Samenvatting

During the recent Senate debate about the constitutional state some senators expressed a concern about the tensions between the legislature and judiciary. The problems of overburdening, underfunding and instrumentalisation of the judiciary have a long history. The legislature has a tendency to overburden himself and the other powers of state, like the judiciary, notwithstanding the official policy to be reserved with regard to the responsibilities of government. The judiciary must adapt itself to an ever more prominent role in the constitutional state. The judiciary also has to generate its own legitimacy and cannot consider this to be a function of the legitimacy basis of the democratic legislator. The legislator for his part has all kinds of democratic wishes and expectations on how the judiciary can increase its own legitimacy basis by dealing quicker with more cases. In this context, the minister strongly adheres to the maxim that justice delayed is justice denied. The working methods of the judiciary have shown small and gradual steps in the direction of a more responsive and communicative procedure. However, the judiciary is not able to transform all its ideas into concrete initiatives and to transform successful initiatives into settled practices.