Werkgevers en aanbieders van goederen en diensten moeten ervoor zorgen dat hun werkomgeving en diensten algemeen toegankelijk zijn voor mensen met een handicap. Die verplichting is in 2016 in de Wet gelijke behandeling op grond van handicap of chronische ziekte (WGBH/CZ) opgenomen. Nu het wetsartikel ruim twee jaar in werking is, is het tijd om te kijken naar de uitvoering. Relevante vraag daarbij is hoe de algemene toegankelijkheid van artikel 2a WGBH/CZ zich verhoudt tot de plicht om individuele doeltreffende aanpassingen te verrichten, zoals die in artikel 2 WGBH/CZ is vastgelegd.
In het navolgende gaan we in op de achtergrond van de wetswijziging en bespreken zowel (inter)nationale jurisprudentie als oordelen van het College voor de Rechten van de Mens.

Mensen met een handicap op gelijke voet laten participeren in de samenleving. Al voor de ratificatie van het VN-verdrag inzake de Rechten van Personen met een Handicap, verder aan te duiden als het IVRPH, was het een belangrijk onderwerp voor de wetgever. Op het gebied van werk zou de invoering van de Participatiewet, in samenhang met de Wet banenafspraak en quotum arbeidsbeperkten (Quotumwet), dit gaan bewerkstelligen. Arbeidsgehandicapten moeten zo veel mogelijk in reguliere banen aan het werk, waardoor sociale werkplaatsen niet meer nodig zijn – zo was de gedachte. Drie jaar later blijkt dat de overheidssector achter ligt op het schema van de banenafspraak. Waar de marktsector ruim zevenduizend banen meer heeft gecreëerd dan gepland, blijft de overheid op een kleine 6.500 banen steken, nog geen 65% van het doel voor 2017. Er moest dus actie ondernomen worden. Dat werd als reden aangevoerd om een systeem van loondispensatie in het regeerakkoord op te nemen. Het primaire doel was om ‘mensen met een arbeidsbeperking meer kansen te geven op duurzaam werk’. Als actief kernlid bij Wij Staan Op! was ik nauw betrokken bij de lobby om loondispensatie uit de Participatiewet weg te houden.

This study investigates the strategies people themselves use to deal with situations in which they fear crime. The authors see people as social agents who hold agency and (also) manage their own safety, instead of viewing people as powerless victims. Previous studies have emphasized people’s agency, often through a focus on avoiding dangerous spaces. Building on insights from the fear of crime literature that approaches fear of crime as situational, the authors illustrate how spaces in which people worry about crime can also be transformed (through action) into safe(r) spaces. The article focuses on the context of urban nightlife areas. Thirty students living in Utrecht, the Netherlands were interviewed. Results show that students perform a range of strategies to cope with their fear, including situational avoidance, arranging companionship, increasing alertness, and reasoning. In the discussion the authors reflect on how the application of such strategies is related to (erosion of) ‘mobility’ and individual freedom of movement.

The aim of this article is to search for a more focused approach of fighting back against ‘the fear of crime’. It is based on a study of the backgrounds of risen levels of fear of crime in twelve neighborhoods in the regions of Utrecht and Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Eight central themes could be identified in the stories of 240 respondents: specific locations, avoidance behavior, social stability, social quality, superdiversity, negative neighborhood images, burglary, and societal pessimism. Despite the fact that these central themes appeared in the overall analysis, every neighborhood showed another mix of factors explaining risen levels of fear of crime. This means that policies to reduce ‘the fear of crime’ should focus on specific, local explanations and should always be tailor-made.

When we consider a ‘court’ a judicial institution recognized by the state that renders judgment based on law recognized by the state, then the only ‘sharia courts’ to be found in Europe are located in the eastern province of Greece. Their jurisdiction is limited to Islamic family law, but a recent case before the European Court of Human Rights has rekindled the discussion on the scope of this jurisdiction, and opened the discussion on the desirability of such courts in a European country. This article presents an analysis of this discussion, based on literature study and fieldwork in the region.

In the 19th century in many Western states, the close relationship between Church and State came to an end and the Roman Catholic Church developed into a major and active player on social and educational level in society separate from the State.
This was due, on the one hand, to the constitutional changes in the Western states from the end of the 18th century, which led to the gradual introduction of the formal principle of separation of Church and State. On the other hand, it was a result of the search for a new position of the Roman Catholic Church in society that also influenced the theological reflection of the Church on society.
The ecclesiastical reflection on the ideal relationship between Church and State took shape in the course of this process in the Ius Publicum Ecclesiasticum. The ecclesiastical view on the relationship between believers/citizens, society and State simultaneously took shape in Catholic social doctrine, which today still offers a model for modern society. In Catholic social doctrine, the believer/citizen is the connecting element between Church and State in a secular society. The ‘state doctrine’ of the Catholic Church is presented in Catholic social doctrine as an ideal image of the democratic constitutional state in which man is central and forms the central link between Church, society and secular State.

The topic of this article is the legal philosophical foundation of John Griffiths’s sociology of law. Griffiths has developed his foundation of sociology of law in discussion with three positions: legal realism, Hart and Dworkin. These three positions give three different answers on the question ‘what is law?’. In the first part Griffiths’s discussion of legal realism is analyzed. From the outset, a legal realistic approach to law has the benefit of its strong focus on the empirical determinants of predicting the outcomes of cases. Problematic, according to Griffiths, is a naïve instrumentalism, often related to legal realism. The second part on Hart’s theory discussed Hart’s notion of rule-following as the core of Griffiths’s sociology of law. Also the different perspectives on law are discussed. According to Griffiths, Black’s extreme external perspective is problematic, but Hart’s moderate external perspective is also not suitable for the external comparative purpose of sociology of law. In the third part, Dworkin’s theory is discussed. Griffiths, in my opinion, unsuccessfully, tried to reconcile Dworkin’s theory with legal positivism. Dworkin’s theory is an interpretive theory from the participant’s point of view, which makes it hard to use it as an adequate foundation of an empirical theory of law. For a sociologist of law, choosing an adequate conception of law is just as important as the choice for an empirical method. The contribution of Griffiths to sociology of law is in this sense unique and of great value for the sociology of law.

Trationally, the term “enemy of all humanity” (hostis generis humani) referred to pirates. In contemporary international criminal law, it refers to perpetrators of crimes against humanity and other core. This essay traces the evolution of the concept, and then offers an analysis that ties it more closely to ancient tyrants than to pirates. Some object that the label is dehumanizing, and justifies arbitrary killing of the “enemy of humanity.” The essay admits the danger, but defends the concept if it is restricted to fair trials. Rather than dehumanizing its target, calling the hostis generis humani to account in a court of law is a way of recognizing that radical evil can be committed by humans no different from any of us.

For quite some years now, crimes of ‘the powerful’ have been studied by criminologists. While researching crimes of ‘the powerful’, researchers aim to maintain and safeguard their integrity and ethics. However, there seems to be a friction between, on the one hand, ethics of the researchers themselves and on the other hand, ethics (policies) of universities. Obviously, not only do they have to justify their actions and decisions to themselves and ‘science’ as a whole, they must justify their research to ethics committees (EC’s) of universities. It could result in complex and difficult situations when researchers suspect that EC’s themselves may be instruments and products of the powerful groups they are studying. In that case, EC’s might undermine ethics and research integrity themselves. What do certain EC- ‘conditions’ look like for research ethics and to which extent do they have to be adjusted or reconsidered when criminologists are researching ‘the powerful’? The key question that will be answered in this contribution is as follows: how can criminologist (re)act ethically responsibly when confronted with (un)ethical committees? To answer this and other relevant questions, after reviewing literature, we reflect on a biographical study of a legal arms trader. We then elaborate on the ‘ethics creep’ (Haggerty, 2004) that seems to haunt social sciences nowadays.

This article introduces the concepts of play and playfulness within the context of legal-philosophical education. I argue that integrating play and playfulness in legal education engages students and prepares them for dealing with the perpetual uncertainty of late modernity that they will face as future legal professionals. This article therefore aims to outline the first contours of a useful concept of play and playfulness in legal education. Drawing on the work of leading play-theorists Huizinga, Caillois, Lieberman and Csikszentmihalyi, play within legal education can be described as a (1) partly voluntary activity that (2) enables achievement of learning goals, (3) is consciously separate from everyday life by rules and/or make believe, (4) has its own boundaries in time and space, (5) entails possibility, tension and uncertainty and (6) promotes the formation of social grouping. Playfulness is a lighthearted state of mind associated with curiosity, creativity, spontaneity and humor. Being playful also entails being able to cope with uncertainty. The integration of these concepts of play and playfulness in courses on jurisprudence will be illustrated by the detailed description of three play and playful activities integrated in the course ‘Introduction to Legal Philosophy’ at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Jurisprudence is a domain related to terms such as rules, morality, principles, equality, justice, etc. Legal scholars have to teach the meaning of these terms. However, these are not terms, one can comprehend by just reading their standard definition. These are terms one must digest and learn to use. My argument is that literature or the law and literature movement can be used as a tool in order to explain and discuss these terms. For instance, beyond simply explaining or teaching legal positivism and natural law, Antigone helps students reflect upon the distinction between them. To cite another example, reading Nana can help students think about sex-workers in a way they would never think before. Moreover, the literature can be a useful means in teaching critical movements in law, such as critical legal studies, feminist legal theory and critical race theory. Finally, the terms I stated at the beginning are not only terms of jurisprudence, they are terms we should use properly in order to construct a healthy legal environment. Therefore, to get students comprehend these terms is a crucially important aim. I argue that literature can be a tool in order to achieve this aim.

Empirical Legal research (ELR) has become well established in the United States, whereas its popularity in Europe is debatable. This article explores the popularity of ELR in Europe. The authors carried out an empirical analysis of 78 European-based law journals, encompassing issues from 2008-2017. The findings demonstrate that a supposed increase of ELR is questionable (at best).
Moreover, additional findings highlight:

• An increase for a few journals, with a small number of other journals showing a decrease over time;

• A higher percentage of empirical articles for extra-legal journals than for legal journals (average proportion per journal is 4.6 percent for legal journals, 18.9 percent for extra-legal journals);

• Criminal justice journals, environmental journals, and economically oriented journals being more likely to publish empirical articles than other journals;

• More prestigious journals being more likely to publish empirical articles than less-prestigious journals;

• Older journals being more likely to publish empirical work than younger journals, but not at an increasing rate;

• Journals being legal/extra-legal, journals in a specific field, journal ranking, or the age of the journal not making it more (or less) likely that the journal will publish empirical articles at an increasing (or decreasing) rate.
  Considering the lack of convincing evidence indicating an increase of ELR, we identify reasons for why ELR is seemingly becoming more popular but not resulting in more empirical research in Europe. Additionally, we explore interventions for overcoming the obstacles ELR currently faces.

This paper presents a basic model of the imagination and offers pedagogical resources and activities for educating three related abilities to imagine. The basic model is that to imagine is to combine the process of awareness, framing and distancing, and the process of, simultaneously actively participate, by doing things with and thanks to artefacts. Artefacts, in turn, are fabricated forms (here, forms of language) that signal their own artifice and invite us to do things with them, across a spectrum of sensory, kinetic, and affective abilities. Modelled in this way, imagination plays a crucial role in legal reasoning, and is exemplified by the following kinds of artefacts in legal discourse: fictions, metaphors, hypothetical scenarios and figuration. These artefacts and their related processes of imagination are vital to legal reasoning at many levels, including the level of the individual lawyer or judge, the level of interaction in courtrooms, and the level of legal language over time. The paper offers nine learning activities corresponding to educating three abilities in the legal context: 1) to take epistemic distance and participate; 2) to generate alternatives and possibilities; and 3) to construct mental imagery.

In de zaak Nowak moest het Hof van Justitie de vraag beantwoorden of beroepsexamens persoonsgegevens zijn. De uitspraak van het Hof van Justitie biedt duidelijkheid over hoe te bepalen of informatie persoonsgegevens zijn. Voor hoger onderwijsinstellingen kan de uitspraak aanleiding geven hun beleid te heroverwegen ten aanzien van het opslaan, het verlenen van toegang tot, en het analyseren van tentamenantwoorden.
HvJ 20 december 2017, zaak C-434/16, Peter Nowak/Data Protection Commissioner, ECLI:EU:C:2017:994.