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Smits, Jan M. --- "The Netherlands" [2006] ELECD 196; in Smits, M. Jan (ed), "Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law

Editor(s): Smits, M. Jan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845420130

Section: Chapter 45

Section Title: The Netherlands

Author(s): Smits, Jan M.

Number of pages: 4

Extract:

45 The Netherlands
Jan M. Smits


1 Introduction
The Netherlands (Nederland) is one of the three countries within the
Kingdom of the Netherlands (the other two are Aruba and the Dutch
Antilles). There is no doubt that its legal system can be qualified as a civil
law system as it has codified its major parts of private law and criminal
law in codes and meets all other requirements usually attributed to civil
law systems (cf. Zweigert and Kötz, 1998, pp. 63ff.). Usually, Dutch law is
located somewhere in between the French and German legal family,
although in practice it seems to approach the German legal family much
more. This is for example apparent from the new Dutch Civil Code of
1992, this code has a general part and a (rather abstract) way of drafting
that reminds the reader much more of the German than of the French
code.
The only official national language is Dutch: all statutes and case law are
in this language. The language to be used in all court proceedings is Dutch
as well. Only in the (northern) province of Friesland is it allowed to make
use of Frisian in the courts and in administrative matters, although this
happens only rarely in practice.
In so far as Dutch law plays a special role in the debate on comparative
law, this is usually associated with its position as a small country. The idea
then is that smaller countries do not have to play the politics of power ...