When damage results from the actions or omissions of members of the armed forces, the question may arise whether the state can be held liable. This contribution firstly provides insight into the needs of surviving relatives with regard to their liability claims against the Dutch State for damage resulting from the deployment of the armed forces. Secondly, it addresses the question of the extent to which the needs of the surviving relatives whose cases have been completed have been met as a result of these claims. The results are based on semi-structured interviews with seven surviving relatives who are, or have been, involved in liability claims against the State. The interviews show that the surviving relatives have (had) diverse needs with regard to the claims. The majority of the surviving relatives indicate that they have (had) one or more material needs, which include financial compensation, and psychological and medical assistance. Furthermore, they all had multiple immaterial needs. The immaterial needs that were addressed can be divided into ten categories. Finally, it appears that the needs of all four surviving relatives whose cases have been completed have been either partially or fully met as a result of the claims.

We investigated whether a written court ruling printed on paper, as published on www.rechtspraak.nl and written and rewritten in understandable language, is better understood by non-litigant readers with no legal education if visual features (such as typography, images and color blocks) are added to that ruling.
First an existing court ruling (V1) was rewritten in understandable language. Then two visual versions of this rewritten ruling were developed. In one version (V2a) the structure of the text was made visual using typography. In the other version (V2b) images, icons and color (blocks) were added to V2a. These versions were tested for understandability and compared with the original version (V1) by means of a questionnaire survey amongst 219 readers with varying levels of education who answered questions regarding the text comprehension of one of the three versions.
Analysis of the results shows that the visual version V2a is the most understandable for the non-highly educated group: it was this version that received significantly more correct answers than the original (V1). Regarding the highly educated group, there were no significant differences in the number of correct answers among the three versions: each version was understood (equally) well.

The legal position of crime victims has been greatly extended in the Netherlands in the last decades, particularly within criminal proceedings. Victims have been granted a number of rights within these proceedings. Well known are the right to file a compensation claim and the right to deliver a victim statement. This legal ‘emancipation’ is rather remarkable in light of the distrustful attitude the Dutch legislator for a long time has had towards victims. The aim of this study was to explore which factors may explain this turnaround. This was done through a systematic and critical review of the literature. In 4 Dutch databases (BJu tijdschriften online, Kluwer navigator, Legal Intelligence en Sdu OpMaat) we searched for relevant publications. To ensure that no other relevant publications were missed, we screened the reference lists of these publications and their authors’ publications lists and entered their titles in Google Scholar to check for relevant citing and related publications. Eventually, twenty-seven publications were included in the literature review. These publications provided 10 different explanations for the legal emancipation of crime victims. However, the large majority of these explanations were not based on historical research and may therefore be unreliable and invalid. More research is needed to confirm or refute the role these factors played in the extension of victims’ legal position.