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.

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.

Empirical Legal Studies (ELS) is research in which legal questions are answered using empirical research methods. Traditionally, lawyers conduct normative, non-empirical research. Lately the legal discipline is increasingly interested in ELS. It is argued that we need more ELS. This raises the question to what extent Dutch researchers and practitioners conduct and apply ELS. In this article, we investigate the state of affairs of ELS in the Netherlands. We look at three different areas: legal research, legal education and legal practice. The data we use are legal PhD theses, legal course material, legislative proposals, and questionnaire data from legal practitioners. The methods are a systematic review, a quantitative content analysis, and a questionnaire research. Our study on legal research shows that researchers do apply empirical methods, but mainly the researchers with an education in social science. Our study on legal education shows that lawyers receive hardly any training on empirical research methods. Finally, our research on legal practice shows that practitioners and legislators struggle to apply empirical legal research. We plead for investments to enhance the production and usage of ELS, to prevent wrongful judicial decision-making, to generate effective legislation, and to create scientific innovation.

In this article Bart Schermer, describes the difficulties in regulating the internet. The global reach of the internet, the fact that it is for the most part owned by private actors and creates opportunities for anonymity challenge regulators. The article describes issues related to sovereignty and jurisdiction, ambiguity in legal texts and dependence on private sector actors. Possible solutions lie in global internet governance, institutional innovation and the internet’s architecture itself.

In this contribution it has been set out that trust in the Belgian justice system cannot be taken for granted. The article contains empirical research on the reporting of newspapers on the Belgian justice system and tries to uncover a possible causal relationship between reading certain newspapers and trust in the justice system. Although it turns out that quality newspapers report on the justice system in a more negative way, readers of popular papers have less trust in the justice system. A direct link between negative reporting and reduced trust was therefore not found. Socio-economic variables and the priming effect on punitive attitudes in popular newspapers are cited as possible explanations.

Derkje Hazewinkel-Suringa entered law studies only after marriage and fulfilling about fifteen years of motherhood duty. Once at the university however, she rapidly became a student-researcher, delivered a PhD dissertation on ownership transfer and was appointed as the first female law professor in 1932, at the age of 42. Her professorship was in a remarkably different field, namely criminal law. Twenty years later she published the Introduction to the Study of Criminal Law, which would become the basis for criminal law teaching in the Netherlands for decades. A major reason behind this success was that the book, emphasizing active study of the law rather than passive reproduction, coincided with the general sprit of the post war era. Besides her scholarly work in which balance and synthesis were the major features, Hazewinkel-Suringa was a very outspoken actor in matters political. In 1936, when virtually the whole country was trying to accommodate the rise of fascism in the mighty neighbouring country, she became member of an anti-fascism committee. In 1938 she wrote a plea to the minister of Justice to allow entry of German-Jewish children into the country. During the German occupation (1940-1945) she proposed to close the university because of the dismissal of Jewish professors. She continued her protests against the social mainstream after the war, e.g. writing against the reintroduction of the death penalty (primarily focused on collaborators with the German regime). Hazewinkel-Suringa’s acts of individual courage could not make a difference in the overall political atmosphere of these times.

In this feature authors review recently published books on subjects of interest to readers of Recht der Werkelijkheid.

The citizen, understood in the classical republican sense as the political actor, is on occasion confronted with issues that concern the room for difference in politics. In the Netherlands, for example, the recent entrance of populist citizens in parliament is regarded as a problem by more deliberative citizens. Do populist citizens threaten ordinary politics or do ordinary citizens, on the contrary, restrict the space of politics too much? To prepare future research on this point, in this article three similar historical controversies in Dutch parliament are examined. In these cases citizens struggle with the problem how much room parliament ought to provide for the differences between them. In these cases citizens eventually grant each other the freedom to engage in politics in their own way, unless that way threatens the freedom of parliamentary politics itself. They defend the right to debate the widest range of issues in the sharpest way, for example, but prohibit making insults and endorsing illegal activities. Further research is needed to confirm and specify these still tentative conclusions.

The position of patients facing forced hospitalization in a mental health clinic develops both in a soft and in a hard direction. On the one hand there is a soft current of more empathy with legal protection and on the other hand a harder current that leads to a growing number of forced measures. This involves three dilemmas. First, legal intervention touches only upon the fringe and not upon the core of psychiatric treatment. Second, the problematic relation with the criminal justice sector and third, a lack of concern for what happens after the decision of the judge. Quality based peer review has not developed well in this sector. Forced hospitalization will remain sour for the near future.

The ‘Bureau Jeugdzorg’ is the gatekeeper in the field of youth care policy. From its start the Bureau has faced a difficult combination of empathy and social control. The individual youth was entitled to ‘a right on care’, which in practice was frustrated by long waiting lists. The mental health professionals also resisted the central role of the Bureau. So, soon after its inception Bureau Jeugdzorg is already in jeopardy. It is unlikely that the new political initiatives in this field will improve the legal protection of minors.

By the end of 2007, the world’s urban population had outnumbered the amount of people living in rural areas. Urbanization is expected to increase strongly in the developing world over the coming years, most of it through informal ways of accessing land and housing. In the initiatives of governments and donor organizations to deal with these developments, the concept of tenure security features increasingly prominently. It is inter alia expected to encourage investment in housing improvement, facilitate access to public services such as gas, water and electricity and also to make formal credit available. There is, however, no consensus as to what tenure security exactly means or how it is to be established. In the present paper, development policy based on establishing tenure security through land titling is critically examined and with the emphasis on urban informality in Latin America, an alternative concept of tenure security is proposed.

Like surfers, legislators … who wish to change everyday social norms must wait for signs of a rising cultural support, catching it at just the right time... (Kagan and Skolnick 1993: 85) The empirical study of the relation between the way a law comes into being and its effectiveness in practice is an underdeveloped subject in the sociology of law. In this article this relation is studied with respect to smoking bans in the Netherlands. The focus is on private companies in general, with special attention for Dutch cafés, bars, hotels and restaurants (where such a ban was recently introduced). Dutch smoking bans in private establishments were only enacted after the government was convinced of public support and after a period of selfregulation. This proved to be a good preparation. The general picture of the relation between the emergence and the effectiveness of smoking bans in Dutch hotels, restaurants etc. is much the same. However, there is one sector - bars, pubs and the like – in which the smoking ban has encountered problems. In this sector a fourth of the establishments refuse to comply. A question addressed in this article is whether the legislator acted too precipitously with respect to this sector. This is obviously the case: there is less public support for smoking bans in such establishments and there had not been a preparatory period of selfregulation.

Experts may be involved in the trial of various types of legal cases. In most cases, they act as an advisor to the court or to the parties. In this model, the so-called ‘advisor model’, the expert writes a report that is used by the court for decision making. Experts may be called to attend the hearing of cases to answer questions that arise regarding their advise. In the other model, the ‘decision model’, the expert forms part of the panel that is in charge of decision making in a case. Decisions in cases are made in co-operation between judges and experts in this model. This model is not used on a large scale; the advisor model is prevailing in Dutch courts.This article discusses advantages and disadvantages of the ‘decision model’. An empirical study to the operation of this model as it is used in a variety of courts is explained. Panels in which experts are included seem to profit from the direct availability of expertise while making decisions in a case. Respondents state that external acceptance of the court decisions is also increased by the involvement of experts in a panel. Participation by experts in these panels is voluminous and they are considered to exert a large influence on the outcomes of decisions.

Since 1 January 2005, citizens in the Netherlands are obliged to show their ID if a police officer asks them to. The (extended) identification duty is meant to prevent crimes and to improve the enforcement of the law. Bart van Klink (Tilburg University) and Nicolle Zeegers (University of Groningen) have investigated how the identification duty is enforced in legal practice by interviewing 12 police officers in 4 different cities and looking at statistical data on enforcement. According to most of the police officers interviewed the identification duty helps to remove anonymity from citizens, which may keep them from committing crimes (in particular crimes in groups, e.g., hooligans). Moreover, the identification duty appears to be instrumental in normalizing citizens: by asking for an ID, police officers are able to discourage behaviour that conflicts with some (legal or moral) standard of normality. This small-scale empirical research indicates that police officers stress the law’s preventive effect. Although prevention may be a valuable goal, it may also constitute a pretext for far-reaching intrusions on citizens’ freedom. An important normative question is how to prevent the police from using this legal instrument too actively for the sake of prevention.