We investigate a recent development in the practice of the civil courts: judges increasingly devote attention to the underlying conflict of parties instead of only to their legal dispute. In administrative law, this development has already been codified and termed ‘de Nieuwe zaaksbehandeling’, but not so in other areas of law.
Lawyers know that social conflicts are transformed into legally viable disputes so that the court can decide on them. For a long time, the most important task for lawyers was to resolve those legal disputes. Nowadays, that does not seem to be enough: judges should become problem solvers. Civil judges seem to blend in with these new requirements, but the question is whether the new approach really works. Based on our empirical material of 100 observed cases in civil law, we answer the following questions. 1. What do judges actually do in civil cases when they address underlying conflicts and try to steer parties toward a settlement? 2. What effects do these interventions of judges have on the outcome of cases? 3. How are these interventions perceived by the parties in terms of procedural justice?

This article serves to gain insight in the use and non-use of various types of legal advice, particularly in relation to income levels and legal costs. Based on (logistic regression) analyses involving survey data on 1,928 Dutch citizens who experienced a non-trivial problem in the period May 2009 to May 2014, main findings are as follows: (1) 37% of citizens facing a (potential) legal problem contacted various types of legal advisers once or repeatedly. (2) In the explanation of use/non-use of advocates, problem characteristics turned out to matter significantly, in contrast with the level of household income. Entitlements to subsidized legal aid (lower income groups) as well as legal expenses insurance have made income a factor of less importance. (3) Looking at the degree in which citizens reported (high) costs being a reason for not using legal advice, again no significant differences were found between income groups. Especially advocates were deemed too expensive, regardless of household income; a reason for non-use in half of the cases in which advocates had been considered.

Recent developments in the field of housing law have led to a renewed interest in eviction and the legal protection against homelessness. Because of European case law, courts need to apply a contextual approach in which tenants’ home interests and personal circumstances are taken into account more seriously. This paper explores the ways in which home interests and personal circumstances play a role in Dutch litigation concerning eviction because of rent arrears. Based on a quantitative systematic content analysis of nearly 100 written judgments of courts of first instance, it is found that tenants frequently advance various types of proportionality defences and refer to home interests and personal circumstances. Although Dutch courts do take these defences, home interests and personal circumstances into account, the vast majority of landlords’ claims are allowed. In one third of the analysed cases, the court dismisses the landlord’s claim and most of the time minimises the breach of the lease or refers to the disproportional effects of eviction or a tenant’s promise to change his behaviour.

The right to adequate housing has since long been established in international and European human rights law and has been (constitutionally) incorporated into many domestic legal systems. This contribution focuses on the extent to which this fundamental right influences rental law and the horizontal relationship between tenant and landlord and how it contributes to the tenant’s access to justice. The right to housing certainly accounts for tenant’s rights, but since international and European human rights law evidently centres around state obligations, any possible impact on the position of tenants remains indirect. This is of course different on the national plane. In Belgium, the constitutional right to housing has been implemented through regional Housing Codes, complementing private law measures and creating additional protection to tenants. Nonetheless, many challenges still remain in increasing access to justice for tenants, both top-down and bottom-up: lack of knowledge and complexity of law, imbalance in power and dependency, discrimination, etc.

Important legal developments are often credited to court decisions. This contribution will firstly discuss the Australian High Court decision in the Mabo case as such. The legal implications of a decision are often emphasised, instead of the actual persons who started the case, as Dutch sociological research has shown. The article will secondly state that in the Mabo case the person Eddy Mabo and his Aboriginal companions were a lot more important. Not that one has to solely think of him and his clansmen as political activists who go to court to change the legal order. The analysis will show that Eddie Mabo c.s. represent a legal culture in its own right. That legal culture has a far much longer history than the two centuries of Anglo-Australian common law. Mabo came to the fore as someone who was entitled by Aboriginal law to bear witness of Aboriginal law. The fact that an Aboriginal actor as such is the pure actuality of law is hardly recognised by the Anglo-Australian legal culture.

The use and expenditure of the Legal Aid System is ever increasing. In addition, some people make use of the Legal Aid System more often than others. In fact, a small percentage of clients (2,6%) uses a substantial part (11,2%) of the legal aid. This paper sheds light on the occurrence of multiple use of legal aid and gives insight into the frequency and characteristics of multiple use.
In the research described in this article, we have made use of the data from 2000 until 2009 concerning legal aid that was provided by the Legal Aid Board. This dataset contains over 3 million cases (so-called certificates that are issued by the Board). The main difference between this research and other (paths to justice) studies is that the dataset contains actually provided legal aid and not self-reported problems by clients. Therefore, the representativeness is guaranteed and no false recollections can occur. At the same time, this means that the research is limited to people who are entitled to legal aid (approximately 39% of the Dutch population) and have actually received a certificate.
The results show that the provision of legal aid leads to new cases for which legal aid is again provided. Also, certain certificates coincide with and act as a trigger for certain other certificates. In the discussion we clarify the significance and implications of the results that are presented. Furthermore, we discuss the recently ordered budget cut in legal aid in the Netherlands. We describe ways to decrease the use and expenditure of the Legal Aid System, some of which are already implemented in the system. Finally, we discuss possible other (non-legal) problems that can be experienced by multiple users of the Legal Aid System.