A forensic mental health report is requested in about 30% of more serious cases presented to the criminal court. These reports can be used at sentencing and advise the judge on criminal responsibility, recidivism risk, and possible treatment measures, but is not a formal factor in decisions about guilt. The current study focuses on the (unwarranted) effect of forensic mental health information on conviction decisions. Using an experimental vignette study among 155 criminology students, results show that when a mental disorder is present, conviction rates are higher than when such information is absent. In line with the story model of judicial decision-making, additional analyses showed that this effect was mediated by the evaluation of guilt rather than by the evaluation of other physical evidence. Implications for further research and practice are discussed.

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.

From day one of the journal Recht der Werkelijkheid (Journal of Living Law) the Legal Anthropology was welcomed. What once started as the jurisprudential study on Folk Law on the one hand and the cultural anthropological study of law on the other hand, evolved into an intensive collaboration among the researchers. Even more intensive under the subject Legal Pluralism. The legal anthropological studies extended over the years to subjects closer to the First World legal practices, i.e. the studies of social groups like the one on migrants. Under the concept of semi autonomous social fields many contributions on cultural versus legal norms were published. Later on, the legal anthropological expertise that sustained the comparative studies for international and supranational law was welcomed. The article thus shows that the journal provided room for the socio legal studies of law practices in other continents, expanded to those of other continents in the home continent as well as to those in all continents.

We analyze two citizen collectives of ‘professional city makers’ who have shaped participation in circular area development in anticipation of the Dutch Environment and Planning Act. The activities of professional city-makers form an interesting new phenomenon that requires attention as well as the implications: it is precisely through the professionalism of the city-makers’ efforts that there is a regular tension in the participation process between their role as citizen and professional in their contact with the government. We therefore discuss how the participation of professional city-makers in area development exposes different paradoxes that must be taken into account in the further implementation of the Environment and Planning Act. In short, we argue that participation in the Act is presented in a traditional way and does not fit the new role of citizens in area development in the 21st century.

Public participation is an important issue in the forthcoming Dutch Environment and Planning Act (2021). The importance of participation is emphasized in numerous places in the parliamentary documents to the Act. This contribution discusses how the new Act gives legal substance to the objectives that the government is pursuing regarding participation and whether the involvement of citizens is indeed better imbedded by this act. It addresses the important subject of the ‘right moment of participation’ in the fragmented Dutch policy and decision system. Consecutively it deals with the question of potential legal consequences for non-compliance by administrative bodies to the legal participation obligations when drawing up plans and decisions. Can a citizen enforce (substantive) participation in the administrative court after the Environmental and Planning Act comes into force? The possibilities are limited. Findings show that the new Environment and Planning Act does not address the essential problems that arise with participation. The successful creation of local support, better quality and faster decision-making through participation all depend on how the (local) government shapes participation. From a legal perspective, the Environment and Planning Act makes little contribution to this. In the view of the authors this is not surprising, because the role of legislation in safeguarding substantive participation should not be overestimated.

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.

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.

This article presents the results of a study into the knowledge of doctors regarding three kinds medical treatment regulation at the end of life, the so-called KOPPEL study. One of the findings of this study is that most doctors know the law that regulates ending life at request (euthanasia) and guideline for palliative sedation quite well. However, hardly any of them know Book 7, Section 450.3 of the Dutch Civil Code, the section that regulates written treatment refusals. Apart from the description of the findings, we elaborate on three reasons that Aubert distinguishes for knowledge of the law: the period the regulation exists, the congruence between habits and norms of the law, and experience with the law. We conclude that Aubert’s factors do indeed explain the differences in knowledge of the doctors. In the discussion we come to the conclusion that sociology of law should not only pay attention to ‘what knowledge of the law is’ (Griffiths, Van Tol) and ‘which factors influence this knowledge’ (Aubert) but also to ‘how knowledge of law can be ascertained’. In our opinion the idea of scripts, as introduced by Schank and Abelson, can be of great help in this respect.

The German lawyer / labour law professor Hugo Sinzheimer (1875-1945) has, in the first two decades of the twentieth century, contributed significantly to the legal recognition of the ‘collective labour agreement’. The imperative character of CLA provisions, now widely accepted all over the world, required a paradigmatic turn in the dominant private law perspective on labour relations. The paper tries to specify what made him able and prone to do this, both by reconstructing the legal and political discussion in Germany and the Netherlands and by relating elements of the process to social-scientific theories of institutional and intellectual innovation. I argue that his combination of commitments in various fields (legal practice, science, politics) allowed him to span the gap between the fields of labour relations and state law and to contribute to the constitutionalisation of labour relations.

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’).

In the Netherlands the task of reintegrating partially disabled workers into the labour market, that used to be accomplished by collective institutions, has been redistributed by the government to private actors: those who were the last to employ these workers. It is pointed out that this policy choice implies reusing a medieval legal technique and that its use regenerates typical legitimacy problems. Building on Ostrom’s theory of ‘institutions for collective action’, a historical comparison of the organization of dyke maintenance in the Dutch bog peat areas of the 11th-13th centuries and of these recent policies reveals that both are to be analysed in terms of a ‘double allotment’: duties as to collective tasks are allotted to individual participants in a collectivity by linking them up with a preceding allotment of usage rights, legally formalized in terms of ‘private law’. While neoliberal ideology may account for the direction that recent reintegration policies have taken, it is only in the Netherlands that this legal technique has to such an extent been mobilized. This observation raises questions as to long-term continuities in Dutch policies.

To what extent do private security workers have a culture that is comparable to the police culture? To what extent can such a private security culture be explained by the use of the so-mentioned stress-coping model of police culture? This comparative survey of a sample of private security workers and a sample of police officers shows that contrary to popular assumptions of increasing similarities between police and private security cultures, in reality there are important differences. Private security workers have a much stronger focus on service tasks than police officers and are less oriented to crime fighting. The stress factors that contribute to a stronger police culture, can also contribute to a similar culture in private security. However, because these stress factors are much less prominent in private security, it may be assumed that such a police-like culture is almost absent among private security workers.

In this article we study ways in which the relationship between housing and integration of migrants are being justified and legitimated in policy documents from the cities of Arnhem and Nijmegen. Making use of a critical frame analysis, we are particularly interested in the assumptions made with regard to the preferred population composition of neighbourhoods, images of ‘normality’ and ‘the ideal society’. Based on the analysis of a set of policy documents (such as the most recent coalition agreement, housing policy document and several neighbourhood plans of each city) and a pilot study that includes interviews with local administrators and residents of twelve neighbourhoods, we found that most problems that are being related to residential segregation in neighbourhoods are defined in socio-economic terms. In general, the data show that the mixing of people with different socio-economic positions is thought to be the solution to this problem. References to migrants are mainly indirect: many documents mention that a large part of the poor people are migrants. The issue of integration is mostly dealt with in documents that focus on so-called ‘problem neighbourhoods’. We conclude that the desirability of diverse neighbourhoods in terms of types of housing and groups of people is widespread. Yet the assumptions on which these ideas are built remain largely implicit.

The GALA lays down general rules that in principle apply to the entire field of administrative law. If a decision by an administrative body can be appealed to a court, the general rule is that an objection procedure must be followed before the matter can be taken to court. Recently, research has been conducted to survey citizens’ experiences before and during objection procedures, as well as factors influencing these experiences. The research was divided into a quantitative research and a subsequent qualitative study to gain insight into the underlying mechanisms. The article reports about the major findings of the qualitative study.
On the whole, the interviewees appreciated their treatment at the hearing. They indicated that they were able to expound their position (voice), that their arguments were taken seriously (trustworthiness), and that they were treated with respect (interpersonal respect). On these elements, the qualitative study paints a slightly rosier picture than the quantitative study.
The most critical comments on the hearing we recorded concerned the attitude of those representing the administrative authority in cases that were considered by an independent committee. That attitude was often judged to be rigid and the respondents were annoyed by the appearance at the hearing of (‘yet’) another official than the one(s) they had previously been in contact with.
Many administrative bodies have chosen to use an informal approach which implies the use of mediation skills, after an objection has been lodged. When informal resolution was attempted, the response of the interviewees concerned was by no means invariably positive, and in some cases even distinctly negative.
The interviews showed that the objectors would have preferred to have had more information about the actual objection procedure in detail and in advance. A number of interviewees indicated that they felt very uncomfortable when certain procedural aspects were sprung on them, such as the presence of the opposing party (which they had not expected) and a medical examination being carried out. Ambiance matters. It was found that the perceived level of treatment could be influenced by subtle expressions of social etiquette. The research shows that objectors set great store by a proper reception and value the physical layout of the hearing venue.

Domestic workers in Saudi Arabia suffer from severely limited access to justice, which affects the conflicts they may have with their employers. As there is no bargaining in the shadow of the law, the more powerful party, employer, can usually enforce their preferred outcome. This article focuses on the question of why domestic workers’ access to justice is so limited; are the underlying causes comparable to the ones in other countries, or does it concern an issue specific to Saudi Arabia? Literature on domestic workers points at both gender and citizenship as factors that weaken the position of these female migrant workers in many societies. This article discusses to what extent these two factors limit access to justice in Saudi Arabia and concludes with some critical remarks concerning the concept of intersectionality.

The relation between law and care has changed dramatically. Until recently this relation could be characterised as distant, supportive and respectful. This relation has undergone a paradigm shift. More and more and in many areas the notion of care is used by the lawmaker, to impose duties of care combined with enforcement. This implies a change from private law to administrative law. This development is undesirable, because it raises false expectations and, in the end, works counterproductive.

Care, self determination and law in child psychiatry is a difficult combination. Three problems arise here: Bureau Jeugdzorg does not have a good working relationship with the doctors, bad coordination between professionals, and finally an unwarranted trust in protection within the family. It is argued that a ‘duty of special care’ for professionals might help. This should prevail over the right of self determination. A second improvement might be a ‘criterion of necessity’ that may overrule a lack of cooperation by the minor.