Philip Langbroek

Ombudsman’s Assessments of Public Administration Conduct: Between Legal and Good Administration Norms

Th e proliferation of new designs in solving administrative disputes is a further development in the relation between public law and administration. Th ese “new” alternatives endeavour to compete with the traditional models of pre-trial objection proceedings and trials at administrative tribunals, administrative or ordinary courts. Th at brings about a slow but gradual change of the role of traditional dispute resolution (especially courts) and alternative dispute resolution (for example ombudsmen1, mediation etc.) in cases against the administration. Where courts and tribunals have a prescribed way of public dispute resolution via litigation procedures in public, in mediation, confl ict resolutions takes place behind closed doors, in private.2 In this article, we deal only with “public services ombudsmen”. Ombudsmen that have been created in order to deal with private manners are not covered here. We compare here the way in which ombudsmen in the Netherlands and in England and Wales position normative standards to assess administrative behaviour in relation to the law and to jurisprudence. We have chosen those ombudsmen, because they have in common that they cannot make legally binding decisions and both

Law and Public Administration: A Love–Hate Relationship?

Lawyers and Public Administrators have grown apart in practice and in academia. In this chapter we explore our observation that administrative lawyers have focused on the judicial perspective and on legal accountabilities for outcomes, whereas the public have taken on a predominantly (instrumental?) perspective on organizational processes and measurable results. We argue that the unwillingness of both sides to communicate and cooperate is potentially harmful from citizens’ perspective, because law and public administration alike try to influence human behavior. Citizen participation, transparency in public decision-making and the realization of good governance norms are subjects that may be at the basis for future exchanges and cooperation, both in academia and in public administration.

The Dutch System of Dispute Resolution in Administrative Law

Legal protection against the government is one of the most important features of administrative procedure in the Netherlands. Part of that system is the Alternative Dispute Resolution mechanisms of administrative pretrial proceedings and Ombudsmen. This system is linked with a system of administrative first instance and secondary appeal courts. In that context, we describe some basic features of Dutch administrative law.

Court Management: A Young Field of Public Management

Court management as a field of research was the result of several factors, for example the debate on New Public Management (NPM) or the activities of the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ). The Permanent Study Group (PSG) XVIII justice and court administration began its activities in 2012. The participants have so far been researchers and practitioners from courts and from judicial administrations. This mix has proved to be interesting and there was a lot of successful knowledge sharing. The strategy for PSG XVIII will be to continue to combine forces with established groups and networks in Europe and beyond.

Written Justifications of Judgments of Utrecht District Court : An Empirical Study on the Relationship between Case Characteristics and Text Characteristics

The primary function of written judgments is to legitimize the decision of the court. In the Netherlands, the judiciary perceives a gap between itself and the general public. Laypeople seem to understand little of the work of the courts. An important question is: For whom do judges write their judgments? This study presumes that the various intended audiences (parties, professional lawyers, other judges, the general public) can be deduced from the characteristics of justification texts: text complexity, juridical intensity, and moral considerations. The purpose of this study is to explain differences in text characteristics by differences in legal area and various case characteristics. We used the text characteristics of 958 cases filed at Utrecht District Court in 2009–2010. The results show that conflict and management characteristics are far more important predictors of text characteristics than “legal area” (trade, administrative, criminal, small claims, family). Also, conflict characteristics are more important to explain text differences than case management aspects and legal area. So much, that there seems to be an homogeneous justification text culture over the borders of legal areas. Also, justification texts seem to be written for professional lawyers primarily.

Special issue of the Utrecht Law Review Adjudication in a globalizing context

P.Langbroek@law.uu.nl). 1 Bas de Gaay Fortman, in: ‘“Adventurous” judgments, a comparative exploration into human rights as a moral-political force in judicial law development’, 2006 Utrecht Law Review 2, pp. 22-43, also hinted at this development. 2 The European Network Councils for the Judiciary, see http://www.encj.net/ 3 Association of the Councils of State and of the Supreme Administrative Jurisdictions of the European Union, see http://www.juradmin.eu/en/ home_en.html 4 For a comparison between the development of court administration in Eastern Europe and in the USA, see Markus B. Zimmer, ‘Judicial Independence in Central and East Europe: the Institutional Context’ 2006 Tulsa Journal of Comparative & International Law, pp. 53-85.