Research on the significance of representation indicates that lawyers contribute to positive outcomes of legal procedures not only by their substantive expertise but also by the relational expertise they bring. The latter involves understanding how to navigate the relationships involved in getting work done. In this paper these insights are used to investigate the highly specific and atypical practise of the preliminary reference procedure in the European legal system in order to reveal how lawyers deal with such an unexpected change of (legal) context. The empirical data, collected through semi-structured interviews with twenty-eight lawyers with past experience with the procedure, reveals the significant ways in which lawyers’ positive contribution to such cases is undermined by their lack of both substantive and relational expertise in pleading a case before the European Court of Justice. The fact that such cases do not necessarily fall into the hands of the professionals best equipped to plead such disputes before the Court, and the inability of the less well-off parties in particular to hire further expertise, points in the direction of a disadvantaged position for this group of litigants in having their interest represented effectively at the European level.

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.

Legal institutions as well as European and international organisations have criticised Dutch policy regarding travellers (including Roma and Sinti living in a caravan). Main point of this criticism is that the Dutch government should do more to protect and facilitate the travellers culture.
In academic literature, the policy has also been criticised from a human rights perspective. In most of these official and academic publications the perspective of travellers was missing. This gave reason for a qualitative research in the form of ten interviews with travellers in the Netherlands. Questions as what does it mean to be a traveller, how should your culture be protected and what do you do to protect your culture (using the law for instance) were, among others, part of these interviews.
This article not only discusses the results of the interviews, but places them also against the theoretical background of legal consciousness, in particular the research of Ewick and Silbey (1998) in which three categories of attitudes towards the law and legal institutions were distinguished.
At forehand it was expected that, as being a minority group, travellers would fall in the category ‘against the law’. Yet the findings of this research suggest that travellers, at least the respondents, fall in the category ‘with the law’. They use the law to reach a better position, i.e. to protect their cultural identity.