This PhD project uses a mixed method design to study perceived procedural justice among defendants in Dutch single-judge criminal cases. To find out whether defendants are concerned with perceived procedural justice and to get a better grasp on the concept, the first empirical project reviewed here is an interview study among defendants conducted in 2017. In this study, defendants were interviewed after their court hearings about perceived procedural justice during their court hearings. The second empirical project, which started in January 2019, zooms in on experiences of defendants with a non-western migration background. Using a questionnaire, I examine whether and how perceived everyday discrimination affects defendants’ perceptions of and reactions to procedural justice during their court hearings. I am currently designing a third empirical study, which entails a scenario experiment among people with a non-western migration background. I plan to manipulate the level of perceived procedural justice during a hypothetical court hearing to examine its influence on, for instance, people’s trust in judges, and again assess whether people’s reactions to perceived procedural justice differ depending on their levels of perceived everyday discrimination. At the end of my dissertation, I plan to connect the empirical findings to the legal domain by assessing possible normative implications.

Victims who suffer severe damages due to the act of a violent crime can request state compensation from the Dutch Violent Offences Compensation Fund (VOCF). VOCF workers who decide on these requests use their discretionary powers to translate the VOCF’s rules and policy into concrete actions. This study investigated (1) to what extent these VOCF workers match Lipsky’s definition of street-level bureaucrats and (2) what routines and heuristics they use to deal with time and information constraints. On the basis of document analysis and interviews, we found that the decision makers of the VOCF can to a certain extent be seen as street-level bureaucrats. To make decisions timely, some of them use routines such as the ‘downstream orientation’. This means that they award requests for compensation if they think that the applicant would be able to successfully contest a rejecting decision. To deal with a lack of information, they sometimes include a review clause in the text of a rejection decision. The use of heuristics was not found among the lawyers who decide in first instance, but in case of appeal hearings heuristics such as the affect and representativeness heuristic seem to play a role in the decision-making process. Future research should investigate whether these routines and heuristics lead to disparities in outcomes.

This paper analyses how street-level bureaucrats in the Netherlands decide on detaining asylum seekers. The paper is based on interviews with officers of the national police and the military police who take these decisions as part of their job. The relevant Dutch and European legal rules are not clear and unambiguous and the officers are given wide margins of discretion in making these decisions. Many interviewees said that they ultimately rely on their ‘feelings’. The paper therefore pays special attention to whether and how gut feelings and emotions of the officers influence their decision-making. In addition, the paper examines whether and how the increased use of ICTs and the Europeanisation of migration and asylum law have reduced the officers’ discretion and autonomy.

This article is about the work of Wibo van Rossum who passed away in April 2018. Trained as a legal anthropologist he has conducted empirical research on the administration of justice in the Netherlands for many years. This anthology is about four research reports he produced and many articles he has written in two decades. This article provides an academic as well as a practical review of his work.

This quantitative empirical research project describes how notaries evaluate disciplinary jurisdiction. Findings show that perceived procedural justice matters for notaries’ trust in the disciplinary jurisdiction of their cases. For example, those respondents who had been involved in a disciplinary case themselves, rated the disciplinary judge with a 5.3 on a 10-point scale when procedural justice was perceived by them to be relatively low. In contrast, when respondents who had been involved in a disciplinary case perceived procedural justice to be relatively high they rated the disciplinary judge with 7.6 on the same 10-point scale. This suggests that perceived procedural justice matters among an interesting type of professionals (notaries) who are involved in an interesting procedure in their profession (a disciplinary evaluation of their professional handling) in which important decisions are made. The current paper can contribute to the development of a barometer of notary disciplinary law.

The topic of this article is the legal philosophical foundation of John Griffiths’s sociology of law. Griffiths has developed his foundation of sociology of law in discussion with three positions: legal realism, Hart and Dworkin. These three positions give three different answers on the question ‘what is law?’. In the first part Griffiths’s discussion of legal realism is analyzed. From the outset, a legal realistic approach to law has the benefit of its strong focus on the empirical determinants of predicting the outcomes of cases. Problematic, according to Griffiths, is a naïve instrumentalism, often related to legal realism. The second part on Hart’s theory discussed Hart’s notion of rule-following as the core of Griffiths’s sociology of law. Also the different perspectives on law are discussed. According to Griffiths, Black’s extreme external perspective is problematic, but Hart’s moderate external perspective is also not suitable for the external comparative purpose of sociology of law. In the third part, Dworkin’s theory is discussed. Griffiths, in my opinion, unsuccessfully, tried to reconcile Dworkin’s theory with legal positivism. Dworkin’s theory is an interpretive theory from the participant’s point of view, which makes it hard to use it as an adequate foundation of an empirical theory of law. For a sociologist of law, choosing an adequate conception of law is just as important as the choice for an empirical method. The contribution of Griffiths to sociology of law is in this sense unique and of great value for the sociology of law.

A central ambition that Griffiths expressed rather frequently was to realize progress in the sociology of law by formulating informative theoretical propositions and testing them empirically according to the maxim of the critical-rational metatheoretical program of Karl Popper. Our analysis of Griffiths’s contributions suggests, however, that he actually refrained from following Popper’s path: to put a Problem – formulate a Theory – testing that provisional answer by empirical Observation. Instead, Griffiths focussed mostly on the rigorously clear formulation of concepts accordingly to his strong philosophical inclination.

This contribution focuses on John Griffiths’ relentless attempt at developing a general theoretical perspective for socio-legal studies. Hence, attention to Griffiths’ important contributions to legal pluralism and the social working of law approach is paid only in passing. Similar to a much earlier assessment, the analysis of Griffiths’ proposal in this contribution is quite critical. Measured against five criteria this author deems important for any socio-legal theoretical framework, the verdict is that Griffiths’ proposal falls short of all of them. The analysis itself focuses primarily on Griffiths’ attempt to redefine the subject for socio-legal studies in terms of social control, the way he uses the concept ‘law’, and his primary focus on rules and rule following. One overall conclusion is that Griffiths remained a legal scholar to a much greater extent than he would have liked.

John Griffiths’ social working approach of legislation tries to estimate the direct effects of laws which prescribe certain behavior. The basic idea of the approach is that rule-guided behavior (direct effect) is influenced by the different groups citizens belong to. Griffiths refers to these groups using the concept coined by Sally Moore (1971) ‘semi-autonomous social fields’. Although Griffiths never formulated hypotheses regarding the relation between SASFs and direct effects, the article explores two of them: If the relevant SASFs accept the new norm, direct effects will occur; and if the relevant SASFs are not ‘though’ (and don’t accept the new norm) direct effects will occur. These two hypotheses are related to the results of smoking bans in bars in the Netherlands. The acceptance of the smoking bans in bars is low. The thoughness of the SASFs in bars and their organization differ in time and so did the compliance with the smoking bans. Because this article is not based on research that depart from the hypotheses, further research based on the hypotheses is needed to draw firm conclusions. The article is rounded up with a plea to use Griffiths approach in impact assessments of legislation.

Similar to the more current Regulator Intermediary Target (RIT) model, Griffiths’ Social Working (SW) theory points to the relevance of intermediaries for explaining rule following behavior. In this article, the author applies both theories (RIT and SW) concerning the role of intermediaries in rule following to explain developments in Dutch prostitution policy: the non-implementation of the emancipatory, sex workers’ rights based approach, and its replacement by a more repressive policy of closing down sex facilities. The analysis shows that although both theories contain useful starting point for explaining these developments, the SW theory’s special value is its acknowledgement of how regulatory intermediaries operate in a social field with existing social rules and a specific balance of power. Such rules and power relations have put barriers to the implementation of the Dutch prostitution policy as formulated in 1999. As illustrated in the article, the SW- theory offers more tools than the RIT- model for an analysis of how legal rules work in practice.

Companies fined for infringing the cartel prohibition are denied access to the courts until the competition authority has reviewed its fining decision in the objection procedure. Several stakeholders have been negative about the functioning of this objection procedure in case of cartel fines, including because of its limited ability to resolve disputes and the cost and length of the procedure. In light of the discussions on the effectiveness of this objection procedure, this article analyses the ability of the cartel objection procedure to resolve disputes on basis of an analysis of the decisions on objection, as well as interviews with the parties involved in the objection procedure and a study of relevant literature. Previous studies have shown that the success of the objection procedure, regarding dispute resolution, depends on the nature of the dispute, the reason that the objection is made and the organisation of the procedure. Reviewing the data which was gathered through the interviews and case analysis with the knowledge of these factors influencing the success of the objection procedure, the article concludes that these previously carried out studies can explain the limited ability of the cartel objection procedure to resolve disputes.

Het Hof van Justitie van de Europese Unie heeft baanbrekende uitspraken gedaan, vooral als gevolg van prejudiciële vragen van nationale rechters op grond van art. 267 VWEU. Het zijn vooral niet-verwijzingsplichtige lagere rechters geweest die voor deze aanvoer hebben gezorgd. Dit artikel onderzoekt hoe dit kan worden verklaard en kijkt naar de motieven van Nederlandse lagere rechters om al dan niet prejudiciële vragen te stellen aan het HvJ. Het doet dit op basis van interviews met 22 rechters en een uitgebreide juridische analyse van uitspraken. Dit artikel toont aan dat met name pragmatische en praktische overwegingen een rol spelen bij het besluit om te verwijzen. Daarnaast laat dit artikel zien dat er meer verschillen zijn binnen een lidstaat dan tussen lidstaten onderling, met name tussen gerechtelijke instanties en individuele rechters.

The Court of Justice of the European Union has rendered landmark cases, especially following references for a preliminary ruling from national courts on the basis of Art. 267 TFEU. Primarily lower courts that are not obliged to refer have been responsible for such cases. This article examines how these references of lower courts can be explained by focusing on the motives of the Dutch lower court judges to refer, or not to refer. It does so on the basis of interviews with 22 judges and an extensive legal analysis of judgments. This article shows that practical and pragmatic considerations play an important role in the court’s decision to refer. In addition, there are more differences within one Member States than between EU Member States, especially between particular courts and individual judges.