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Recent years have seen multiple controversies between the EU and its member states that revolve around different conceptions of what kind of polity the EU is, and what it should be. These controversies are particularly heated when fundamental democratic values are at stake. In this article, we address the fundamental tension between the assertion of common EU values and the pluralistic character of the EU polity, both among and within member states. The driving question of this article is how we can understand controversies between the EU and its member states in light of the presence of alternative conceptions of the EU and its democratic and pluralistic character. We reconstruct two opposing conceptions of the EU – the intergovernmental and the cosmopolitan conception – and then analyse how the disagreement between these fundamental conceptions plays out in five key controversies. We argue that the disagreement over what the EU is, and what it should be, is inherent to EU politics. The EU can only become democratic if it recognizes these conflicting understandings and provides political arenas in which the disagreements between them can be articulated, confronted, and resolved.

Based on multi-sited archival research, this article examines the racialized regulation of commercial sex in 1970s France, and whether and how this was intertwined with the protection of a racialized, gendered, and class-based sexual order. In doing so, this article contributes to a contextualized and historicized analysis of the construction of race and colour-blindness in French legislation and law enforcement. During and after the Algerian War, colonial anxieties about sexual threats posed by North African male labour migrants in the French metropole played a role in the discussion on commercial sex and motivated politicians, policymakers and journalists to argue for its selective tolerance. The author argues that the indirect legislation on commercial sex granted discretionary power to the police to protect the sexual order through colourblind justifications. This enabled law enforcement to implement and enforce universalist legislation ‘from below’ in a racially particularistic way.

This study discusses the European Union’s proposal for a Regulation on Markets in Crypto-Assets, now subject to formal approval by the European Parliament. The objective is to explore whether it will positively impact the adoption of crypto-assets in the financial sector. The use of crypto-assets is growing. However, some stakeholders in the financial service sector remain skeptical and hesitant to adopt assets that are yet to be defined and have an unclear legal status. This regulatory uncertainty has been identified as the primary reason for the reluctant adoption. The proposed regulation (part of the EU’s Digital Finance Strategy) aims to provide this legal certainty for currently unregulated crypto-assets. This study investigates whether or not the proposed regulation can be expected to have the intended effect by reviewing the proposed regulation itself, the opinions and reactions of the various stakeholders, and secondary literature. Findings reveal that such regulation will most likely not accelerate the adoption of crypto-assets in the EU financial services sector, at least not sufficiently or as intended. Some suggestions are made to improve the proposal.

Drawing on the neo-republican theory of non-domination and a qualitative case study conducted in three Dutch municipalities, this article explores the extent to which external rules are able to prevent arbitrary power in relationships between welfare officers and work supervisors, on the one hand, and welfare recipients participating in mandatory work programmes, on the other hand. It concludes that external rules were insufficiently implemented in the three municipalities in question. In addition, it found that rules cease to be capable of constraining arbitrary power where institutional contexts themselves are unpredictable and insecure. Under these conditions, welfare recipients may seek to avoid risks and act in accordance with the preferences (or their expectation of the preferences) of the welfare officer or work supervisor by playing the role of the ‘good recipient’ instead of relying on available rules of a protective nature or rules that enable them to have a say in their participation in mandatory work programmes.

Kent de Afdeling sinds het reflectieverslag van de werkgroep juridische reflectie van de ABRvS bij de geloofwaardigheidsbeoordeling meer waarde toe aan iMMO-rapportages? Marcelle Reneman bespreekt diverse uitspraken van rechtbanken en twee nieuwe Afdelingsuitspraken waarin de rapportage een rol speelde. Het zogenoemde onderdelenvereiste blijkt te zijn losgelaten. Maar over de waardering als steunbewijs is nog niets gezegd.

In dit artikel wordt de praktijk van datagedreven opsporing beschreven en worden de consequenties ervan voor het stelsel van strafvordering geduid. Om datagedreven opsporing uit normatief oogpunt in te bedden in het stelsel van strafvordering, zal moeten worden onderkend dat de toepassing van opsporingsbevoegdheden óók gericht kan zijn op andere doelstellingen (zoals het verstoren van criminele infrastructuren of het produceren van intelligence). Daarbij moeten worden gezocht naar een vorm van normering die ook passend is voor deze andere doelstellingen. Het is daarvoor noodzakelijk dat het Wetboek van Strafvordering en de Wet politiegegevens beter op elkaar aansluiten en het stelsel van toezicht en controle op datagedreven opsporing opnieuw wordt ingericht.

De heersende leer in de rechtspraak en literatuur is dat causaliteit in het strafrecht moet worden vastgesteld aan de hand van de leer van de redelijke toerekening. In dit artikel wil ik een alternatief standpunt verdedigen over causaliteit in het strafrecht. Dat alternatieve standpunt houdt in dat het vaststellen van causaal verband in de meeste gevallen niet een materieelrechtelijke kwestie is van het toepassen van juridische criteria op vastgestelde feiten, zoals de redelijkheid of de condicio sine qua non. Het vaststellen van causaal verband is in de meeste gevallen een formeelrechtelijke kwestie die wordt bepaald door het bewijsrechtelijke criterium of het tenlastegelegde verband buiten redelijke twijfel uit de bewijsmiddelen kan worden afgeleid.

Centraal in dit artikel staat een onderscheid dat ik maak tussen drie registers van normativiteit: doelmatigheid, rechtvaardigheid en fatsoen. Aan de hand van voorbeelden betoog ik dat binnen een verantwoorde evaluatie van het recht aan alle drie de registers aandacht wordt geschonken. Het hoofdvoorbeeld vormt het systeem van promoveren en degraderen in het gevangeniswezen. Ook komt aan bod hoe de beweging ELS zich verhoudt tot deze registers.

Deze bijdrage gaat over de beperking van het aantal studenten voor een bacheloropleiding binnen het Nederlands universitair onderwijs door het vaststellen van een maximum voor het aantal toelatingen. Ingegaan wordt op de recente geschiedenis van het hanteren van numerus fixus, de (juridische grondslag van de) huidige procedure, de toepassing van numerus fixus bij rechtenopleidingen en aankomende wetswijzigingen ten aanzien van selectiemogelijkheden. De beoogde wetswijzigingen zijn bedoeld om de kansenongelijkheid te verminderen en de toelatingskansen zo min mogelijk te beperken.

Artikel 21 SW kent bijzondere waarderingsvoorschriften, waaronder voor woningen. Op grond van jurisprudentie van de Hoge Raad werken deze waarderingsvoorschriften onder omstandigheden door in de waardering van vorderingen die afhankelijk zijn van de waarde van een goed waarvoor een waarderingsvoorschrift geldt. De auteurs analyseren de reikwijdte van deze doorwerking.

Legal sightseeing de- notes the ‘eventisation’ of inter- national law: international court- houses stage public photo exhibitions and offer audio tours, inter- national lawyers partake in film festivals, and the buildings of international organisations have become top tourist destinations. We zoom-in on these encounters and ask how international law is presented to ‘the public’ and in turn what that public shows up for. We argue that as phenomenon, legal sightseeing is vital to our understanding of the contemporary practice of international law and to questions of who gets to partake in it. Moreover, as experimental methodological intervention, legal sightseeing is not only an argument about what to look at and for, but also about how to look and see.

The combat against the COVID-19 pandemic in Belgium led to the adoption of several measures that impacted the freedom of religion or belief. The particular focus of this article is the collective exercise of religion in places of worship and its protection by judicial actors during the first two years of the COVID-19 crisis. This choice was prompted by the fact that the government measures taken in this context had significant consequences for this form of religious manifestation...

Het zwijgrecht is een fundamenteel onderdeel van het recht op een eerlijk proces, maar is desondanks niet absoluut. In dit artikel wordt aan de hand van systematische feitenrechtspraakanalyse onderzocht wat de rol is van het zwijgen van de verdachte in de bewijsbeslissing bij diefstal, of dit verschilt tussen de delicten diefstal en witwassen en zo ja, welke factoren daarbij relevant zijn.

The decision to remand a defendant into custody pre-trial is one of the most controversial criminal justice decisions because it deprives individuals of their liberty while they are presumed to be innocent of a crime. Indeed, pre-trial detention decisions can have significant consequences for defendants, which need to be balanced against the potential implications of bail for public safety and the course of criminal proceedings. Despite this, court-based bail and remand decision-making remains relatively underexplored. In this paper, we compare court-based bail/remand decision-making in England and Wales and The Netherlands. We focus on (i) the procedure and structure of decision-making, (ii) the substantive relevant legal frameworks, (iii) the courts in which the decisions are made and the decision-makers in those courts, (iv) the conditions characterizing the decision task, and (v) the court’s reasoning of bail and remand in custody decisions. Using a comparative and multi-disciplinary approach, relying on Law, Criminology, and Psychology, we make predictions about bail and remand in custody rates in the two jurisdictions as well as the decision performance of court-based decision-makers. These predictions are then evaluated using available (official) statistics and past research. We identify the need to collect more nuanced statistical data on bail and remand in custody rates and point to potentially fruitful avenues for future research. A comparative, multi-disciplinary, evidence-based approach can underpin remand reform in England and Wales, The Netherlands, and beyond.

In deze Uitspraak Uitgelicht bespreekt Galina Cornelisse het arrest Landkreis Gifhorn (JV 2022/106 nt S. Thelosen, ve22000591) waarin opnieuw strenge eisen worden gesteld aan de uitzonderingen op de hoofdregel, namelijk dat vreemdelingen alleen in speciale inrichtingen in bewaring mogen worden gesteld. De beperkte rolopvatting van de Nederlandse bestuursrechter in dit soort zaken is niet verenigbaar met het Unierecht.

This article analyses the consistency between the implementation of the EU Youth Guarantee and the fundamental right to work. Focusing on the use of traineeships as an implementation instrument, it explores various types of national Active Labour Market Policies (ALMP) for young unemployed people in Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Poland. The case studies show that it remains to be seen whether the traineeships considered in this research comply with the right to work. The authors argue for the need to strengthen the Youth Guarantee to accord with the right to work, so that in addition to the right to a first job, it ensures that work-related instruments include the provision of effective training, as well as the right to equal pay for work of equal value, and decent working conditions. This is particularly important in view of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, that has had an unprecedented economic impact in the EU and is likely to result in another dramatic upsurge in the number of young unemployed. Youth Guarantee, Right to Work, NEETs, Traineeships, Decent Work, Equal Pay, Active Labour Market Policies

This article seeks to conduct a critical analysis of the place the EU currently occupies on the international scene and how it uses its central position to shape international politics in order to promote international peace and security. For this purpose, it will firstly provide the reader with a general overview of the CFSP and how the Lisbon treaty changed the EU’s functioning in this field. Secondly, taking the EU-Russia relations as a starting point, this paper will evaluate the means the EU employs to achieve its CFSP goals. Thirdly, it will seek to predict the possible future of the EU role as a unitary political actor in the global fora.

Het strafrecht staat erom bekend dat het met een zekere terughoudendheid moet worden toegepast. Alleen indien inzet van andere middelen niet effectief is, is het aangewezen om het strafrecht in te zetten tegen ongeoorloofd gedrag. Tegelijkertijd klinkt de roep om inzet van het strafrecht als doelmatig en afschrikwekkend middel steeds luider, zo ook in het kader van aan voetbal gerelateerde feiten. Deze noties doen de vraag rijzen wat de precieze rol van het strafrecht in en rondom het voetbal is (of moet zijn). Die vraag wordt beantwoord met aandacht voor twee uitgangspunten in het strafrecht: onrechtmatigheid en de ultimum remedium-gedachte.

The Belgian Constitution holds an obligation for governmental schools to organise RE in the recognised religions and in non-confessional ethics for all children of school age. While neither the Flemish nor the French Community legislator can thus abandon RE altogether, both legislators have recently taken initiatives, moving beyond the opt-out system, towards an opt-in system and a partial withdrawal of RE in governmental schools. After a brief description of the Belgian RE system and its historical roots, we scrutinise these evolutions. Although the Constitution does offer some room for manoeuvring, not everything goes: ending the possibility for students in governmental schools to opt for RE in any of the recognised religions or in non-denominational ethics altogether would, for instance, not be allowed. This is different from the perspective of human rights instruments such as the ECtHR, which permits, but does not require governmental schools to organise moral or religious education. Following the margin of appreciation doctrine of the ECtHR, the ECHR does not pose strict limits on governmental possibilities. It remains, however, to be seen whether the Flemish and French Community will manage to stay in line with the stricter regime of the Belgian Constitution.

This article investigates how participatory art can contribute to legal change. As a case study, it discusses Jonas Staal’s project of New World Summit in Rojava, a (so far still) autonomous region in North and East Syria. It offers an interesting case, since it invites the law to include what it has excluded so far. To begin with, it is clarified how change is conceived within legal systems based on the rule of law. Although law resists radical change, it is involved in a constant process of adaptation to its environment. Subsequently, Staal’s project of New World Summit is discussed from a utopian perspective. Its apparent impossibility is what makes is so valuable for law and its development. By erecting a parliament for Rojava, it presents a picture of how the international order could look like when things were different. It basically is an exercise in “utopian world-making”.

This contribution questions the conception of normative theory that Martijn Hesselink seems to embrace in Justifying Contract in Europe. The question it asks is ostensibly simple and straightforward: what is normative theory? And: what does Hesselink mean when he speaks of normative theory? By connecting the method and approach of Justifying Contract in Europe to the question of delimitation, the article raises several concerns with the reasons Hesselink offers for excluding feminist and Marxist theory, including their heterogeneity and presumed hostility to normative questions and approaches. The article suggests that these reasons point to a broader and more profound difficulty with Hesselink’s understanding of normative theory, which rests on a problematic distinction between normativity and critique. To this, the article responds that critique and normativity (moral philosophy), properly understood, are intimately related – in fact: inseparable – and that one without the other leaves us with a significantly impoverished and unduly narrow understanding of both normativity and critique.

This dissertation focuses on the period between 1948 and 1968 in the British metropole and examines the regulation of interracialised relationships during this time. The large-scale immigration from Britain's former colonies to the metropole began after 1948, coinciding with the development of the British welfare state and job opportunities. The dissertation highlights the political and public discourse surrounding the settlement of colonial citizens, with employment, housing, and 'miscegenation' being recurring themes in political debates and media coverage. The author specifically explores the national discourse on interracialised relationships, particularly between White women and Black men, which attracted political and media attention. The author argues that such relationships posed a threat to the racial order and the construction of a white British nation because they were seen as crossed racialised, gendered and class boundaries thereby challenging societal norms within Britain. This research expands on legal scholarship by exploring the ways control and regulation occurred across diverse social authorities, including non-governmental institutions. It demonstrates that regulation of interracialized relationships went beyond strict legal codes or the state itself. This dissertation presents a comprehensive analysis of the locations where moral regulation occurred by examining the interconnectedness of various governmental and non-governmental departments and institutions. It highlights how institutions such as the police, the church, and immigration agencies played a role in regulating interracial relationships. By situating the analysis of UK policy and governance within the broader historical context of the British empire, the dissertation aligns with postcolonial and decolonial scholarship. It emphasizes the interconnectedness of colonial and metropolitan spaces and contributes to understanding how interracial relationships were racialized within the empire. Overall, the dissertation contributes to the field of 'mixed race' studies by providing a comprehensive analysis of the regulation of interracialized relationships, situating them within historical, social, and cultural processes, and exploring the nuanced ways in which they were governed.

Het wetsvoorstel ‘Wet confiscatie criminele goederen’, dat in december ter advies aan de Raad van State is voorgelegd, voldoet niet aan de eisen van proportionaliteit, subsidiariteit en doelbinding. Er bestaat geen noodzaak tot uitbreiding van de huidige confiscatiemaatregelen in Nederland. De reikwijdte van de voorgestelde regeling is te breed met het oog op de gevallen waarin non-conviction based confiscatie (NCBC) kan worden ingezet (doelbinding) en de inzet van NCBC als zelfstandige procedure (subsidiariteit). De voorgestelde regeling beoogt belangrijke rechtswaarborgen van de verdediging, zoals het recht op een eerlijk proces, toegang tot een effectief rechtsmiddel en de onschuldpresumptie, te omzeilen. En tot slot worden de belangen van het slachtoffer ook niet gewaarborgd door de NCBC-procedure.

Op 1 januari 2024 wijzigt titel 7.12 BW ten gevolge van de inwerkingtreding van de Wet kwaliteitsborging voor het bouwen. Deze bijdrage geeft een overzicht van de wijzigingen en problematiseert vanuit een juridisch-technisch perspectief de introductie van een aantal nieuwe bepalingen die zien op de oplevering van bouwwerken en de daaraan verbonden rechtsgevolgen.

Het bericht dat ITV Studios advocatenkantoor Van Doorne N.V. inschakelde om zelfonderzoek te doen naar de ernstige situatie rondom de voormalige deelnemers van The Voice lokte een zo mogelijk nog heftigere maatschappelijke discussie uit dan zelfonderzoek naar fraude en corruptie. In deze bijdrage wordt onderzocht wat het verschil is tussen deze vormen van zelfonderzoek.

Soms leunt beleid grotendeels op cijfers en data, zie de coronapandemie en de klimaatcrisis. Hoe verhoudt dit zich tot recht en democratie? vraagt Maxim Februari zich af in zijn essay Doe zelf normaal.

Advances in reproductive biotechnology increase control over who is born and under what circumstances. Resulyingly, we are confronted with the question: what do we owe to future people who are born with the help of these technologies? In an attempt to do justice to future people, a new entity has appeared the legal stage: the future child. This is the child that has not been born or even conceived yet – but might be at some point in the future. In order to be able to include this new entity in discussions on the regulations on reproduction, we need a theoretical framework that helps us understand what this entity is and how we can address it. In the regulations on reproduction, the future child is often conceptualised as a subject of rights or interests. Yet, as a result of these regulatory frameworks that invoke the interests of the future child, the future child itself is ultimately prevented from coming into existence, which renders the future child as a merely legal construct and a complex entity. This research aims to assess the conceptualisation of the future child in the regulations on reproduction, by scrutinizing the tenability of the ‘interests of the future child’ construction. In order to assess this construction, it is deconstructed into the four assumption upon which it is based. These are: first, the core values underlying the regulations on reproduction can be understood as interests of an individual subject; second, the future child has an implicitly assumed interest in its own non-existence; third, the future child is a legal subject and, fourth, the future child whose existence is prevented is capable of having interests. The critical assessment of these four assumptions reveals that each of them is questionable. The first and second assumptions are untenable in most cases. The third and fourth assumptions, pertaining to the future child’s subjectivity, are completely untenable due to the future child’s non-existence. In short, the interests of the ‘interests of the future child’ construction appears to be unable to articulate various values that underlie the regulatory framework and it is internally contradictory. In response, I propose an alternative theoretical framework based on the work of Hans Jonas that is capable of taking up this task. This alternative approach conceives the future child as the object of our responsibility. In order to set the parameters of our responsibility towards the future child, we need a more articulated normative account of the human person. In this research, I explore how perceiving the human person as equal and an autonomous end in himself is capable of making sense of the various values that can be distilled from the regulation of reproduction. Of course, the notion our humanity may remain topic of discussion, as it is surrounded by unprecedented complexities. As technological developments erode the boundaries between the given and the made, it may seem that we are losing our grip on this endeavour. But precisely because the regulation of biotechnology touches upon the intimate aspects of our humanity, and every regulatory choice implies an idea of what it means to be human, we cannot escape articulating such a collective perspective. Nor can we hide behind the ‘interests of the future child’ in an attempt to present our perspective on humanity as based on individual interests or rights. Therefore, rather than shy away from it, we must take up the challenge to at least further reflect upon the notion of humanity that forms the foundation of the regulations on reproduction and to attempt to articulate in more depth what it means to be human.

Leerboek ten behoeve van de deelnemers aan de advocaat-stagiaire opleiding van de Law Firm School. Dit zijn advocaat-stagiairs van de bij de Law Firm School aangesloten grote internationaal opererende advocatenkantoren in Nederland.

Net-zero targets play an important role in public and private climate governance. The concept of net zero implies that emissions can be outbalanced by compensatory activities such as greenhouse gas removals and offsetting. However, emissions and compensation measures are not equivalent in terms of their climate impact. The climate benefits of currently available compensation practices are more uncertain and less permanent than the harm caused by emissions. From a legal perspective, two problems can be observed. First, aggregating emissions and non-equivalent compensation measures may violate the requirement that greenhouse gas inventories should be accurate. Second, it may conflict with the principle that only effective mitigation measures should count towards emission reduction targets.

In het Smallsteps-arrest uit 2017 oordeelde het Hof van Justitie van de EU dat de uitzondering die in Richtlijn 2001/23/EG inzake overgang van ondernemingen is opgenomen voor de faillissementsdoorstart, niet van toepassing is wanneer een dergelijke doorstart wordt gerealiseerd met gebruikmaking van de pre-packmethode. In het Heiploeg-arrest van april 2022 blijkt het Hof over deze kwestie een compleet ander standpunt in te nemen. Na een korte introductie van de relevante Europese regelgeving en weergave van de belangrijkste overwegingen uit het Smallsteps-arrest, bespreekt de auteur de Heiploeg-zaak en staat hij stil bij de implicaties van het recente Hof-arrest voor de Nederlandse doorstartpraktijk.

Daniel Joyce’s book is more than a publication. It is a testimony to courage. When he started this book project, I had a few brief chats with the author. He harboured doubts, as some experienced scholars in the field had given him free advice: do not take up such a vague and undefined topic. International law is about sources and rules and their application; not about media and public communication. The author wisely decided to ignore this free advice, to follow his own intuition and curiosity instead. The result is the topic of this symposium: Informed Publics, Media and International Law, a remarkable and important book...

Deze drafting tip gaat over de dwingende bewijskracht van een tussen partijen opgemaakte akte en over de vraag wat rechtens is als de echtheid van hetgeen in de akte is opgenomen of de echtheid van de daarop geplaatste handtekening door een der partijen wordt betwist.

The Peace Palace in The Hague is more than a mere venue where international law is practiced. Initiated after the 1899 Peace Conference it provided a material home for the emergent international community and as such, we argue, helped to sing this community into existence. This article traces the process of materialising the grand international ideal of ‘peace through justice’ by shedding light on its bureaucratic backstage of transnational diplomacy. Taking a ritual perspective on gift-giving as a way to constitute relationships, we analyse how three sets of gifts were crucial to (the) building (of) the emergent international community: finding a proper site (as a gift from the Dutch government), securing Andrew Carnegie’s financial gift, and collecting materials and artworks donated by the States as gifts to the Palace. We examine how each of these arrangements involved a complex web of public and private transnational actors, temporalities, and bickering over nitty gritty details as the conditions of possibility for giving and receiving gifts, and constituting the international community.