Family breakdown and the ‘Welfare Child’ in 19th and 20th century Britain

This article traces new cycles of interest in past children as distinct from past childhood. Recent work highlighting that a conceptualisation of childhood existed even in periods with few written records closes the chapter begun by Philippe Ariès in 1960. Instead, there has been a new surge of interest in children on the edges of family life, as well as children in similarly liminal positions between the worlds of adults and children: runaways, delinquents and orphans. Several themes in the literature are identified, based on the conflicting ideas of ‘body/mind’, ‘victim/threat’, ‘needs/rights’. It is noted that researchers are using more imaginative ways of reaching the lived experience of children than the family or institutional framework, and that an increasing link is drawn between historical and modern concerns such as child abuse and the care of ‘at risk’ children.     

The Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and Judgments: The Way Forward

This article analyses the proposed Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and Judgments, which has been the subject of lengthy and ongoing negotiations. The issues that continue to divide the parties centre on differences between approaches to jurisdiction broadly similar to those used in Europe, and the approach used in the United States. The most comprehensive draft of the Hague Convention starts from a European approach, but makes a number of concessions to the US approach. The United States has rejected this draft, and the parties appear to have accepted this rejection and are now discussing whether a narrower convention can be drafted upon which the parties can reach consensus.
The article argues that the broad draft convention was a sound one, that it made all of the concessions to the US approach that were warranted, and that the goal of harmonising world approaches to jurisdiction in civil cases would be better promoted by adopting the broader convention, if necessary without the participation of the United States.     

The Draft Hague Judgments Convention: Some Perspectives from Arbitration

Netherlands International Law Review -     

The role of the wedding place. Community context and marital timing in nineteenth and early twentieth century Netherlands

This study investigates how community characteristics influenced the timing of marriage of men and women in nineteenth and early twentieth century Netherlands on the basis of a large scale database consisting of marriage certificates covering five provinces of the Netherlands between 1840 and 1922. The results show the significance of religious context for understanding marriage timing in the nineteenth century. Living in a predominantly Catholic community resulted in a later marriage for both men and women, while living in a community that was dominated by Orthodox Protestants resulted in an earlier marriage, particularly for men. In addition, residence in a municipality with a high mobility, a large population size and a high birth rate speeded up marriage timing among both men and women. The results indicate that religious restraint and the urbanization and openness of places are, next to parental social class, of vast importance for understanding marriage timing. As our study only addressed those who married, future research will have to show whether the same mechanisms were at work for those that experienced permanent celibacy.     

Forensic medicine in The Netherlands

In this paper a review is given of the evolution of the Dutch Forensic Medical Association (Forensisch Medisch Genootschap, FMG): post-graduate education and the position of the police surgeon today in the Dutch legal and medical society. In just a couple of years forensic medicine has grown into a respected form of social health with worldwide contacts.     

Quantitative criminology in The Netherlands

This article briefly describes quantitative criminology in The Netherlands since the seventies. Dutch quantitative criminologists have been active in most fields of the discipline of criminology: research has been done on the etiology of crime and, in relation to this, the self-report methodology. A number of victimization surveys have been executed, and in relation to this, attention was given to fear of crime, victims in the judicial system, and situational approaches to crime. There has been research on policy evaluation, sentencing, and differential treatment in the criminal justice system, and alternative sanctions. Recently three major international studies have been coordinated by Dutch criminologists: an international self-report study, an international victim survey of households, and an international survey of victimization among businesses. In this article we describe the first two studies and briefly compare some of their features. Overall, it appears that Dutch quantitative criminology is embedded in the international mainstream of criminology and, in general, has been strongly related to policy concerns.     

Netherlands Insolvency Law: The Netherlands Bankruptcy Act and the Most Important Legal Concepts

Netherlands International Law Review -     

The impact of education on the demographic life course: The family reproduction process of literates and illiterates in the Netherlands at the end of the nineteenth century

A widely held assumption is that the decline of illiteracy had a notable impact on the demographic transition in western Europe in the nineteenth century. Literates, it is said, were more open to innovation and were better equipped to control their environment and their destiny. The article examines this hypothesis by looking into the family reproduction process of literates and illiterates who lived in the town of Eindhoven between 1850 and 1900. Using the concept of the life course, the article looks at differences in age at marriage, fertility, and infant and child mortality, and finds that in each category of literacy a certain form of demographic behavior prevailed.     

Non-voluntary and involuntary euthanasia in The Netherlands: Dutch perspectives

During the summer of 1999, twenty-eight interviews with some of the leading authorities on euthanasia policy were conducted in the Netherlands. They were asked about cases of non-voluntary (when patients are incompetent) and involuntary euthanasia (when patients are competent and made no request to die). This study reports the main findings, showing that most respondents are quite complacent with regard to breaches of the guideline that require the patient's consent as a prerequisite to performance of euthanasia.     

Editorial: From Kyoto to The Hague: European Perspectives on Making the Kyoto Protocol Work

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics -