The Netherlands: A No-Nonsense Approach to Civil Procedure Reform
In the Netherlands, significant changes to the procedural regulations and other policy reforms have thoroughly reshaped the legal system over the past decades. Much more attention than before is directed to gathering data and to conducting empirical research in order to assess some of these changes. The role of the judge regarding case management seems to be of greater significance today than in the early 1990s. Judges have the authority to control the progress of lawsuits. It is now common for judges to schedule oral hearings at an early point in time at which the judge will order the parties themselves to appear in court in order to discuss the case. In the Dutch legal system, some preliminary steps have also been taken to promote mediation.
Rechtspleging Civiel en Bestuur 2008 : ontwikkelingen en samenhangen
Om een beeld te kunnen schetsen van de ontwikkelingen in het (maatschappelijk) functioneren van het rechtsbestel op het gebied van civiel en bestuursrecht is behoefte aan beleidsinformatie over de ontwikkelingen in het stelsel van geschilbeslechting in de afgelopen jaren. Er bestaan, onder andere bij het WODC, verschillende monitoren en trendrapportages die informatie geven over de juridische beroepsgroepen, rechtspraak en geschilbeslechting. Doel van de nieuwe ‘Monitor Rechtsbestel’ is de informatie van verschillende monitoren en ander relevant onderzoek te bundelen in een - tweejaarlijks te verschijnen - rapport. De Monitor zal zich vooral richten op het weergeven van trends of nieuwe ontwikkelingen op het terrein van de toegankelijkheid en kwaliteit van procedures en juridische dienstverleners in het rechtsbestel.

In 2007 is een eerste rapport van het WODC verschenen, ‘Geschilprocedures en rechtspraak in cijfers 2005’, waarin gegevens over de jaren 2000-2005 zijn gepresenteerd. De huidige monitor bouwt hierop voort en wordt uitgebreid met gegevens die in voorgaande jaren werden verzameld voor de Trendrapportages van de juridische beroepsgroepen (advocatuur, notariaat, gerechtsdeurwaarderij).
The Origins of the “Theorica Planetarum”
Introduction In medieval universities astronomy was taught in two different contexts. In some places the Faculty of Medicine provided its students with the elements of medical astrology and its astronomical presuppositions to enable them to co-operate with the influence of the stars and determine the auspicious dates for the medical treatment of diseases, or for performing phlebotomy and other hygienic routines. But although this medical interest in astronomy and astrology was responsible for much of the astronomical literature of the Middle Ages, it was neither the original nor the most important stimulus to the study or teaching of astronomy. For before a student was qualified to enter the Faculty of Medicine or any other higher faculty he had to pass through the Faculty of Arts, where astronomy was taught in its own right as one of the four disciplines of the quadrivium and in the wider educational framework of the liberal arts. This was already the case when the first universities grew out of the great schools of the twelfth century under the pressure of a veritable explosion of knowledge in all fields caused by the great wave of translations of scientific texts from the Arabic, and to some extent also from the Greek. Unfortunately we do not know a great deal about this first teaching of astronomy within the universities. The earliest extant statutes of the Faculty of Arts are not specific on this point, with the result that we have to make inferences from other sources of information. Among these the most important are the treatises whose character reveals them to have been textbooks used for the teaching of astronomy in an introductory and elementary way.