Principles of Dutch law
What is ‘law’ anyway?
To understand the law, you first have to approach the law as a lawyer would, and this, of course, from the perspective of a civil law system, since the private law of the Netherlands is grafted upon Roman-Germanic law. The law consists of nothing more then a large number of rules of behaviour (or rules of conduct). The law, in other words, is just a set of appointments between all people ordering how to behave with regard to what they consider to be correct and fair. In the past people made these rules themselves. That today is no longer possible. For this reason the people of a society have transferred this competence to the government, which establishes and maintains these rules for them. In a modern democracy the people can only elect once in a few years the members of Parliament, the Municipality Council and other public bodies. These members together influence the acting and organisation of the government. The various institutions of the government decide, each on their own legal and geographical territory, which rules are issued, how they work in practice and how they are or have to be interpreted in the case of a dispute. Legislation, implementation and jurisdiction are these days an exclusive task of the government. The government is the only institute in society that is allowed to use violence to enforce the compliance with its rules. This violence expresses itself in imposing a fine or a prison sentence, that sometimes even can lead to the death of the one who has broken a rule. No other person is allowed to use violence to get his way. The people of a country are submitted to the rules of the government because they have agreed upon this themselves. It’s the only way to prevent chaos and to impede that the strongest and most aggressive persons can take ‘the law’ into their own hands. Other criteria than random violence must ascertain whether someone is damaged in his interests and, because of this, has the right to claim a certain behaviour from another person. These criteria are retrieved in the law, which takes into account everybody’s interest and the interest of the society as a whole. The starting point of the law is always what is reasonable and fair, given all circumstances.
The law as a collection of rules of behaviour
The law exists of a large number of binding appointments that have to be observed by everyone. Those appointments have been laid down in laws. They regulate how persons must behave mutually and what they can expect from each other, for example with respect to their property or to what other persons may or may not do. A rule of law is a right or duty that is recognised as such by law. This means that the right or duty finds its basis in law, so that the government can enforce the compliance with it, if necessary with the assistance of judicial authorities and the police. With this, the rules of law distinguish themselves from other rules of conduct, which for example result from decorum, religion or morality.
