This brief editorial considers the significance of citizenship; the dangers of an exclusionary attitude towards non-citizens; the cosmopolitan response to such dangers, which denies any intrinsic significance to citizenship; and an alternative response that preserves the significance of citizenship as a matter of belonging to a genuine political community, but that also takes seriously both the need to welcome new citizens, and the status of non-citizens as guests.

Originally, Article 12 of the Dutch Code of Criminal Procedure was intended as a correction mechanism for the prosecution monopoly of the Public Prosecution Service. In a later stage, the private interest of complainants (or victims) became more central. This article argues that a third function now emerges: a valve function for social dissatisfaction. The social conflicts that underly the proceedings in these socially sensitive cases give rise to new democratic legitimacy problems. However, an appropriate normative framework that captures these new democratic demands has not yet been constructed. To this end, this article provides an alternative democratic vocabulary in order to bridge the gap between empirical and normative notions of legitimacy. By means of a historical and normative analysis, it will be argued that Article 12 has an important democratic potential within the characteristically autonomous Dutch system of criminal law.

De doctrine van de trias politica is een van de meest bekende en meest besproken concepten in de literatuur over staatsinrichting. Toch kan het sterk verschillen welke betekenis er in het wetenschappelijk discours aan de trias politica wordt gegeven en hoe macht en machtsuitoefening binnen deze kaders kunnen worden gekanaliseerd en gereguleerd. In deze multidisciplinaire verkenning van dit concept worden drie betekenissen van ‘trias politica’ onderscheiden: (1) de trias als doctrine, (2) de trias als positiefrechtelijke praktijk en (3) de trias als een set regels van het politieke spel. Deze drie betekenissen weerspiegelen elk een eigen component in het onderzoek naar de trias, respectievelijk: normatief, beschrijvend en verklarend. In deze bijdrage wordt gekeken naar de mogelijkheden om in interdisciplinair onderzoek de drie betekenissen van de trias politica zorgvuldig te gebruiken en te combineren.

This contribution engages the perspectival character of globalization processes as these play out in law and politics. In an interview which brings together a group of Japanese scholars and Hans Lindahl, the participants identify and discuss how Lindahl’s phenomenologically inspired theory of (global) legal ordering might shed light on the similarities and differences which inform Japanese and Western perspectives when theorizing globalization processes.

Interviews with legal scholars or professionals are not just there for our amusement. Why, then, would interviews be worthy of ‘scholarly’ attention and, perhaps even more important, deserve a place in legal journals? A question that has barely begun to be examined – if at all. This article forms a bold plea for more attention to this still largely undefined but fascinating genre and source. It argues that the questions and answers as published in interviews extend the boundaries of a text by clarifying and illuminating parts of its contents. In addition, the genre of the interview could help illuminate interesting processes of scholarly research and debate. More to the point: interviews could serve as a source that presents regular knowledge about the questions asked across the world. In this way, interviews give insight in legal knowledge canons. They offer researchers an opportunity to join an emerging body of scholarship on the spatial foundations of legal thinking.

Del Mar’s conception of legal inquiry sheds light on aspects of judicial decision-­making, in particular their use of some argument-types. In turn, the deeper insight into these argumentative practices helps us better understand how legal arguments put forward in authoritatively decided cases relate to future cases, beyond the strict limits of a doctrine of binding precedent. In this contribution I motivate these claims (i) by unpacking the Del Mar’s account of legal inquiry, (ii) by demonstrating that one common and important judicial argumentative practice (the judicial use of infer­ences to the best legal explanation) cannot be fully captured within the limits set out by a doctrine of binding precedent and, finally, (iii) by showing how Del Mar’s notion of legal inquiry helps us make sense of that particular argumentative practice.

This contribution explores Maksymilian Del Mar’s Artefacts of Legal Inquiry by posing several questions and an objection. First, I celebrate the role that Del Mar awards for hesitation and experimentation in adjudication, but I question, at the same time, whether it can backfire regarding the accountability to which judges and legislators are subjected. Next, I wonder about the author’s position with regards to the dangers of affective participation in the law, as well as regarding the obstacles to true listening in adjudication. Then, I address Del Mar’s proposal to use of ‘figures’ in legal inquiry, and ask whether that can somehow imply that we, in turn, approach the defendants’ character in problematic ways. Finally, this contribution ends with an objection to Del Mar’s approach to the cognitive theory of language, and specifically with respect to metaphors, in legal studies.

This comment situates the ideal of adjudication that Del Mar develops in Artefacts of Legal Inquiry within the reality of justice systems being in a ‘sorry state’; courts are generally considered too slow, too expensive and too complicated to provide meaningful access to justice to all citizens.
In reaction to this justice gap, one development that is hailed by the access to justice movement is digitalisation. The use of legal technology is promoted for its promise to deliver cheaper, faster, and better justice.
As Del Mar’s ideal of adjudication emphasises the value of embodied, collective, imaginative, text-based practices of inquiry among judges and other legal professionals involved, this comment also addresses the question to what extent digitalisation poses a threat to this ideal.
Rather than offering a clear-cut answer, this comment is meant as an encouragement to Del Mar and other legal theorists to take heed of the justice gap and digitalisation in the justice system as part and parcel of their theories about adjudication.

This article explores the insights of Maksymilian Del Mar’s monograph Artefacts of Legal Inquiry from the perspective of a scholar of early Tudor literature and drama. It traces the origins of much of the early interlude drama in the culture of argumentation and ‘case putting’ originating in the Inns of Court of early modern London, and suggests the broad overlap between the rhetorical foundations of Tudor common law and those of the interlude drama of John Heywood and his contemporaries, drawing out the ways in which both deploy comedic tropes and personae.

This contribution is a response to four comments on Artefacts of Legal Inquiry (2020) by Adriana Alfaro Altamirano, Iris van Domselaar, Claudio Michelon, and Greg Walker. It discusses four themes by way of response to each commentator: conversing, listening, feeling, and hesitating.

In the past ten years the scientific discourse on artificial intelligence (AI) has thrived. What are the challenges that AI poses to the law? If something goes wrong, who should be blamed? In the pursuit of answers to these questions, legal scholars – as the authors of the reviewed books – jumped on the AI bandwagon, joining philosophers, ethicists, computer scientists.
The essay highlights recurring traits of this discussion on AI and law. Its purpose is to present two paramount examples of the common versus civil law approach to solving conflicts, such as the one represented by the impact of AI technologies on our society.