. Is dit in overeenstemming met kinder- en mensenrechten?

This article is a summary of the recently published study of Defence for Children - ECPAT: Sentencing of Sexual Exploitation of Minors: an analysis. The aim of the research was to provide insight into the penalties imposed in 2015-2019 in cases involving the sexual exploitation (human trafficking) of child victims. Another aim was to gain a better understanding of how the sentence was determined. A total of 145 convictions were analysed. This article first describes (the reason for) the research. Subsequently, the crime of human trafficking is briefly discussed. The findings of the analysis are then presented in a summarized version. Finally, the conclusion and recommendations follow.

In deze bijdrage worden de belangrijkste ontwikkelingen vanaf juni 2019 met betrekking tot het jeugdstraf(proces)recht uit de doeken gedaan. Zo worden de wijziging van het Wetboek van Strafvordering na implementatie van Richtlijn 2016/800/EU en de Wet USB besproken. Daarnaast zal inzicht worden gegeven in beleid over onder meer DNA-afname, verblijf in politiecellen en de reprimande. Ook een nieuw General Comment van het VN-Kinderrechtencomité en een mondiaal onderzoek naar vrijheidsbeneming komen aan de orde. Vervolgens worden wetsvoorstellen besproken, gevolgd door een korte reflectie op deze ontwikkelingen in het licht van het Internationale Verdrag inzake de Rechten van het Kind.

The 20th anniversary of this journal is a good reason to glance back at developments with restorative justice for children and young people. Can we say that restorative youth justice has become mature? Some core events and articles about developments in Belgium, the Netherlands and elsewhere are discussed, paying attention to young suspects as well as victims. Subsequently, the embedding of restorative justice in youth laws is discussed. Finally, the article focuses on the question what should be done to improve the implementation into an effective, child friendly and ‘rights based’ youth sanction model.

Age limits, minimum and maximum, and both explicit and ‘covert’, are still used in the National Health Service to determine access to a range of health interventions, including infertility services and cancer screening and treatment. Evidence suggests that chronological age is used as a proxy for a host of characteristics in determining access to healthcare: as a proxy for the capacity of an individual to benefit from an intervention; for the type of harm that may result from an intervention; for the likelihood of such benefit or harm occurring; and, in some cases, for other indicators used to determine what may be in the patient’s interest. Age is used as a proxy in this way in making decisions about both individual patients and wider populations; it may be used where no better ‘marker’ for the relevant characteristic exists or – for reasons including cost, practicality or fairness – in preference to other available markers. This article reviews the justifications for using age in this way in the context of the existing legal framework on age discrimination in the provision of public services.

In this article a critical reflection upon age limits applied in the law is provided, in light of the tension that exists in international children’s rights law between the protection of children and the recognition of their evolving autonomy. The main research question that will be addressed is to what extent the use of (certain) age limits is justified under international children’s rights law. The complexity of applying open norms and theoretically underdeveloped concepts as laid down in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, related to the development and evolving capacities of children as rights holders, will be demonstrated. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child struggles to provide comprehensive guidance to states regarding the manner in which the dynamic legal position of children should be applied in practice. The inconsistent application of age limits that govern the involvement of children in judicial procedures provides states leeway in granting children autonomy, potentially leading to the establishment of age limits based on inappropriate – practically, politically or ideologically motivated – grounds.

This article argues in favour of lowering the voting age to 16. First, it outlines a respect-based account of democracy where the right to vote is grounded in a respect for citizens’ autonomous capacities. It then outlines a normative account of autonomy, modelled on Rawls’s two moral powers, saying what criteria must be met for an individual to possess a (pro tanto) moral right to vote. Second, it engages with empirical psychology to show that by the age of 16 (if not earlier) individuals have developed all of the cognitive components of autonomy. Therefore, since 16- and 17-year-olds (and quite probably those a little younger) possess the natural features required for autonomy, then, to the extent that respect for autonomy requires granting political rights including the right to vote – and barring some special circumstances that apply only to them – 16- and 17-year-olds should be granted the right to vote.

Kritische analyse van jurisprudentie van de Raad van State over gezinshereniging van vaders met kinderen, in het licht van de Gezinsherenigingsrichtlijn en de toepasselijke mensen- en kinderrechten.

‘Illiberal’ is an adjective that is commonly used by scholars. For example, they might speak of ‘illiberal cultures’, ‘illiberal groups’, ‘illiberal states’, ‘illiberal democracies’, ‘illiberal beliefs’, and ‘illiberal practices’. Yet despite its widespread usage, no in-depth discussions exist of exactly what it means for someone or something to be illiberal, or might mean. This article fills this lacuna by providing a conceptual analysis of the term ‘illiberal practices’, which I argue is basic in that other bearers of the property of being illiberal can be understood by reference to it. Specifically, I identify five ways in which a practice can be illiberal based on the different ways in which this term is employed within both scholarly and political discourses. The main value of this disaggregation lies in the fact that it helps to prevent confusions that arise when people use the adjective ‘illiberal’ in different ways, as is not uncommon.

Deze bijdrage beoogt de belangrijkste thema’s van de nieuwe General Comment No. 24 (2019) uit te lichten die door het VN-Kinderrechtencomité zijn aangevuld of in hun geheel nieuw zijn toegevoegd. De wijzigingen zijn doorgevoerd in reactie op het veranderende beeld van kinderen in jeugdstrafrechtstelsels, dat van invloed is geweest op een drietal thema’s waaromtrent het Comité positieve en negatieve trends heeft gesignaleerd. Zo uit het Comité bijvoorbeeld zijn zorgen over het aanhoudende gebruik van vrijheidsbeneming ten aanzien van kinderen en benadrukt het nogmaals de noodzaak voor buitengerechtelijke interventies als alternatief voor vrijheidsbeneming. Het Comité hanteert daarentegen een optimistische toon wanneer het komt te spreken over de nieuwe absolute minimumleeftijd voor strafrechtelijke aansprakelijkheid, die is verhoogd van 12 naar 14 jaar, en het prijst de lidstaten die verder reiken dan dat minimum. Met de onderhavige General Comment tracht het Comité zijn standpunten omtrent bestaande en nieuwe thema’s te herbevestigen of geheel nieuw toe te voegen en daarmee aan lidstaten een richtsnoer te bieden voor het creëren van een jeugdstrafrechtstelsel dat volledig in lijn is met het VN-Kinderrechtenverdrag.

In the Netherlands, mayors are entitled to close public and non-public premises if drug-related activities are being conducted there. Using data from the case law of Dutch lower courts, published between 2008 and 2016, this article examines the relative success of different types of litigants, and the influence of case characteristics on drug-related closure cases. We build on Galanter’s framework of ‘repeat players’ and ‘one-shotters’, to argue that a mayor is the stronger party and is therefore more likely to win in court. We categorise mayors as ‘upperdogs’, and the opposing litigants as ‘underdogs’. Moreover, we distinguish stronger mayors from weaker ones, based on the population size of their municipality. Similarly, we distinguish the stronger underdogs from the weaker ones. Businesses and organisations are classified as stronger parties, relative to individuals, who are classified as weaker parties. In line with our hypothesis, we find that mayors win in the vast majority of cases. However, contrary to our presumptions, we find that mayors have a significantly lower chance of winning a case if they litigate against weak underdogs. When controlling for particular case characteristics, such as the type of drugs and invoked defences, our findings offer evidence that case characteristics are consequential for the resolution of drug-related closure cases in the Netherlands.

Met de aanname van het Jeugddelinquentiedecreet, bepaalt Vlaanderen de richting die het wil uitgaan in het omgaan met personen die op minderjarige leeftijd strafbare feiten plegen of hiervan verdacht worden. Zo ambieerde Vlaanderen onder meer zich ‘internationaal als goede praktijk in de aanpak van jeugddelinquentie te profileren’. Deze bijdrage gaat vanuit een kinderrechtenperspectief na in welke mate het nieuwe Vlaamse decreet deze internationale ambitie waar maakt.

In deze bijdrage wordt de rechtspositie van aangehouden minderjarige verdachten vanaf het moment van aanhouding tot en met de voorgeleiding onderzocht en naast de lat van Europese en internationale kinderrechten gelegd. Welke rechten en plichten hebben minderjarige verdachten in het Nederlandse rechtssysteem tijdens de eerste fase van het strafrechtelijk onderzoek, welke rol hebben Europese regelgeving en internationale kinderrechten in de totstandkoming van deze rechten en plichten gespeeld en voldoet Nederland aan dit internationale kader van kinderrechten?

In recent years, migration has been at the centre of European debates and the number of migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean remains alarming. To this day, hundreds of people continue to risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean on small boats in order to flee conflict zones, persecution or extreme poverty. However, due to the lack of legal alternatives, migrants engage in dangerous journeys and find themselves helpless in the hands of smugglers. This article will address the growing pattern of criminalisation of migration and humanitarian assistance throughout Europe and consider the extent to which national, European and international anti-smuggling laws affect the work of civil society actors.

De grote toestroom van migranten en asielzoekers in de EU houdt vandaag nog steeds verschillende regelgevers wakker. Niet alleen de nationale overheden, maar ook de EU-regelgevers zoeken naarstig naar oplossingen voor de problematiek. Daartoe trachten de EU-regelgevers het Gemeenschappelijk Europees Asielstelsel (GEAS) bij te werken.
Binnen de groep migranten en asielzoekers bestaat een specifiek kwetsbaar individu: de niet-begeleide minderjarige vreemdeling (NBMV). Hij is zowel vreemdeling als kind en kreeg reeds ruime aandacht binnen de rechtsleer. Nochtans werd deze aandacht niet altijd weerspiegeld in de EU-wetgeving. Het lijkt alsof hij door de regelgevers af en toe uit het oog verloren werd.
Uit het onderzoek blijkt dat de EU-regelgevers nog een zekere weg te gaan hebben. In de eerste plaats bestaat er wat betreft het geheel aan regels met betrekking tot de NBMV weinig coherentie. De EU-regelgevers zouden bijvoorbeeld meer duidelijkheid kunnen scheppen door een uniforme methode vast te leggen voor de bepaling van de leeftijd van de NBMV. Hetzelfde geldt voor een verduidelijking van de notie ‘het belang van het kind’ binnen asiel en migratie. Verder blijken de Dublinoverdrachten en de vrijheidsontneming van de NBMV nog steeds gevoelige pijnpunten. Hier en daar moet aan de hervorming van het asielstelsel nog wat gesleuteld worden, zodat de rechten van de NBMV optimaal beschermd kunnen worden.
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Today, the large influx of migrants and asylum seekers into the European Union (EU) keeps several regulators awake. Not only national authorities, but EU regulators too are diligently searching for solutions to the problems. To this end, EU regulators are seeking to update the Common European Asylum System (CEAS).
There is however a particularly vulnerable individual within the group of migrants and asylum seekers: the unaccompanied alien minor (UAM). These minors already received a great deal of attention within legal doctrine. However, this attention was not always reflected in EU legislation. It seems as if UAM are occasionally lost from sight by the regulators.
This article shows that the EU regulators still have a certain way to go. First, there is little coherence in the set of rules relating to the UAM. The EU regulators could, for example, create more clarity by laying down a uniform method for determining the age of the UAM. The same applies to a clarification of the notion of 'best interests of the child' within the context of asylum and migration. Second, the proposal for a new Dublin Regulation and the proposal for a new Reception Conditions Directive still appear to be sensitive. Here and there, the reform of the asylum system still needs adjustments, so that the rights of UAM can be optimally protected."