Jo Ritzen and Aalt Willem Heringa
Biographies
Jo Ritzen is Professor at the Maastricht School of Governance/MERIT/UNU. He retired in February 2011 from the Presidency of Maastricht University. During his 8 year tenure Maastricht University became one of the most international research universities worldwide (almost 50% students from abroad) renowned for its problem based learning approach in all degree courses. Before assuming the Presidency of Maastricht University Mr. Ritzen was Vice President of the World Bank's Development Economics Department. He assumed this position in August 1999. In July 2001 he assumed the position Vice President of the World Bank's Human Development Network, which advises the institution and its client countries on innovative approaches to improving health, education and social protection. Mr. Ritzen joined the Bank as Special Adviser to the Human Development Network in September 1998. Prior to coming to the Bank, he was Minister of Education, Culture, and Science of The Netherlands, one of the longest-serving Ministers of Education in the world. During his term, he enacted a series of major reforms throughout the Dutch education system. Mr. Ritzen has also made significant contributions to agencies such as UNESCO and OECD, especially in the field of education and social cohesion. Prior to his appointment as Minister in 1989, Mr. Ritzen held academic appointments with Nijmegen University and Erasmus University in The Netherlands, and the University of California-Berkeley and the Robert M. LaFollette Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States. Mr. Ritzen obtained a master's degree in physical engineering in 1970 from the University of Technology in Delft, and a PhD in economics in 1977 from Erasmus University in Rotterdam. His dissertation on education, economic growth, and income distribution earned him the Winkler Prins prize.
Aalt Willem Heringa is Professor of Comparative constitutional and administrative law at Maatricht University. He graduated from the Rijksuniversiteit Leiden in 1978, where he worked until 1987 as an assistant professor. He was a visiting researcher at the Centre of European Governmental Studies of the University of Edinburgh (1986) and at the European Research Center of the Harvard Law School (1996). In 1989 he completed his Ph.D. thesis 'Sociale Grondrechten' (Social Rights). He has been working at Maastricht University, the Faculty of Law, since 1987; he was appointed full professor of comparative constitutional and administrative law in 1995. He is an author and editor of numerous books and articles on Dutch Constitutional law, the European Convention of Human Rights, the European Social Charter, comparative constitutional law, US constitutional law and Human Rights. He has served for many years as a Member of the Netherlands Commission on Equal Treatment. He is one of the founding editors of het NJCM Bulletin (the Dutch Human Rights Journal); of EHRC (European Human Rights Cases) and of EVRM Rechtspraak & Commentaar (a loose leaf commentary on the European Convention of Human Rights). He served on the supervisory board of Hiil and on the Supervisory Board of LVO (a major Limburg based school board for secondary education; from 1999 until 2010). He is since 2010, a member of the supervisory board of Orbis Medical Center. Since 2003 he is Dean of the Law Faculty and member of the Mangement Team of Maastricht University. Since 2006 he is president of the Council of Law School Deans and of the Association of Law Faculties. Furthermore, he is a member of the Board of the International Association of Law Schools (IALS), academic director of Maastricht University’s Campus Brussels, and a substitute judge in the District Court of Roermond. He also sits on the Board of the China-EU School of Law (CESL). In the Faculty of Law of Maastricht University he was one of the founders of the LLM program, Magister Iuris Communis (master in comparative, European and international law, which was the predecessor of the present master on International and European Economic Law) and of the original and innovative European Law School LLB and LLM: the only programme to train European lawyers in an English taught program in European law, international law and comparative law. Recently he was a member of groups of experts accrediting law schools in Estonia (2006 and 2008) and assessing the organisation of teaching in Helsinki University (2008). His most recent book is Constitutions Compared (Intersentia 2009, second edition), An Introduction to Comparative Constitutional Law, with co-author Philipp Kiiver.
Abstract
An Imminent Implosion of Legal Systems?
Ritzen and Heringa focus on two questions. The first is what might or will happen when (as seems to be the case) legal texts and judgments explode in numbers. Can it be argued or foreseen that there is a link between confidence in law and the rule of law and the exponential growth in law-making? This question is therefore related to the interplay between law and its social, economic, and political context. Instead of building trust and providing predictability, the explosion of legislation, accelerated by the internationalisation of law, might threaten social trust and predictability. The exponential growth of legislation is caused by social risk aversion in combination “with a political system which is bound to overpromise in order to gain political support.” A major challenge for both international and national legislators therefore is to exercise restraint with the creation of new legislation. Ritzen and Heringa propose “to take a substantial minimum period before the adopted new legislation is implemented or even made.” However, although the authors are inclined to assume that there is a link, or at least a possible turning point, where the abundance of laws could lead to a decline of trust in the legal order, they did not find concrete empirical proof or data to substantiate that present day, complex law-making societies show a decline in trust. Other factors are at play such as the budget deficit, for instance. However, the issue seems worth considering and researching further.
