Recent developments in the field of housing law have led to a renewed interest in eviction and the legal protection against homelessness. Because of European case law, courts need to apply a contextual approach in which tenants’ home interests and personal circumstances are taken into account more seriously. This paper explores the ways in which home interests and personal circumstances play a role in Dutch litigation concerning eviction because of rent arrears. Based on a quantitative systematic content analysis of nearly 100 written judgments of courts of first instance, it is found that tenants frequently advance various types of proportionality defences and refer to home interests and personal circumstances. Although Dutch courts do take these defences, home interests and personal circumstances into account, the vast majority of landlords’ claims are allowed. In one third of the analysed cases, the court dismisses the landlord’s claim and most of the time minimises the breach of the lease or refers to the disproportional effects of eviction or a tenant’s promise to change his behaviour.

‘I felt so sorry for you, such a lovely tool, and then you have no users!’ This was one of the comments after my presentation of the eKantonrechter at ODR 2016, organized by HiiL in The Hague in May 2016. ODR, online dispute resolution, was presented as a tool to solve all problems in the 4^th Trend Report by HIIL after the conference. Arno Lodder, in a weblog, commented that ODR had raised hopes in its early promoters, but had not really taken off.
ODR is a tool to help parties in the dispute resolve their problem. There are various examples of ODR tool: supporting double blind bidding to determine a sum of money, working out divorce settlements, negotiating a solution and taking a case to court.
Interesting research questions abound in the area of ODR and its users: What paths do people take when trying to resolve a problem? How can people have ownership of their court procedure? How can solutions, ODR and court procedures, best be tailored to the type of problem?
ODR and its users is a field in which law and society researchers can effectively contribute to improving digital problem solving and dispute resolution procedures in court.

Is online dispute resolution (ODR) the way to organise 100% access to justice? Or is it more of a bubble-solution looking for a problem? Experiences are mixed but there are reasons to be optimistic. A Dutch example of an online divorce platform show how technology can better serve the justice needs of citizens. But for that we need to stop thinking in terms of ADR, ODR and court litigation but rather design more hybrid processes.

Liability insurances shift the financial risk of the loss of a damage from the person who is liable for the damage to the liability insurer. To avoid negligent behavior of the insured, the insurer provides different prevention tools in the insurance policy. The insurer will attach certain sanctions or rewards to certain behavior and certain circumstances in the general conditions of the insurance contract. This research raises the question of the effectiveness of these instruments. The hypothesis is that without knowledge of the insured of these sanctions or rewards, these sanctions and rewards will not form an additional incentive for careful behavior and they will have no preventive effect. Additionally, these prevention tools may undermine the protection of the insured. For this reason the legislature has limited the freedom of contract. This study examines the extent to which the legislature has limited the possibilities of the insurer to provide in prevention tools in de insurance policy. It assesses the extent to which the legislature may or may not succeed in its purpose to protect the insured, and on the other hand, where there are still possibilities for the insurer to fulfill its prevention task.