Exploring Lawyer–Client Interaction

Personal injury victims involved in compensation processes have a worse recovery than those not involved in compensation processes. One predictor for worse recovery is lawyer engagement. As some people argue that this negative relation between lawyer engagement and recovery may be explained by lawyers’ attitude and communications to clients, it seems important to investigate lawyer–client interaction. Although procedural justice and therapeutic jurisprudence had previously discussed aspects relevant for lawyer–client interaction, the client’s perspective has been rather ignored and only few empirical studies have been conducted. In this qualitative study, 21 traffic accident victims were interviewed about their experiences with their lawyer. Five desirable characteristics for lawyers were identified: communication, empathy, decisiveness, independence, and expertise. Communication and empathy corresponded with aspects already discussed in literature, whereas decisiveness, independence and expertise had been addressed only marginally. Further qualitative and quantitative research is necessary to establish preferable lawyer characteristics and to investigate what would improve the well-being of personal injury victims during the claims settlement process.     

Can Money Symbolize Acknowledgment? How Victims’ Relatives Perceive Monetary Awards for Their Emotional Harm

Legal systems differ markedly on how they treat the emotional harm suffered by close family members of crime or accident victims. This paper reports the results of two empirical studies examining how citizens whose child, partner, or parent was killed or seriously injured as a result of violent crime or tort (secondary victims) perceive a monetary award for their own non-economic harm relating to the death or injury of their loved one. The objective of our research was to test the Dutch legislator's assumption that a (modest) monetary award for secondary victims' emotional harm can have a meaningful symbolic value by providing recognition and satisfaction. Until then, no compensation was available for such harm under Dutch law. In addition, we examined whether victims' relatives preferred standardization or individuation in determining the amount of the award, how they evaluated the amount, and the manner in which such awards might be offered. In a first quantitative survey study conducted in the Netherlands, 726 secondary victims were asked for their evaluations of such awards for the emotional harm they suffered as a result of the death or injury of their family member. We also asked our representative sample about their actual experience of the legal process in order to put their evaluations of such awards into context. In a second qualitative study, conducted in Belgium, interviews were held with 14 secondary victims who had actually received an award for their own emotional harm under Belgian law (study 2). Results suggest that secondary victims regard an award for emotional harm as a positive gesture and may interpret it as helping to satisfy relatives' psychological concerns by seeing it, for example, as an acknowledgment of loss and responsibility. Overall findings suggest that victims' relatives may be seeking acknowledgement of their emotional losses and the norm violation.     

Free Movement of Goods and Property Law

Although usually considered a national competence, there is an effect of internal market law on property law. When a property right is validly created in one Member State and the object on which it rests is moved to another Member State, an internal market dimension arises. Such has been the case in the ECJ's Krantz decision 25 years ago, dealing with the question on whether the rules allowing a seizure of goods owned by someone else in another Member State and leading to a potential loss of right is in conformity with EU law. More than 25 years have passed and our thinking about the internal market as well as the free movement case‐law has changed significantly. A re‐examination of this decision leads to a different conclusion: the refusal to recognise property rights validly created in another Member State violates the free movement of goods under Article 34 TFEU.     

Recodifying the Law: A Metalinguistic Inquiry into the Recodification of Belgian Law Between 2014–2019

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique - Legal scholars attribute a great deal of importance to the linguistic dimension behind...     

Article 345 TFEU (ex Article 295 EC), Its Meanings and Interpretations

Research that has been conducted over the last decades shows that neither the scope of application nor the exact meaning of Article 345 TFEU (ex Article 295 EC) is clear from its wording. This article seeks to clarify its meaning through analysis of the drafting of the Article as well as the use of it by the EU's institutions and by the Member States. Article 345 TFEU, formerly Article 295 EC and, before that, Article 222 EEC, is an Article that limits, but not prevents, the application of the TFEU Treaty as a whole to the way in which rules of a Member State deal with the right of ownership of undertakings. The conclusion can be drawn that Article 345 TFEU only concerns the private or public ownership of undertakings, with which the Community shall not concern itself and which can thus be regulated by the Member States themselves. Most importantly, the Article does not concern the content of the right of ownership, nor the objects of a right of ownership. It does therefore not form an obstacle to the development of a European property law.