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Law and Method


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Access_open Special issue on Education in (Professional) Legal Ethics, Emanuel van Dongen & Jet ­Tigchelaar (eds.)

Keywords professional ethics
Authors Emanuel van Dongen and Jet Tigchelaar
AbstractAuthor's information

    The theme of the special issue of Law and Method on Education in (Professional) Legal Ethics consists both of content-related as well as didactical-oriented contributions, of which most are written in the Dutch language and two are written in the English language. The content-related approaches show that in education in legal ethics use can be made of professional standards, constitutional principles as well as general ethical theories (such as utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics). Because lawyers work with ‘the law’, broader or narrower conceptions of law (in relation to morality) also affect legal reasoning and are therefore relevant to education in professional legal ethics. However, these approaches are also put into perspective: the leap forward from moral reasoning based on abstract core values and ethical principles to morally correct action in concrete moral dilemmas in legal practice is a large one. Several solutions are proposed: I. teach ethics indirectly, stressing the importance of facts and of professional role consciousness, and of the importance of formal and informal respect for all concerned, as an essential part of the professional lawyers’ role (Kaptein – written in English); II. use insights from social psychology to overcome barriers to actual ethical behaviour (Becker and Mackor); III. use dialogues about case studies that demonstrate different aspects of judicial ethics for judges (Brenninkmeijer&Bish – written in English) or IV. give (to future governmental lawyers) context-sensitive bottom-up moral dilemmas to enhance realism, alertness and role resistance against opposing forces (Van Lochem). A relevant theme in the didactical approaches to legal ethics is the absence or limited practical professional experience law students have, so that, for example, conversation techniques based on personal experience have limited value. At university level, this can be remedied to some extent by reinforcing one’s own experience, i.e. experiential learning, or by bringing the experiences of others into the classroom, for example with guest lecturers from the field, or by telling and discussing fictional or true stories (Van Dongen & Tigchelaar). Education at university gives a good starting point for (professional) legal ethics, followed by post-academic legal ethics education and legal practice as lifelong learning school. A contribution with a focus on the notary (Waaijer) highlights the different approaches within this continuum.


Emanuel van Dongen
Dr. Emanuel van Dongen is Assistant Professor Private Law at the Molengraaff Institute for Private Law, researcher at the Utrecht Centre for Accountability and Liability Law and the Montaigne Centre for Rule of Law and Administration of Justice, Utrecht School of Law.

Jet Tigchelaar
Dr. Jet Tigchelaar, Assistent Professor Legal Theory, researcher at Utrecht Centre for European Research into Family Law, Utrecht School of Law.
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Access_open Special Issue on Pragmatism and Legal ­Education – Editorial

Authors Sanne Taekema and Thomas Riesthuis
Author's information

Sanne Taekema
Prof. mr. dr. Sanne Taekema is professor of jurisprudence, Erasmus School of Law, Rotterdam.

Thomas Riesthuis
Dr. Thomas Riesthuis is ssistant professor of jurisprudence, Utrecht University.
Artikel

Access_open Notariële ambtsethiek als constante in de ­opleiding van de notaris: de deugd in het midden

Special issue on Education in (Professional) Legal Ethics, ­Emanuel van Dongen & Jet Tigchelaar (eds.)

Keywords education, notaries, legal ethics
Authors Boudewijn Waaijer
AbstractAuthor's information

    Behandeld wordt de vraag of en hoe door educatie een bijdrage kan worden geleverd aan beroepsethisch handelen in het notariaat. Ik doe dat door de opleidingseisen te differentiëren al naar gelang de verschillende gedaanten die de notarieel jurist aanneemt: die van student, beginnend notarieel jurist en notarieel jurist met een afgeronde beroepsopleiding.


Boudewijn Waaijer
Mr. dr. Boudewijn Waaijer is Of counsel bij Dentons Europe LLP, Amsterdam.
Artikel

Access_open Professioneel ethiekonderwijs voor de ­aankomend overheidsjurist

Special issue on Education in (Professional) Legal Ethics, ­Emanuel van Dongen & Jet Tigchelaar (eds.)

Keywords beroepsethiek, overheidsjuristen, onderwijs
Authors Peter van Lochem
AbstractAuthor's information

    De beroepsethiek van overheidsjuristen wordt traditioneel gericht op het functioneren als poortwachter van de rechtsstaat. Zij ontlenen hun beroepsethisch normenkader aan bovenliggende normen van democratie en rechtsstaat. Beroepsdilemma’s komen daarbij voort uit zich voordoende spanning tussen ambtelijke en juridische verantwoordelijkheden, bijvoorbeeld die tussen loyaliteit aan de politieke leiding versus het bevorderen van proportionaliteit van bevoegdheden (case Tijdelijke wet maatregelen covid-19) en die van handhaving (case kinderopvangtoeslagen). In de praktijk van de overheidsjurist is de beroepsethiek het resultaat van het omgaan met genoemde dilemma’s. Deze contextuele beroepsethiek van onderop wijkt af van de aan de rechtstaat ontleende beroepsethiek van bovenaf. Er zijn de nodige argumenten om het professionele (universitaire) ethiekonderwijs voor aankomend overheidsjuristen te richten op een normatieve oriëntatie van onderop. Het bevordert realisme, waakzaamheid voor tegenkrachten en rolvastheid. In het ethiekonderwijs voor aankomend overheidsjuristen zou dan een empirische en op verantwoording gerichte attitude centraal moeten staan.


Peter van Lochem
Mr. dr. P.J.P.M. (Peter) van Lochem is Fellow van het Meijers Instituut (Universiteit Leiden).
Artikel

Access_open Professionele ethiek in het academisch juridisch onderwijs - Enige inhoudelijke en didactische aanknopingspunten

Special issue on Education in (Professional) Legal Ethics, ­Emanuel van Dongen & Jet Tigchelaar (eds.)

Authors Emanuel van Dongen and Jet Tigchelaar
AbstractAuthor's information

    In deze bijdrage bespreken de auteurs inhoudelijke en didactische aanknopingspunten voor de integratie van professionele ethiek in de academische juridische opleiding. Dat gaat wat de auteurs betreft verder dan (enkel) het leren van gedragsregels, maar betreft ook de (kritisch-)ethische reflectie (op de professionele rol) van de jurist en ethische oordeelsvorming. Aanknopingspunten uit rechtstheoretische en onderwijskundige literatuur vragen om een curriculum brede, stapsgewijze, inbedding met passende toetsing. Dit onderwijs dient idealiter een combinatie te zijn van afzonderlijke meta-juridische vakken over recht en ethiek, positiefrechtelijke vakken die ethische elementen bevatten, klinische training en specifieke vakken over beroeps- of professionele ethiek. In dit artikel bespreken de auteurs diverse methoden die kunnen worden gebruikt om het onderwijs vorm te geven en illustreren dit met enkele voorbeelden uit het Utrechts universitair juridisch onderwijs. Actieve participatie, reflectie en – idealiter – eigen ervaringen zijn daarbij van groot belang. Een aantal modellen uit niet-juridische disciplines kan behulpzaam zijn bij het bieden van structuur voor ethische reflectie, voor zover het morele sensitiviteit en morele oordeelsvorming stimuleert. Verscheidene toetsingselementen op het terrein van de ethiek zijn door het curriculum heen nodig. Leeractiviteiten en toetsing kunnen worden opgebouwd in het curriculum van kennis en begrip, naar competenties ten aanzien van ethische dilemma’s en moreel oordelen.


Emanuel van Dongen
Dr. Emanuel van Dongen is Assistant Professor Private Law at the Molengraaff Institute for Private Law, researcher at the Utrecht Centre for Accountability and Liability Law and the Montaigne Centre for Rule of Law and Administration of Justice, Utrecht School of Law.

Jet Tigchelaar
Dr. Jet Tigchelaar is Assistent Professor Legal Theory at the Institute for Jurisprudence, Constitutional and Administrative Law, researcher at the Utrecht Centre for European Research into Family Law, Utrecht School of Law.
Artikel

Access_open Onderwijs juridische beroepsethiek aan rechtenstudenten

Special issue on Education in (Professional) Legal Ethics, ­Emanuel van Dongen & Jet Tigchelaar (eds.)

Keywords professional ethics, legal ethics, research ethics, moral psychology
Authors Anne Ruth Mackor
AbstractAuthor's information

    In dit artikel geeft de auteur haar visie op het onderwijs in beroepsethiek aan rechtenstudenten. Ze bespreekt de inhoud van de juridische beroepsethiek en enkele didactische aspecten. De auteur maakt onderscheid tussen rechtvaardigende perspectieven, die een explicatie en rechtvaardiging van een onderscheidende juridische beroepsethiek en -moraal mogelijk maken, en kritische perspectieven, die een kritische beoordeling van die rechtvaardigende verhalen mogelijk maken. Ze benadrukt daarbij het belang van empirische, in het bijzonder sociaal- en moraalpsychologische benaderingen in het onderwijs van beroepsethiek. Ze wijst op het feit dat studenten niet beschikken over relevante praktijkervaring en dat dit een obstakel vormt voor diepgaande casusanalyses. In de conclusie betoogt de auteur dat de belangstelling en de ruimte voor het onderwijs in beroepsethiek aan rechtenstudenten sinds het nieuwe millennium wel is toegenomen, maar dat meer systematische reflectie op deze vakken nodig is. Ook stelt ze dat bij het onderwijs in beroepsethiek aan rechtenstudenten die nog geen werkervaring hebben in een specifieke beroepspraktijk, de nadruk zou moeten liggen op thema’s die in de beroepsopleiding minder aandacht krijgen. Het accent moet meer liggen op het verwerven van ethische en empirische theoretische kennis en kritische reflectie op rechtvaardigende verhalen, en minder op discussie over concrete gevallen. Haar laatste aanbeveling is dat in het onderwijs niet alleen normatief-ethische theorieën aan de orde moeten komen, maar ook empirische inzichten over bounded ethicality.


Anne Ruth Mackor
Prof. mr. dr. Anne Ruth Mackor is als hoogleraar professie ethiek, in het bijzonder van juridische professies, verbonden aan de Faculteit Rechtsgeleerdheid van de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.
Artikel

Access_open Teaching Legal Ethics by Non-Ethical Means – With Special Attention to Facts, Roles and Respect Everywhere in the Legal Curriculum

Special Issue on Education in (Professional) Legal Ethics, ­Emanuel van Dongen & Jet Tigchelaar (eds.)

Keywords legal ethics, informal respect, educational integration, importance of setting examples
Authors Hendrik Kaptein
AbstractAuthor's information

    Legal ethics may be taught indirectly, given resistance to ethics as a separate and presumably merely subjective subject. This may be done by stressing the importance of facts (as the vast majority of legal issues relate to contested facts), of professional role consciousness and of the importance of formal and informal respect for all concerned. This indirect approach is best integrated into the whole of the legal curriculum, in moot practices and legal clinics offering perceptions of the administration of legal justice from receiving ends as well. Basic knowledge of forensic sciences, argumentation and rhetoric may do good here as well. Teachers of law are to set an example in their professional (and general) conduct.


Hendrik Kaptein
Hendrik Kaptein is associate professor of jurisprudence em., Leiden University.
Artikel

Access_open Ethiek en recht, actio in distans

Special issue on Education in (Professional) Legal Ethics, ­Emanuel van Dongen & Jet Tigchelaar (eds.)

Keywords juridische beroepspraktijk, juridische opleiding, ethiek
Authors Marcel Becker
AbstractAuthor's information

    Deze tekst belicht achtergronden van het ethiekonderwijs aan juristen, zoals dat aan de Radboud Universiteit vorm krijgt. Centraal staat eerst de praktisch én theoretisch relevante spanning tussen ethiek en recht. Na een verkenning van deze spanning bespreekt Marcel Becker de status van ethische theorieën en de meerwaarde van sociaalwetenschappelijke kennis voor ethiekonderwijs.


Marcel Becker
Dr. Marcel Becker is associate professor Ethics and Political Philosophy, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen.
Artikel

Access_open Space and Socialization in Legal Education: A Symbolic Interactionism Approach

Special Issue on Pragmatism and Legal Education, Sanne ­Taekema & Thomas Riesthuis (eds.)

Keywords legal education, pragmatism, symbolic interactionism, sociology of space
Authors Karolina Kocemba
AbstractAuthor's information

    The article deals with the possibility of socializing law students through space. It first indicates which features of space affect the possibility of influencing interactions and identity. It then discusses how we can use symbolic interactionism to study interactions and socialization in spaces of law faculties. Then, on the basis of the interviews conducted with law faculty students about their space perception, it shows how to research student socialization through space and how far-reaching its effects can be.


Karolina Kocemba
Karolina Kocemba, MA, is PhD student at the University of Wroclaw; Uniwersytet Wroclawski, Wroclaw, Poland.
Artikel

Access_open Thought Experiments in Law

Special Issue on Experimental Legislation in Times of Crisis, Sofia Ranchordas & Bart van Klink (eds.)

Keywords legal empirical studies, legal methodology, philosophy of law, thought experiments
Authors Gabriel Doménech-Pascual
AbstractAuthor's information

    Thought experiments have been widely used in virtually all sciences and humanities. Law is no exception. We can find countless instances of such experiments in both the legal practice and the legal theory. However, this method has hardly been studied by legal scholars, which contrasts with the vast literature devoted to it in other fields of knowledge. This article analyses the role that some thought experiments – those where an imaginary legal change is made, and its social effects are observed – may play in law. In particular, we show why these empirical legal thought experiments might be useful for the practice and theory of law, the main principles for conducting them and how the law deals with them.


Gabriel Doménech-Pascual
Dr. Gabriel Doménech-Pascual, PhD is full professor of Administrative Law at the University of Valencia, Spain. I thank Bart van Klink, Sofia Ranchordas, Alba Soriano, María José Añón, Pablo de Lora, Diego Papayannis, Arturo Muñoz, Violeta Ruiz, Pedro Herrera, Viviana Ponce de León, Maximiliano Marzetti, and two anonymous referees for their useful and thoughtful comments. All remaining errors are mine.
Artikel

Access_open Law Schools and Ethics of Democracy

Special Issue on Pragmatism and Legal Education Sanne Taekema & Thomas Riesthuis (eds.)

Keywords legal education, democracy, pragmatism
Authors Michal Stambulski
AbstractAuthor's information

    Contemporary critical analyses of legal education indicate that legal education is undemocratic as it is based on a discipline that produces subjects who obey hierarchies, are free from the habit of criticism and are ready to self-sacrifice for promotion in the social hierarchy. At the same time, critical analyses offer the very passive vision of the law student as merely ‘being processed’ through the educational grinder. Paradoxically, in doing so they confirm the vision they criticize. This article argues that, by adopting a pragmatic philosophical perspective, it is possible to go beyond this one-sided picture. Over the past few decades, there has been an increase in ‘practical’ attitudes in legal education. Socrates’ model of didactics, clinical education and moot courts are giving rise to institutionalized ideas as structural elements of legal education, owing to which a purely disciplinary pedagogy may be superseded. All these practices allow students to accept and confront the viewpoints of others. Education completed in harmony with these ideas promotes an active, critical member of community, who is ready to advance justified moral judgements, and as such is compliant with pragmatic ethics of democracy.


Michal Stambulski
Dr. Michal Stambulski is postdoctoral researcher at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and assistant professor at the University of Zielona Gora.
Artikel

Access_open Time and Law in the Post-COVID-19 Era: The Usefulness of Experimental Law

Special Issue Experimental Legislation in Times of Crisis, Sofia Ranchordas & Bart van Klink (eds.)

Keywords COVID-19, time and law, law-making, parliament, government, legal certainty
Authors Erik Longo
AbstractAuthor's information

    The COVID-19 pandemic swept the world in 2020 impelling us to reconsider the basic principles of constitutional law like the separation of power, the rule of law, human rights protection, etc. The two most pressing legal issues that have attracted the attention of legal scholars so far are, on the one hand, the different regulatory policies implemented by governments and, on the other, the balance among the branches of government in deciding matters of the emergency. The pandemic has determined a further and violent acceleration of the legislature’s temporal dimension and the acknowledgement that, to make legislation quicker, parliament must permanently displace its legislative power in favour of government. Measures adopted to tackle the outbreak and recover from the interruption of economic and industrial businesses powerfully confirm that today our societies are more dependent on the executives than on parliaments and, from a temporal perspective, that the language of the law is substantially the present instead of the future. Against this background, this article discusses how the prevalence of governments’ legislative power leads to the use of temporary and experimental legislation in a time, like the pandemic, when the issue of ‘surviving’ becomes dominant.


Erik Longo
Prof. Dr. Erik Longo is associate professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Florence.
Artikel

Access_open GMO Regulation in Crisis – The Experimental Potential of Regulation (EU) 2020/1043 on Covid-19 in Addressing Both a Crisis and a ­Pandemic

Special Issue Experimental Legislation in Times of Crisis Sofia Ranchordás & Bart van Klink (eds.)

Keywords experimental legislation, regulatory knowledge, GMO regulation, evaluation
Authors Lonneke Poort and Willem-Jan Kortleven
AbstractAuthor's information

    In this article, we analyse Regulation (EU) 2020/1043 on Covid-19 against the backdrop of the current deadlock in EU-regulation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). We build on temporary and experimental legislation scholarship and employ a normative framework of regulatory knowledge. The Covid-19 Regulation aims at speeding up the development of GMO-based Covid-19 treatments or vaccines by temporarily suspending requirements that otherwise would have made for time-consuming and burdensome authorization processes. Although the Regulation lacks an explicit experimental purpose, we hypothesize that experiences with its functioning may be utilized in evaluation processes serving attempts to change the GMO legal framework. As such, it may fulfil a latent experimental function. We reflect on the types of knowledge that are relevant when evaluating experimental legislation and developing regulation more generally and argue that the inclusion of social knowledge is pertinent in dealing with complex issues such as GMO regulation. Experimental law literature focuses on gathering evidence-based knowledge about the functioning of legislation but virtually neglects knowledge about different experiences and value appreciations of various societal actors and social-contextual mechanisms. We propose that such social knowledge be included in the design of experimental legislation and that evaluation be approached bottom-up instead of top-down.


Lonneke Poort
Lonneke Poort is Associate Professor at the department of Sociology, Theory and Methodology of Law at Erasmus School of Law.

Willem-Jan Kortleven
Willem-Jan Kortleven is Assistant Professor at the department of Sociology, Theory and Methodology of Law at Erasmus School of Law, Rotterdam.
Artikel

Access_open Art, Science and the Poetry of Justice – ­Pragmatist Aesthetics and Its Importance for Law and Legal Education

Special Issue on Pragmatism and Legal Education ­Sanne Taekema & Thomas Riesthuis (eds.)

Keywords legal research, legal education, epistemology, law, science and art
Authors Wouter de Been
AbstractAuthor's information

    Classic pragmatists like John Dewey entertained an encompassing notion of science. This pragmatic belief in the continuities between a scientific, ethical and cultural understanding of the world went into decline in the middle of the 20th century. To many mid-century American and English philosophers it suggested a simplistic faith that philosophy and science could address substantive questions about values, ethics and aesthetics in a rigorous way. This critique of classic pragmatism has lost some of its force in the last few decades with the rise of neo-pragmatism, but it still has a hold over disciplines like economics and law. In this article I argue that this criticism of pragmatism is rooted in a narrow conception of what science entails and what philosophy should encompass. I primarily focus on one facet: John Dewey’s work on art and aesthetics. I explain why grappling with the world aesthetically, according to Dewey, is closely related to dealing with it scientifically, for instance, through the poetic and aesthetic development of metaphors and concepts to come to terms with reality. This makes his theory of art relevant, I argue, not only to studying and understanding law, but also to teaching law.


Wouter de Been
Wouter de Been is a legal theorist who has written widely on pragmatism and legal realism. I would like to thank the reviewers for their comments. Their critical commentary made this a much better article. Any remaining shortcomings are of course my own. I dedicate this article to the memory of Willem Witteveen, who always saw the art in law.
Artikel

Access_open Professional Ethics for Judges – Lessons Learned from the Past. Dialogue as Didactics to Develop Moral Leadership for Judges

Special Issue on Education in (Professional) Legal Ethics, ­Emanuel van Dongen & Jet Tigchelaar (eds.)

Keywords professional ethics, ethical dilemmas, judiciary, independence
Authors Alex Brenninkmeijer and Didel Bish
AbstractAuthor's information

    There is an intimate link between good conduct by judges and the rule of law. The quintessence of their role is that judges shape a trustworthy and fair legal system from case to case. Ethical trading is not carved in granite, and judges must determine their course on different levels. First, it concerns personal conduct and requires integrity and reliability. On the second level, the challenge is to achieve proper adjudication by conducting a fair trial in accordance with professional standards. Third, judges exercise discretion, in which normative considerations run the risk of becoming political. They should act independently as one of the players in the trias politica. A triptych of past cases illustrate moral dilemmas judges may encounter in their profession. Calibrating the ethical compass is not an abstract or academic exercise. A dialogue at the micro (internal), meso (deliberation in chambers) and macro levels (court in constitutional framework) could be incorporated in the legal reasoning as a didactic framework to make future judges aware of their ethical challenges.


Alex Brenninkmeijer
A.F.M. Brenninkmeijer, PhD is Member of the European Court of Auditors, Luxembourg. Professor of Institutional Aspects of the Rule of Law at Utrecht University.

Didel Bish
D.A. Bish, LLM is a trainee at the European Court of Auditors, Luxembourg.
Artikel

Access_open Experimental Regulations and Regulatory ­Sandboxes – Law Without Order?

Special Issue Experimental Legislation in Times of Crisis, Sofia Ranchordás & Bart van Klink (eds.)

Keywords experimental regulations, regulatory sandboxes, methodology, regulatory quality
Authors Sofia Ranchordás
AbstractAuthor's information

    This article discusses the key methodological shortcomings of experimental regulations and regulatory sandboxes. I argue that the poor design and implementation of these experimental legal regimes have both methodological and legal implications. The deficient design of experimental regulations and regulatory sandboxes can have three adverse effects: First, the internal validity of experimental legal regimes is limited because it is unclear whether the verified results are the direct result of the experimental intervention or other circumstances. The limited external validity of experimental legal regimes impedes the generalizability of the experiment. Second, experimental legal regimes that are not scientifically sound make a limited contribution to the advancement of evidence-based lawmaking and the rationalization of regulation. Third, methodological deficiencies may result in the violation of legal principles which require that experimental regulations follow objective, transparent, and predictable standards. I contribute to existing comparative public law and law and methods literature with an interdisciplinary framework which can help improve the design of experimental regulations and regulatory sandboxes. I draw on social science literature on the methods of field experiments to offer novel methodological insights for a more transparent and objective design of experimental regulations and regulatory sandboxes.


Sofia Ranchordás
Sofia Ranchordás is Full Professor of EU and Comparative Public Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen, The Netherlands & Associate Professor of Public Law, Innovation, and Sustainability at the Faculty of Law, LUISS Guido Carli, Italy.