This article outlines the need in the Netherlands for socially effective justice that better resolves citizens’ problems. The author argues that new forms of dispute resolution should be integrated in the justice system. The author first describes various types of innovations. Then he outlines the obstacles to innovations. A major obstacle is that many stakeholders in the existing legal system are simultaneously the gatekeepers for the admission of innovations. It is necessary to create an infrastructure that welcomes, reinforces, tests, finances and imports new treatments for legal problems.

This article is about the history of the justice of the peace, a low profile judge where people easily have access to. The history of the justice of the peace goes back to the seventeenth century. The justice of the peace was reintroduced in the Netherlands in the French period, when the country was annexed by the French Empire under the reign of Napoleon. The justice of the peace was also introduced in Belgium and is still in use. The most important task of the justice of the peace is ‘conciliation’. In the conciliation procedure the justice of the peace has a very active role. The judge tries to mediate between the parties in order to come to an agreement.

In Dutch courts several pilots are being carried out in order to enhance the quality of civil procedure. The main focus of the pilots is to speed up the procedure and make it more cost-effective, while ensuring the procedure is easily accessible and is overseen by a mediating judge in a nearby court. This focus largely corresponds with aspects of the civil procedure that the courts and the minister of Justice have identified as in need of attention. The courts and the minister have focused on different specific problems and propose different solutions, however, and neither aims to address the quality of civil procedure as a whole. It is doubtful whether the proposals for improvement, put forward by the courts and the minister, can address the concerns they have intended to resolve and whether the overall quality of the civil procedure (for all civil cases instead of the simple ones) will be improved. Solutions to the problems of the civil procedure cannot be devised without first developing a clear picture of the problems people experience with civil procedures and the courts.

Socially effective justice requires innovative legislation that allows the judge to experiment with simple procedures that bring parties together in order to prevent escalation of disputes. For that reason, the Dutch government has enabled experiments with low-threshold local civil courts. This article focuses on the experiences with such a court in Rotterdam. The court provides a simple, fast and cheap procedure with the aim of reaching a solution to the dispute in joint consultation. The article provides insight into the nature and the number of disputes that have been dealt with up to now.

A characteristic difference between administration of justice and mediation so far was the element of voluntariness on the side of the clients. Administration of justice however is, for the citizen who is brought before the courts, not voluntary. Recently pilots have been started in which citizens can turn voluntarily to the Court at low cost, and not far from their neighborhood. Judges will not primarily aim at making a decision in accordance with the law, but at finding friendly solutions. Does this mean that judges are going to mediate? And if so, how should this be appreciated? In this contribution attention is paid to certain aspects of this question. It is argued that differences between jurisdiction and mediation still remain. More than mediators judges must act within the legal framework. The extent to which they can engage in the emotional undercurrent of conflicts is limited. Confidence in the Court is from a different origin than trust in the mediator, and that also makes a difference. And finally, a judge is competent to make a binding judgment, which influences the way he or she is looked at by the parties.

As a core element of the ‘rechtsstaat’ (a country under the rule of law) the importance of the principle of access to justice is widely agreed upon. Nevertheless it is complicated to reach an agreement on subjects that are pivotal to the implementation of this principle in practice. The needs of society change over time and the factors that influence the concrete accessibility are many (costs, length, complexity of procedures, etc.). Furthermore, as a result of the coming into being of ADR and new forms of law enforcement the use of the civil and criminal trial has declined. To evaluate the current state of access to justice against the backdrop of these factors and developments the central question should be whether the judge is still able to fulfil his function in a rechtsstaat of providing legal protection, whilst functioning as a counterbalance to the executive and law-making powers of the state.

Private administration of justice is an online and offline reality. In this article the reality of online dispute resolution (ODR) is explored, using the example of eBay (60 million conflicts taken on each year). The issue of jurisdiction in online cases is clarified and an analysis is made of the causes of the propagation of ODR. Finally the new phenomenon of online dispute prevention (ODP) is examined. This leads to the conclusion that ODR started as an alternative form of dispute settlement, but more and more becomes a substitute for the public administration of justice.

On March the first 2009 the compulsory parenting plan was introduced in Dutch law. The plan is a binding agreement between parents on the consequences of the divorce for their children. During the parliamentary debate, the compulsory character of the parenting plan was frequently criticised. The author scrutinises the relevant case law on the parenting plan over the last two and a half years to examine how it operates in practice. Questions about accessibility of the judicial procedure, the minimum requirements and the completion if the parents do not come to an agreement are discussed. The author concludes that considering the judicial decisions and the small amount of publicised case law the compulsory parenting plan does not seem to cause many problems or delays in the divorce proceedings. More research is necessary to determine whether the parenting plan is able to fulfill its goal to reduce the amount of conflicts between parents after a divorce.

In recent years many changes occurred in procedural divorce law and divorce practice in the Netherlands. The bottomline of these changes is that divorcing partners themselves should settle the consequences of the divorce as much as possible by mutual agreement. The author describes how in the same period divorce mediation boomed, especially after the introduction in 2009 of the so-called collaborative divorce. This type of mediation is characterised by the presence of lawyers acting for each of the two parties and the line-up of a team of experts. In general the supply of divorce guidance has diversified substantially. It is important that clients are able to choose the form of divorce guidance that suits them best. Divorce mediators should have enough experience and knowledge to handle the psychological as well as the legal aspects of a divorce. Finally the chances of a good ‘after marriage’ are enhanced by ensuring access to affordable mediation for all divorcing couples.

In this study the authors examine changes over the past decade in the number of divorces and divorce-related proceedings. Furthermore, the authors look at the accompanying expenses for subsidised legal aid. They observed that, after six years of relative stability, divorce proceeding prevalence increased in 2010. Moreover, there were fewer adversarial divorce proceedings in 2010 than in previous years, while the number of divorce proceedings upon a joint petition and proceedings without opposition increased substantially. Proceeding prevalence for child custody and alimony nearly doubled over the past decade. The recent increase of divorce proceeding prevalence is presumably due to the discontinuation of flash divorce in 2009. Mitigation of opposition may stem from the introduction of the mandatory parenting plan in 2009. Legal aid expenses for divorce roughly followed the trend in the number of divorce proceedings. The expenses for divorce-related proceedings increased far more than the expenses for divorce proceedings. It can be expected that expenses and proceeding prevalence for divorce-related matters will decrease in the future due to the introduction of the parenting plan.