How to shift blame for the childcare benefits affair? In the aftermath of the childcare benefits affair, elected officials, parliamentarians, public officials and the judiciary engaged in blame games to deal with, shift, and minimize their own role in the affair. In this podcast, Koen Migchelbrink provides a reconstruction of the childcare benefits affair and analyzes how politicians, administrators and the judiciary played the blame game based on the paper he wrote with Sandra van Thiel.

In recent years, there have been multiple 'system failures' in the domain of automated social security enforcement across welfare states. The Dutch childcare benefits scandal is an especially alarming example, among other reasons because of the scope of systemic weaknesses in the rule of law system (Rechtsstaat). As part of a broader investigation into system-level risks in the digital welfare state, Maarten Bouwmeester examines the (mal)functioning of rule of law control mechanisms in the childcare benefits scandal.

During the first 6 weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic the hearings of (urgent) family cases continued with the use of telephones, Skype or in hybrid format. This created all kinds of participation challenges. Anne Janssen examines to what extent litigants were able to effectively participate during these hearings. To do so she applies McKeever’s remote justice framework, the so-called ‘ladder of legal participation’ to these specific litigants.

In Belgium, the Central Solvency Register (RegSol) was launched within the commercial courts in 2017. Lisa Pelssers, together with Christophe Dubois researched how RegSol was designed and developed within the commercial courts and the impact it had on the working context of its stakeholders. They conclude that without mobilizing and involving court practitioners in the design, development and implementation of the tool, its capacity to increase access to and transparency of justice will remain problematic and controversial.

The COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on everyone in a way nobody could have predicted and the judicial system was no exception. Marieke Dubelaar, together with María Bruquetas-Callejo and Karen Geerstema, analysed the role of the lawyer in criminal law, immigration detention law and asylum law in the context of digitalisation measures during the COVID-19 lockdowns in the Netherlands.