This contribution explains what access to justice can encompass and how the ideals about access to justice have developed in time. The way to do this is going back to the work of the famous scholars Cappelletti and Garth, who were responsible for a worldwide project on access to justice in the 1970s. Their main issue was to explain access to justice is more than the access to a judge and the organization of courts. Primarily, the system must be equally accessible to all, irrespective of social or economic status or other incapacity. But it also must lead to results that are individually and socially just and fair. Equal access and effective access are the central notions. Their work is put in perspective. The importance of their legacy and the question how we can get along with their work are stressed. Their definition is compared to a few other authoritative definitions. The waves in the history of access to justice are described and putting them in the current context illustrates why a fourth waved can be observed. The major question to be answered is how one can assess the challenges and obstacles of access to justice in the current context. Therefore, some recent dimensions and developments within access to justice are presented: the democratic dimension, the effectiveness of new social rights, the attention for poor and vulnerable people, further juridification, expanding frontiers of and monitoring access to justice, e-justice, and self-help. Finally, a few building blocks for reforms are presented.

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.

An alleged ‘return to religion’ in contemporary western politics (and science) prompted the Trustees of the Hans Kelsen Institut to posthumously publish Kelsen’s critique of the concept of ‘secular religion’ advanced by his early student Eric Voegelin. This paper identifies, firstly, what concept of transcendence is targeted by Kelsen, and argues that his analysis leaves scope for other conceptions. It does so in two steps: it summarizes the arguments against ‘secular religion’ (section 2) and it gives an account of the differences between Voegelin’s and Schmitt’s conception of transcendence – both under attack from Kelsen (section 3). It then submits an alternative account of the relationship between politics and religion in Modernity, building on the concept of a ‘civil religion’ as found in Rousseau’s Social Contract. Giving a Rousseauist slant to Claude Lefort’s analysis of political theology (section 4) it concludes that a thin concept of transcendence is part and parcel of every, in particular a democratic, account of politics. It should be a stronghold against any resurgence of religion that feeds on hypostatized transcendence. In closing (section 5), it is argued that two key concepts in Kelsen’s legal philosophy may well be understood as paradigms of thin transcendence, namely ‘the people’ and ‘the Grundnorm’.

Is behavioural profiling a viable alternative to more traditional approaches to profiling, viewed from the perspectives of underlying theoretical assumptions and measures of effectiveness? In this article we describe behaviour profiling in relation to other types of profiling, we review relevant psychological mechanisms that underpin behaviour profiling, and discuss effectiveness of this type of profiling as well as methodological aspects of measuring effectiveness. Behaviour profiling is a method largely used to select potential offenders before the offence is committed by observing and giving meaning to behaviours preceding incidents. Deviant behaviours exhibited by suspects can be either part of a modus operandi related to the offence, the consequence of increased stress, or an atypical response to prodding actions by security officers. Relevant psychological mechanisms to explain ways behaviour profiling works include direct characteristics of deception as well as indirect indicators of deception, such as a criminal being more self-focused and more cognitively engaged. Effectiveness of behaviour profiling is increased by training, including learning more about modi operandi and related behaviours, awareness of biases in general, specific relevant biases, and techniques to correct for these biases.

In continental Europe, post-war sociology of law passed through diverse phases, swinging between grand theorizing and empirical research. In the last two decades, socio-legal studies have shown a more balanced approach with respect to these models. Neo-functionalism à-la Luhmann still takes the lead in high theory, although some more eclectic voices make themselves heard and some signs of renaissance of conflict theories have become visible again. Through an overview of the recent editorial policy of three influential journals in France, Germany and Italy, the author highlights that middle range socio-legal theory has successfully dealt with some relevant aspects of legal change of the last decades, in such fields as criminal justice, migrations, or family law. Yet, it has left aside other and no less important aspects, such as commerce and property laws, common goods, environment, and other crucial questions of our times. Thus, there is a risk for sociology of law not to perform its critical and pioneering task that belongs to its own tradition.

This article sets out to contribute to the special issue devoted to multi-disciplinary legal research by discussing first the limits of purely doctrinal legal research in relation to a particular topic and second the relevant considerations in devising research that (inter alia) draws on non-legal, auxiliary disciplines to ‘fill in’ and guide the legal framework. The topic concerned is the (analysis of the) fundamental rights of minorities.
The article starts with a long account of the flaws in the current legal analysis of the European Court of Human Rights regarding minorities’ rights, particularly the reduction in its analysis and the related failure to properly identify and weigh all relevant interests and variables. This ‘prelude’ provides crucial insights in the causes of the flaws in the Court’s jurisprudence: lack of knowledge (about the relevant interests and variables) and concerns with the Court’s political legitimacy.
The article goes on to argue for the need for multi-disciplinary legal research to tackle the lack of knowledge: more particularly by drawing on sociology (and related social sciences) and political philosophy as auxiliary disciplines to identify additional interests and variables for the rights analysis. The ensuing new analytical framework for the analysis of minorities’ rights would benefit international courts (adjudicating on human rights) generally. To operationalise and refine the new analytical framework, the research should furthermore have regard to the practice of (a selection of) international courts and national case studies.