Samenvatting

Various developments since 1960 have lead to a legalization of care, especially the call for individual rights, emancipation, international treaties, the transformation of private problems to public issues and the diminishing authority of professionals. This legalization has important social consequences. Effects are both direct and indirect, positive and negative. The ‘rights revolution’ has gone too far and leads to unrealistic expectations of what law can do. Therefore a down-to-earth and empirical informed perspective on the relation between law and care is of great importance.