In the past five years, the Council of State, the National Ombudsman and several academics have criticized the way in which new legislation has been made. In their view, principles of law and the rule of law are insufficiently uphold due to an instrumentalist view on law. This criticism urged the authors to conduct an empirical study into the question how legislative drafters deal with legislative plans which are problematic from a legal or rule of law point of view, and how they justify their role in the legislative process. This study is explorative and qualitative in nature. During the summer of 2018, 24 legislative lawyers from five different Dutch ministries have been interviewed. The results show that the role of legislative lawyers can best be characterized as constructively critical. As their tasks encompass much more than solely the actual drafting of legislation, they more and more resemble their colleagues from the policy department. The authors suggest that legislative lawyers should articulate their distinctive professional ethics in order to strengthen the checks and balances within the ministries.

This article is about the work of Wibo van Rossum who passed away in April 2018. Trained as a legal anthropologist he has conducted empirical research on the administration of justice in the Netherlands for many years. This anthology is about four research reports he produced and many articles he has written in two decades. This article provides an academic as well as a practical review of his work.