Rob Jagtenberg

‘Shadow of the Law’ or ‘Shadow of the Settlement’: Experiences with the Dutch Act on Collective Settlement of Mass Damage (WCAM)

Public and private justice may not be such mutually exclusive concepts as commonly viewed. Public court judgments may co-determine private settlements, but also conversely, private settlements may co-determine court judgments. The latter phenomenon can be found particularly in mass disputes leading to collective settlements that receive broad media coverage. This contribution analyses the practice in the Netherlands, where such collective settlements can even be endorsed by the courts under the Act on Collective Settlement of Mass Damage, or the WCAM Act. Individual parties that decline such a settlement and prefer to pursue their case in court may nevertheless be confronted with such a private settlement to which they themselves are not a party. The contribution rounds off with a non-exhaustive stocktaking of salient pros and cons of negotiated settlement and law enforcement, respectively.

Private Justice in the Domain of Family Law: The Place of Family Group Conferences Within the Range of ADR Methods

In this contribution, the success of family mediation and collaborative practices across Europe will be briefly touched upon, but the focus will be on a less known method (or rather a decision-making model): ‘family group conferences’. The concept of family group conferences originated in New Zealand in 1989; less than 15 years later the proliferation of the concept had led to the adoption of such conferences in over 30 countries worldwide. This contribution analyses how referrals to family group conferences have been organized and regulated in three of those jurisdictions, New Zealand, England and Wales and the Netherlands. Among the issues to be dealt with are: the problems that crop up in the (judicial) assessment of requests for referrals, the nature of ‘a right to direct’ one’s own family affairs and the legal status of ‘plans’ concluded during a family group conference. The analysis ends with a preliminary assessment of the value added by this specific ADR variety, while further longitudinal, empirical research by the authors is in progress.

Mediation/bemiddeling in de rechtspraak binnen Europa

Er zijn de afgelopen jaren nogal wat boeken en artikelen gepubliceerd waarin ont‐ wikkelingen op het gebied van mediation/bemiddeling vanuit een vergelijkend Europees perspectief werden geanalyseerd. Dat is ook begrijpelijk, gezien de voor‐ trekkersrol die de Europese Unie en de Raad van Europa op dit gebied gedurende langere tijd hebben gespeeld.1 Zonder ook maar enige aanspraak op volledigheid te maken, kan gewezen worden op de recente Europese/internationale naslagwerken die over mediation en ADR in het algemeen zijn verschenen onder redactie van Steffek en collega’s, van Espugles Mota en collega’s, van Brenneur en GEMME, en van Schonewille en Schonewille.2 Eerdere vergelijkende studies werden uitgebracht door onder andere Martin-Casals en collega’s, door CEDR, door Alexander, en door Cadiet en collega’s.3 Nog eerder zelfs, in de jaren tachtig, zijn al aanzetten gegeven tot ver‐ gelijking van ADR-figuren door Blankenburg en Taniguchi, en door Kötz en Ottenhof.4 Deze belangrijke studies hebben de contouren van het moderne mediationlandschap (en vaak ook de procesrechtelijke omgeving, voor zover rele‐ vant) in kaart gebracht. Daarbij ging begrijpelijkerwijze de aandacht vooral uit naar het aspect van regulering – door bijvoorbeeld wetgeving of gedragscodes – en naar achterliggende politieke discussies en beleidsstukken. Cijfers over het daadwerkelijk gebruik van mediation komt men soms ook in deze studies tegen, maar niet overal is het empirisch onderzoek even vergevorderd.

Mediation: A Desirable Case Management Tool for the Courts?

Building on empirical data from various countries relating to court-referred mediation, and based on Dutch comparative research, this chapter invites a wider perspective for reflecting critically on what procedural law experts know – and do not know – about the popular ‘demand’ for public and private justice. Across jurisdictions, authorities appear increasingly inclined to prescribe mediation mandatorily, but all the more striking is the lack of any evidence-based framework for fundamentally assessing different conflict resolution strategies. Ingredients and pitfalls to reckon with in such a framework are discussed, including implications for judicial policy-making.