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The central question in this article is whether an empirical-legal approach to victimhood and victim rights could offer a sufficient basis for proposals for reform of the legal system. In this article, we choose a normative-critical approach and raise some objections to the way in which part of such research is currently taking place, on the basis of two examples of research in this field, one dealing with compelled apologies as a remedy within civil law and the other with the victim impact statement within criminal law. In both cases, we argue, the strong focus on the measurable needs of victims can lead to a relatively instrumental view of the legal system. The legal system must then increasingly be tailored to the wishes and needs of victims. Within this legal-empirical, victim-oriented approach, there is little regard for the general normative principles of liberal democratic legal systems, in which an equal and respectful treatment of each human being as a free and responsible legal subject is a central value. We argue that results of empirical-legal research should not too easily or too quickly be translated into proposals for legal reform, but first become part of a hermeneutical discussion about norms and legal principles, specific to the normative character of law and legal science.

This article outlines two points of criticism related to Christopher Marshall’s discussion of a relational justice of care. First, addressing the needs of the parties involved in a criminal justice case finds its appropriate place in the post-trial stage. In the pre-trial and trial stages, protecting the legal rights and equal treatment of suspects should take priority over caring for suspects. Secondly, if the outcome of the restorative encounter in the pre-trial stages has a bearing on the verdict of the judge, the encounter may risk to lose its authenticity. The offender may have reason to believe that a socially appropriate performance will be rewarded with less punishment.

The current World Anti-doping Code can be characterised as a tough approach to doping. In this paper we investigate how the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) justifies this tough approach. To this end, WADA advances two justificatory arguments. It maintains, first, that protection of the spirit of sport warrants tough measures and, second, that athletes have voluntarily consented to the Code. We argue that in the way they are presented by WADA, neither of these arguments can withstand scrutiny. In the second part of the paper, we go on to show that these arguments are in fact ideological in nature. The specific aim of these arguments is not to be correct, but rather to distort social reality, because in this way they can be used to ward off any critical discussion of the Code. We conclude that WADA’s interest is to create a façade of justice, not in serving justice itself.

This article identifies two mistakes commonly made about the concept of punishment. First, confusion exists about when an analysis of punishment counts as retributive, and when as justificatorily neutral. In particular, a fair number of legal scholars claim to analyze punishment in a neutral way, but closer inspection shows that many of these definitions are not justificatorily neutral. Second, legal scholars tend to analyze the concept of punishment very restrictively, with a focus on the intention of the legislator. While there may be good reasons to restrict the scope of the concept of punishment in the legal arena, from a philosophical point of view, restrictive analysis is not fruitful. It is a bad starting point for critical evaluation, because it is perfectly possible for impositions generally experienced as punitive not to be classified as such. This is all the more troublesome given that these impositions often contain fewer safeguards than are offered in criminal law and that there is sometimes a taboo on the language game related to punishment. I argue that these problems can be overcome by embracing an inclusive, justificatorily neutral concept of punishment that takes the outward appearance of the harm inflicted as its starting point.

The central question in this article is whether an empirical-legal approach of victimhood and victim rights could offer a sufficient basis for proposals of legal reform of the legal system. In this article, we choose a normative-critical approach and raise some objections to the way in which part of such research is currently taking place in the Netherlands, on the basis of two examples of research in this field, one dealing with compelled apologies as a possible remedy within civil procedural law and the other with the victim’s right to be heard within the criminal legal procedure. In both cases, we argue, the strong focus on the measurable needs of victims can lead to a relatively instrumental view of the legal system. The legal system must then increasingly be tailored to the wishes and needs of victims. Within this legal-empirical, victim-oriented approach, there is little regard for the general normative principles of our present legal system, in which an equal and respectful treatment of each human being as a free and responsible legal subject is a central value. We argue that results of empirical-legal research should not too easily or too quickly be translated into proposals for legal reform, but first become part of a hermeneutical discussion about norms and legal principles, specific to the normative quality of legal science itself.