Within orthodox-protestant schools in The Netherlands there is growing diversity and uncertainty about internal religious, cultural and social norms. Though orthodox-protestant schools are among the strongest semi-autonomous social fields, where it is difficult for equal treatment law to pervade, this growing diversity and uncertainty about internal norms can make this pervasion possible. The uncertainty about the meaning of the exception clause in equal treatment legislation for the appointment policy of religious schools also affects this.
Because of the uncertainty about the meaning of the exception clause the position of the school board was strengthened in comparison to the employee, even though the intention of the equal treatment law was the opposite. At a later stage the clarification of the anti-discrimination norm by changing the exception clause has strengthened the position of the employee. Though this is only possible when religious, cultural and social norms are changing. In that case orthodox-protestant schools, as semi-autonomous fields, are more open for the effects of this legal norm.
Uncertainty about the meaning of the requirement of a consistent appointment policy has led both to tightening as well as relaxation of the policy. In the first place tightening or relaxation of policies depends on the development of religious, cultural and social norms within different school denominations. Thus, uncertainty about internal norms works both contrary as well as strengthening to uncertainty about equal treatment legislation.

It is unclear to what extent criminal record screening policies can explain low employment rates after release. This descriptive study provides more insight into this matter by examining whether ex-prisoners applied for a certificate of conduct, found employment and whether this job was found without such a certificate. To answer these questions interview data on ex-prisoners (N=931) are combined with data on criminal record screenings. Only 6 percent applied for a certificate, half of which were granted. Many ex-prisoners did not report any employment, but almost all working ex-prisoners found this job without a certificate. These findings bring nuance to discussions on the role of criminal record screening after release.

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.

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.

A very large number of people experience everyday legal problems considered by them to be serious and difficult to resolve, the vast majority say it is important to resolve these problems, and virtually everybody experiencing legal problems takes some action to resolve them. However, the fact that very few people make use of the formal justice system suggests that the justice system is not meeting the legal needs of the public. One response would be to expand the traditional formal justice system to include an early-resolution services sector. An ERSS would encompass the early intervention and supported self-help objectives of many existing access to justice initiatives, but would go farther by conceiving what we mean by the justice system more broadly in a way that would accommodate what the everyday legal problems approach tells us about how the public experiences legal problems.

This contribution addresses the limits placed on access to justice in the context of social services, with a particular, but not exclusive, focus on the UK, across five central platforms: legal representation, the financial barriers, the structure of the programme, the attitude of the bureaucracy, and the personal attributes of the client. The contribution finds that there exist, for decades, problematic elements that constitute barriers to justice in this area: the means-tested element in the programmes and the bureaucracy’s double role as provider of services and detector of fraud. But to them, in recent years, significant barriers were added: recent cuts in legal aid and the imposition of tribunal fees in the UK are retrograde steps, reverting 40 years of impressive achievements in the field.

This editorial offers an introduction to the current issue.

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.

Legislation as we know it is a recent phenomenon, and its quality has been under debate for 40 years. It is not surprising or problematic that the place and function of legislation evolve under the influence of societal changes. It is, however, important to change the mechanistic view of legislation. Instead of viewing it as an instrument of policy, we must search for structures and institutions that create room for diversity without breaking the unity of law. In our dealings with inevitable risks and damage to society, rules too often take the place of ethics or professional judgment. Rules are essential, but they should leave room to dissent from them if justified: rules as a point of departure, not rules that must be respected on pain of sanctions.

A second empirical revolution in law is in full swing: legal big data have made their entrance and will play an increasingly important role in the legal field. Legal big data, for example, increase the accessibility and transparency of files. They make it easier for legislators to find out how society views proposed legislation. Using big data, all jurisprudence can be processed very easily and judicial decisions can be predicted with a high degree of certainty. The contribution concludes with a number of legal and ethical issues and methodological challenges in relation to legal big data, such as ownership, privacy and representativeness.

In the course of it short existence, Socio-legal studies (SLS) in the Anglo-Saxon world has burgeoned into a rich and variegated field. Reviewing it is therefore a challenging task. I begin with some general reflections and an outline of recent developments. Although these indicate an extremely vibrant field, concerns have been expressed for the future. In my discussion of these, I argue that our analysis of SLS needs to be historicised since the emergence of SLS is connected to processes of social modernization and democratization. The erosion of these processes by neo-liberal discourses and policies is the background to a discussion of my own research into the impact of the cuts to civil legal aid in England and Wales. This leads me to conclude that the fundamental dissonance between neo-liberal rationality and social science may portend a difficult future, in particular for empirical work; however, I note too that other developments such as the ongoing juridification of society and new social media may make continued SL engagement irresistible.

This article paints Henk Leenen as the godfather of Dutch health law. Godfather because Leenendesigned his own version of health law, a version that is characterized by an emphasis on autonomy of the patient. And godfather because Leenen was one of the founders of the Dutch Association of Health Law and for many years the editor of its periodical. He succeeded to bind almost all health law scholars to this organization and his way of seeing health law. The article illustrates Leenen’s influence by describing his reading of autonomy in health law, by outlining his informal and formal position in the health law landscape and by sketching the coming into being and the content of two important laws: the Law on medical contracts and the Law on physician assisted death (‘euthanasia’).

With the help of a model of policy formation designed by John Kingdon, we seek to map the actors in the previous cases of legal change and to establish the way in which they performed their key role and what conditions allowed them to do that. It appears that only two of the actors are insiders, government officials. The rest are outsiders. According to Kingdon’s model, a particular kind of actors is most likely to play a key role in policy change. He calls them ‘policy entrepreneurs’ and they typically are experts in a particular field of policy, who spend time, energy and money to promote a proposal they favour. They spring into action when they seize an opportunity to push their proposal on the agenda of the decision-makers. In our small collection of actors, Lemkin, Sinzheimer and Leenen are prototypical ‘policy entrepreneurs’. The others do not fit this profile, but played an influential role nevertheless.

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

Schwitters focuses on the differences between economic and a sociological perspectives on non-pecuniary damages. By exposing the alternative perspectives on this issue, he illuminates some methodological differences between both disciplines. Although law and economics has had a positive influence on empirical research, he questions the merits of this perspective when analysing non-pecuniary damages. Law and economics regards non-pecuniary damages exclusively as a financial incentive to realise optimal deterrence and maximisation of welfare. Alternatively, in sociology of law there is also attention for the symbolic dimension of law in which rules are seen as normative standards of behaviour. Compensation is a way to bring the wrongdoer to recognise that he has done wrong and has to compensate the victim, and to show the victim that his rights are taken seriously. Through a sociological lens, the adoption of an exclusively economic model of human behaviour has to be questioned. To what extent human behaviour is really influenced by either financial incentives or by normative standards of behaviour is an open empirical question. Finally, he argues that the decision to base our institutions (such as law) on economic underpinnings is a decision which itself cannot be based on an economic procedure of aggregating individual preferences and maximising welfare.

In a footnote on the last page of her article, Janneke Gerards writes: ‘Here I will leave to one side the debate on the involvement of the ECHR with questions that are not really constitutional.’ But it is precisely the involvement of the ECHR with questions that are ‘not really constitutional’ – and therefore not really fundamental – that the debate is about. It is regrettable that those who are indignant about my critique of the course that the ECHR is currently taking hardly – if ever – respond to my arguments against such an expansive course. The fact that the Court is now facing a pile of waiting cases rapidly approaching 200,000, as well as problems of legitimacy after taking a stand in undeniably political cases such as prisoners’ voting rights, limits to the freedom of speech, as well as its hinting that it would disapprove of a ban on the burqa, all undermine and impede what the ECHR was originally set up for: to be an effective, swift and authoritative voice in the protection of ‘fundamental principles of justice’. By indulging in meddlesomeness and political correctness, the ECHR is digging its own grave.

In this contribution Ronald Leenes discusses the implications of technoregulation, i.e. regulation by means of technology. Starting from Julia Black’s definition of regulation he discusses how technologies are used to alter or modify human behaviour. One of the objections he raises concerns the intransparency of the norm that is thus enforced, and he argues that technoregulation easily becomes administration or discipline rather than law.