Conference on Covid-19 and civil justice
News
Jos Hoevenaars joins Vici ‘Affordable Justice’ team
On 1 November 2023, Jos Hoevenaars re-joined Erasmus School of Law after completing a one-year research project at the Dutch Council for the Judiciary which focused on questions of effectiveness of judgments in the Dutch legal system (report available early 2024). Previously, he was part of our ERC ‘Building EU civil justice’ team, where his research focused mainly on (self)representation in court and access to justice in a cross-border context. In 2022, he was the executive project manager for a study commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security and its Research and Documentation Centre (WODC) that looked into the usefulness and necessity of a litigation fund for collective actions in the Netherlands (Dutch report available here, English book forthcoming).
The coming years he will strengthen the Vici ‘Affordable Access to Justice’ team, focusing on costs and funding of collective actions, and he will develop a new line of research in the area of strategic litigation in which he will investigate the collective and representative action field from a legal mobilisation perspective. He will also play a role in the setting up of a European Civil Justice Centre.
Published: May 18, 2020
On the 15th of May, Xandra Kramer participated in an online conference dedicated to Covid-related litigation and judicial and legislative responses. The conference was organised with Catherine Piché (University of Montréal) and 18 speakers from different countries around the globe participated in this online event. Xandra discussed the closing down of the courts in the Netherlands on the 17th of March resulting from the lock-down. After this date, only urgent and written proceedings continued. A new temporary act was put in place to regulate distance hearings and other temporary measures concerning the operation of the courts and the online submission of documents. As of 11th of May, the courts re-opened, however with limitations to physical oral hearings and exclusion of the general public. She also discussed, following an interview with the president of the Rotterdam district court, how the corona crisis has led to boosting technology and innovation and a pragmatic approach of Dutch courts in this respect.