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Towards a visual verdict? The effect of visual features on the comprehensibility of a court ruling: We investigated whether a written court ruling printed on paper, as published on www.rechtspraak.nl and written and rewritten in understandable language, is better understood by non-litigant readers with no legal education if visual features (such as typography, images and color blocks) are added to that ruling. First an existing court ruling (V1) was rewritten in understandable language. Then two visual versions of this rewritten ruling were developed. In one version (V2a) the structure of the text was made visual using typography. In the other version (V2b) images, icons and color (blocks) were added to V2a. These versions were tested for understandability and compared with the original version (V1) by means of a questionnaire survey amongst 219 readers with varying levels of education who answered questions regarding the text comprehension of one of the three versions. Analysis of the results shows that the visual version V2a is the most understandable for the non-highly educated group: it was this version that received significantly more correct answers than the original (V1). Regarding the highly educated group, there were no significant differences in the number of correct answers among the three versions: each version was understood (equally) well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detention of asylum seekers: a matter of feeling? This paper analyses how street-level bureaucrats in the Netherlands decide on detaining asylum seekers. The paper is based on interviews with officers of the national police and the military police who take these decisions as part of their job. The relevant Dutch and European legal rules are not clear and unambiguous and the officers are given wide margins of discretion in making these decisions. Many interviewees said that they ultimately rely on their 'feelings'. The paper therefore pays special attention to whether and how gut feelings and emotions of the officers influence their decision-making. In addition, the paper examines whether and how the increased use of ICTs and the Europeanisation of migration and asylum law have reduced the officers' discretion and autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chapeau! (though Popper would not be happy): The paper highlights the contributions on judges and courts published in Recht der Werkelijkheid from 1980-2020. It addresses three general themes, namely communication in court, the consumers of the law and the professionals of the law, in view of the objective of the journal. The authors of the contributions, newcomers as well as well-known experienced researchers, come from different kind of branches like anthropology, psychology, sociology and history, utilizing quite different approaches, methodologies and theories. They elaborate on each other's work, methods, empirical findings and theoretical insights, in order to develop new research questions or to conduct research in different contexts. Although the critical-rational ideas of Popper has no many followers among the authors, lessons can be learned for policy makers, judges, lawyers and academics. By bringing the authors together, the journal has made an invaluable contribution to the debate among socio-legal researchers in the Netherlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four decades of socio-legal research on regulatory enforcement in the Netherlands: Because of the sharp contrast between the law-in-the-books and the law-in-action regulatory enforcement has always been a popular subject in socio-legal research. This paper looks back at forty years of Dutch research on regulatory enforcement, using several key publications in this journal from each decade. First, it is argued that these Dutch studies reveal three general themes: this research can be seen as a time machine that takes us back to some of the most important social and political events of the past decades, these studies emphasize the crucial role of individual enforcement officials, and in everyday enforcement state law only plays a limited role. Next, this review also discusses some of the strengths and weaknesses of Dutch research. Most studies on regulatory enforcement are more interested in the role of the state than in the role of citizens and businesses. As a result, research focuses more on issues of effectiveness and less on questions of legitimacy. Finally, empirical research is seen as more important than theory development. Based on this overview, the author introduces a new research agenda for future research on regulatory enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lawyers in Europe: Representation at the highest level? Research on the significance of representation indicates that lawyers contribute to positive outcomes of legal procedures not only by their substantive expertise but also by the relational expertise they bring. The latter involves understanding how to navigate the relationships involved in getting work done. In this paper these insights are used to investigate the highly specific and atypical practise of the preliminary reference procedure in the European legal system in order to reveal how lawyers deal with such an unexpected change of (legal) context. The empirical data, collected through semi-structured interviews with twenty-eight lawyers with past experience with the procedure, reveals the significant ways in which lawyers' positive contribution to such cases is undermined by their lack of both substantive and relational expertise in pleading a case before the European Court of Justice. The fact that such cases do not necessarily fall into the hands of the professionals best equipped to plead such disputes before the Court, and the inability of the less well-off parties in particular to hire further expertise, points in the direction of a disadvantaged position for this group of litigants in having their interest represented effectively at the European level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vertrouwen in het notariële tuchtrecht: Ervaren procedurele rechtvaardigheid onder het notariaat This quantitative empirical research project describes how notaries evaluate disciplinary jurisdiction. Findings show that perceived procedural justice matters for notaries' trust in the disciplinary jurisdiction of their cases. For example, those respondents who had been involved in a disciplinary case themselves, rated the disciplinary judge with a 5.3 on a 10-point scale when procedural justice was perceived by them to be relatively low. In contrast, when respondents who had been involved in a disciplinary case perceived procedural justice to be relatively high they rated the disciplinary judge with 7.6 on the same 10-point scale. This suggests that perceived procedural justice matters among an interesting type of professionals (notaries) who are involved in an interesting procedure in their profession (a disciplinary evaluation of their professional handling) in which important decisions are made. The current paper can contribute to the development of a barometer of notary disciplinary law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is little known on settlement negotiations during civil lawsuits in the Netherlands. Settlement negotiations take place during a (suspension of the) public court hearing. The public hearing takes place in the majority of the civil lawsuits in the Netherlands. The qualitative empirical research I am carrying out, intents to give insight in these settlement negotiations and questions what lawyers actually do during these negotiations. The research intents to contribute to the effectiveness of settlement negotiations in the sense that (i) the number of settlements increases and of compulsory settlements decreases, (ii) the perceived fairness of procedure and outcome in settled cases increases, and (iii) the number of resolved underlying conflicts increases. I expect to find that most settlement negotiations can be qualified as distributive negotiations (as opposed to integrative negotiations). Furthermore, based on a literature review on biases and heuristics I hypothesized that settlement could be more effective than they actually are. The paper touches on the methodology and on both hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]