Sjaak Zhang During the past week, China was celebrating its 67th national day; meanwhile, an intense controversy as to whether the national day should be considered as the birthday of the mother country arose, which has demonstrated Chinese people’s confusion about what constitute a country. This blog seeks to briefly explain where such confusion…

Cong-rui Qiao On 14 September 2016, the Chinese State Bureau for Complaint Letters and Visits (“Bureau”) in Beijing saw 24 lawyers providing legal advice for the petitioners. This was the first experiment of the joint-program between the Ministry of Justice and the Bureau, which aims to resolve litigation-related petitions. With much attention given to the ongoing reforms,…

A few weeks ago, a journalist announced on VGNyhetter, a major Norwergian news website, that 19 Norwegian judges have heard cases in which insurance companies were parties, while the judges had shares in these insurance companies. The journalists Frank Haugsbø and Geir Olsenen have skilfully embroidered their story, including stories from the parties who lost…

Eddy Bauw Earlier this year, the Council for the Judiciary released a plan to establish a Netherlands Commercial Court (NCC). In the plan it was stated that the NCC would start on the 1st of January 2017. By now, a starting date of July 1st, 2017 seems more realistic. The upcoming Brexit makes this, in…

Bas van Bockel According to art. 50 of the Treaty on European Union (“TEU”, Lisbon version), “any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements”. In February of this year the European Parliament published a briefing informing citizens and politicians of the backgrounds and the debate on…

Tom Zwart  Increasingly, in the West, in the class rooms of law schools and offices of foreign ministries, international law is being associated exclusively with courts and tribunals. The idea seems to be that something can only be regarded as law if it emanates from an international court. This judicialization of international law overlooks the…

Brianne McGonigle Leyh International criminal justice has a reputation for being slow and progressing at a ‘glacial’ pace. For example, it took the International Criminal Court (ICC) ten years before it handed down its first judgment in the Lubanga case after it started operating in 2002. Similarly, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia…

Introduction In my previous blog I gave a modest impetus to define the concept of ‘the unity of law’ and I have discussed a number of instruments which in any case (also) aim to optimize the unity of law. The following four instruments are distinguished: institutional reform, preliminary ruling procedure, coordination and a differentiated discursive…

Eddy Bauw Under the headline ‘The claim industry’, the Volkskrant on Saturday the 27th of February devoted attention to the increase in the number of collective redress procedures in the Netherlands. The figures presented by the newspaper are clear: organisations who allegedly represent half a million people, have in total claimed 1.6 billion euros in…

In his ‘The Unity of Law 1: Blogging about the unity of law?’, Eddy Bauw gave an inspiring kick-off on the subject of the unity of law. It is the intention to – with this blog as a starting point – start a series about that topic. With this blog and the next blog, this…