There are two fundamental problems with regard to the freedom of religion. The first concerns the content and scope of the right; the second, a possible unequal treatment between population groups. The first problem can only be dealt with by a preliminary analysis of the religious phenomenon, which precedes a legal definition. It turns out that there is a range of different types of religion, with on the one hand traditional forms of religion which are narrowly interwoven with the culture in question (all kinds of ‘cultural’ practices possessing a religious dimension), and on the other forms of religion which loosen to a considerable extent the ties between culture and religion. Evidently, the former types of religion cause problems in modern society. An additional problem is that freedom of religion as a modern basic right rests on a view of human being – including the idea of the inherent dignity and autonomy of the human person – which is at odds with the symbolic universe of traditional religion. The conclusion of the article is that in the modern pluralist society freedom of religion is on its way to becoming, or already has become, an unmanageable right. So the problems arising around this right (including that of unequal treatment) can only be solved in a pragmatic, not really satisfactory way. In that context, modern humanitarian standards should be observed in the implementation of the right of freedom of religion because fundamental human rights are connected with a specific concept of humanity.

Martin Buijsen’s book review of B.C. van Beers, Persoon en lichaam in het recht. Menselijke waardigheid en zelfbeschikking in het tijdperk van de medische biotechnologie

Jaap Zwart and Femke Storm, book review of Wilbert Mennings, Wouter Veraart en Pieter Edelman (red.), Voorlopig ben ik humanist. Teksten en voordrachten van Jan van Zijverden (1928-2003)

This article draws on Hans Kelsen’s theory of democracy to argue that, contrary to conventional wisdom, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the democratic legitimacy of either the European Union (EU) or the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The legitimacy problems from which the EU in general and the ECJ in particular are alleged to suffer seem to result mainly from our rigid adherence to the outdated conception of democracy as popular self-legislation. Because we tend to approach the Union’s political and judicial practice from the perspective of this democracy conception, we are not able to observe what is blindingly obvious, that is, the viability and persistence of both this mega-leviathan and the highest court thereof. It is, therefore, imperative that we modernize and adjust our conception of democracy in order to comprehend the new reality to which these bodies have given rise, rather than to call for ‘reforms’ in a futile attempt to bring this reality into accordance with our ancient preconceptions about what democratic governance ought to be. Kelsen is the democratic theorist whose work has enabled us to venture into that direction.

Les Johnston and Clifford Shearing argue in their book, Governing Security, that the state has lost its monopoly on the governance of security. Private security arrangements have formed a networked governance of security in which the criminal law of the state is just one of the many knots or ‘nodes’ of the security network. Johnston and Shearing consider On Crimes and Punishment, written by Cesare Beccaria in the 18th century, as the most important statement of the classical security program which has withered away in the networked governance of the risk society. This article critizes the way Johnston and Shearing analyze Beccaria’s social contract theory and it formulates a Beccarian theory of the criminal law and nodal governance which explains the causes of crime and the rise of nodal governance and defends the central role of the state in anchoring security arrangements based on private contracts and property rights.

“Het waren mijn genen, edelachtbare, niet ik” kopte NRC Handelsblad van donderdag 5 november 2009.¹xFolkert Jensma, “Het waren mijn genen, edelachtbare, niet ik”, NRC Handelsblad, 5 november 2009. Het artikel bericht over een Italiaanse rechtszaak waarin in hoger beroep de straf die aan een moordenaar werd opgelegd, werd verlaagd van twaalf naar negen jaar. De raadsheer nam deze beslissing, aldus de verslaggever, nadat twee neurowetenschappers van de universiteiten van Pisa en Padua op een hersenscan onregelmatigheden hadden aangetoond en bovendien afwijkingen waren gevonden in het MAOA-gen, dat ook wel bekendstaat als het ‘agressiegen’.

Noten

• 1 Folkert Jensma, “Het waren mijn genen, edelachtbare, niet ik”, NRC Handelsblad, 5 november 2009.

Peter van Schilfgaarde, book review of Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice

Thom Holterman, book review of Jacques Langlois, Misère du droit.

Huls has argued that the idea that judges are truth-finders is misleading. In the first part of the paper I put his claim to the test. Against Huls I argue that the aim of procedures in criminal lawsuits is not only to guarantee binding decisions but also to help to find the truth. In the second part of the paper I investigate the role expert-witnesses play in truth-finding. Cleiren and Loth have argued that experts fail to understand the differences between legal and scientific ways of truth-finding. It turns out that Cleiren does not offer an argument for her claim and that Loth’s claim fails too, since it confuses coherence as truth and coherence as epistemic justification. I conclude that legal scholars, rather than experts, fail to understand the nature of legal and scientific truth-finding.

In their book De slapende rechter (The sleeping judge) Dutch legal psychologists W.A. Wagenaar, H. Israëls and P.J. van Koppen claim that Dutch judges wrongfully convict suspects in certain cases because these judges generally fail to understand the way hypothetical reasoning works in relation to empirical evidence. This article argues that Wagenaar, Israëls and Van Koppen are basically right in their claim that reasoning on evidence in criminal cases should have the form of hypothetical reasoning. However, they fail to apply this form of reasoning to their own analysis of Dutch criminal cases and the causes of wrongful convictions. Therefore, their conclusion that a form of revision of convictions outside of the criminal law system should be introduced does not meet their own methodological standards.

Machiel Karskens, book review of Hans Lindahl (red.), A Right to Inclusion and Exclusion. Normative Fault Lines of the EU’s Area of Freedom, Security and Justice

Thom Holterman’s book review of Pierre Legendre, L’autre bible de l’occident: le Monument romano-canonique, Étude sur l’architecture dogmatique des sociétés, Leçons IX