Professional Ethics of Lawyers and Judges
News
Visiting Researcher Zilin Hao
We are currently hosting visiting researcher Zilin Hao, PhD researcher at Wuhan University, in January-June for a six-months research stay. She is working on her PhD thesis (Exclusive jurisdiction for cross-border litigation) and got LLM and LLB in Law (China University of Political Science and Law).
She presents herself: “My research interests focus on the fields of private international law and international civil procedure. Before I came to Rotterdam, I learned a lot from the publications of Prof. Xandra Kramer. Thus, I appreciate Professor Kramer, who integrated me into her research group. During my stay, Xandra Kramer and her team gave me warm welcome and care. Most
importantly, by participating biweekly academic seminar with professional
teammates, I can consider my thesis question from the comparative perspective of
European private international law and civil procedure law in a straight way.
I cherish this rare opportunity for an academic visit and look forward to learning more in the coming months.”
Published: July 11, 2022
On 10 and 11 July, Jos Hoevenaars participated as a speaker at the meeting of the RCSL Working Group of the Comparative Study of the Legal Professions (WGLP) which was held from 10 till 12 July in Coimbra, Portugal. The working group brought together eminent researchers working on various aspects surrounding professional ethics of both judges and lawyers. Unable to travel to Portugal Jos joined the panel on legal ethics remotely to present his research on the impact of the (increasing) possibility for parties to litigate without the guidance of a legal aid provider on Dutch civil procedure in practice. Through interviews with Dutch subdistrict judges he analyses the extent to which self-representation influences the role of the judge. The research shows how judges seek a balance between their role as neutral arbitrator in a dispute and a more active role necessitated by parties not being represented by a legal aid provider. In doing so, they navigate between process and content, and must constantly balance the trade-off between acting more actively to gather sufficient information for a substantive handling and assessment of the case, on the one hand, and safeguarding the limits of party autonomy and their own (perceived) neutrality, on the other.