Hi, I'm Paul Verschoor, and together with my colleague Andreas Roepstorff,
we are speaking in this episode with Ernst Numa about collaboration in the judicial system.
Ernst began his career as an attorney and received his first judicial appointment in 1983.
In 2000, he was appointed to the Supreme Court of the Netherlands and served
as its vice-president from 2011 until his recent retirement.
Ernst, just to kick off the discussion, could you give us a short description
of your professional trajectory that brought you in that position of being vice
president of the national court?
Yes, well, I started, I worked two years.
I was in a position at university, And then I started, I was 26 at the time, as a lawyer,
attorney in The Hague, which I did for about six and a half years, I think.
And then I was appointed in the district court of The Hague,
where I did both civil and criminal cases.
After a couple of years, I think five years, we moved to Curacao,
where I served four years, during four years, as a member of the Court of Appeal
of the Netherlands, Antilles, as it was called at the time.
Then I returned to The Hague, back to the district court where I became vice president,
until in 2000 I was called to the Supreme Court,
where I served exactly 20 years until the end of the month.
Turned 70 where for legal reasons your appointment ends and you are being retired.
Right. So that's roughly what I did professionally.
Okay. So now, how would you define collaboration? So what is it?
Jack, it is a very, very general term, of course, notion.
Cooperation is what people do to
gain certain goals which they are either willing or bound to strive for.
And probably every way they try to reach that goal without blocking talking
to each other could be called cooperation,
but cooperation can of course be very intense or less.
You can cooperate probably with having different goals as long as your interests are the same,
but generally I would say there is a common goal you have to reach,
where you need cooperation.
Okay, so you emphasize the issue of goals, common goals, but then in your professional
experience would you look at these processes of collaboration in different domains?
Yeah, there is cooperation in several levels.
First, in individual cases, the lawyers have completely adversary goals, mostly.
The goal of the court, of a judge, is to reach a fair outcome, a fair decision,
applying the law, whatever that may be at the time.
But in order to reach that goal, there must be even between the two advisory
parties and the judge some cooperation, because you have to go through the procedure together.
Notwithstanding the fact that the procedure respects the contrary interests of the parties,
But you have to cooperate in a certain way under the supervision of the judge
who has to make decisions, if necessary,
about the procedure itself.
But that results in a certain form of cooperation.
And then you have the cooperation between the judges to reach their decision.
There can be quite different views on the situation, but,
finally, there is only one decision which will be the formal one, the one who is brought.
Who is the official decision and binding the parties.
But before you reach it, you have to cooperate,
you have to listen to each other as judges, and you have to find a way to make
a decision whether the judge or the judges who are in in fact,
opposed to it, can live with.
That's, at least in the Supreme Court, an ambition we always have.
And then there is a quite different form of cooperation.
That's between the different powers in the state known as the trias politica.
You have the legislation power, the executive power, and the judiciary power.
Unlike in the United States, where the powers are divided between,
institutions in the Netherlands, and I think in all Europe,
you can, there is a distribution of tasks, of functions, but not strictly between the powers.
The government has sometimes legislation powers, The legislation sometimes has
some governmental powers.
The judges have their own responsibility, but in a certain way,
work together, cooperate with the legislation as well.
I can give you an example. For example, there was a couple of years ago a new
legislation on, yeah, now I don't know the English word, anti-crack.
Ah, anti-squatting.
Yeah, well, that was a new legislation come into force.
And then the judge, it was the Supreme Court, I wasn't involved in that,
but I said, yeah, this legislation is partly not valid because,
I don't know the details, but there was a way of.
Ontruimen, evacuate, is that evacuate? Yeah, evacuate.
Yeah, evacuate a house, an occupied house, without the previous order of the court.
So, the Supreme Court said that's not legal in view of fundamental rights and the Constitution.
And then the legislator listened to that and changed the legislation in this point.
And then on the second round, the court said, well, now it's okay.
That's a form of cooperation as well.
Right. You described now a very multi-layered system of creation, as you call it,
and also earlier indicated that shared goals is critical in making these kinds
of cooperative processes work.
But now in every layer of this system, the goals and the goal setting might
not always be consistent.
They might not always be transparent either.
But then still, how do all these layers hang together?
Because this would suggest there is still some meta-goal that all these layers serve.
If you want the lawyer and his client or her client, and in the end,
also the Supreme Court and its judges.
How would you see then such a meta-level goal of that system?
Well, in the examples I mentioned, there is one common goal that is the rule of law.
What we call in Dutch de rechtsstaat,
the notion that everything that is… every power in the state which is effective
should be according to the law.
In order to have that in a proper way, there is this division between the powers, the trias politica.
They influence each other, and they must respect each other,
and they might hate each other and have, on a short time, or in a certain view, different goals.
But the common goal is to maintain the rule of law.
But that is also hinting then to this third collaborative process I mentioned
earlier because you, in some sense, are also collaborating or cooperating over
time, over centuries even,
in building what you call the rule of law because that is a human-created system, right?
So do you also see that as a responsibility, as a goal that certainly the Supreme Court serves?
It's like interpreting a whole tradition of law and also fine-tuning that for future application.
So would you see that as a cooperative process as well within which you would operate?
Yeah, but it's certainly not the courts only, and on top of them,
the Supreme Court, or even you
might mention as well the European Court on Human Rights and the EU Court,
but that's not a matter of just the courts.
The situation should not be that the government and or the legislation do whatever
they want and the court has to correct them.
No, the legislation and the executive power have to obey the rule of law as well.
Well, the thing is only that the judge is finally
the power to say loud and clear that something might be illegal or forbidden or not correct,
but it's the responsibility of all these powers.
From their own point of view, and with their own interests, to safeguard the rule of law.
What I'm trying to understand is how should we look at this rule of law, right?
On the one hand, you could look at it dogmatically and say, look,
there's this rule of law and we follow it.
Alternatively, you could have a position where you say, well,
actually, it's up to us in the Supreme Court to interpret and advance that rule
of law with a few in the future.
That's a very different goal, right? Because then it's also about how to change
the rule of law in order to make it more sustainable on the long run.
Well, it's not just the courts.
Where does come the law, which is the law of the rule of law?
Where comes the law from?
That's the legislation, the legislator, but it's also the interstate treaties and, for example,
very important is the European Court on Human Rights.
That is not the Dutch legislature as such.
That's a, well, what it is, it's a cooperation between states,
who formulate rules every state should obey to,
rules which can be infringed by judges as well.
There have been decisions from the Supreme Court of every country which have been found.
Not complying with the European human rights treaty.
Treaty, and that's not only a matter of the judges, of the government,
but also judges can infringe human rights.
So that's an important source of the rule of law. And then every country's constitution
is a very important source of law.
And all these sources of law together form the law which must be obeyed by every power in the state.
This is extremely interesting. Interesting. So I would like just to go a few steps back,
because you said that in the Supreme Court, it was seen as part of your work
or maybe even critical to the work,
also to come up with a solution that the party that was losing could somehow live with.
Now, how does that space of agency unfold itself?
Because it seems that it's not just a matter of imposing here or following the
rule of law, but also doing it in such a way that there is a path forward for
the people you are working with.
And that would put the judge, I think, in a very important role for facilitating
future, if not collaboration, then certainly not animosity.
Yeah, what I was aiming at to give a decision, the loser, the minority can live, was calling judges.
But the same is for the party who is losing a case.
We always think, I'm not so sure about the truth of it,
but we pretend that formulating good grounds for your decision can be a comfort to the party who loses,
that he has been hurt and that he gets reasons why his point of view is not accepted.
That is, well, as I just said, we present that as a factor.
I'm not sure that's always the case, but that's one of the important reasons
that judicial decisions must be motivated.
And that's...
But also on the level of the calling judges, in the Supreme Court,
we have mostly panels of five.
And sometimes you have a minority of one or two who don't agree with the decision of the majority.
In Holland, we don't have a system of dissenting opinions.
So, you are not allowed to bring out what your opinion is,
but there can be a fierce opposition against a certain new path that the jurisprudence has taken.
Then, in our Supreme Court, we always find it important.
We do. I'm not sure that I don't know how that is in other countries,
but we try to find a formulation of what you, the new decision you give, the new rule you give,
that the minority can live with.
That the minority can say, well, I don't agree, but if you put it this way,
I can live with it because the dangers are less than otherwise might be the case or something.
So that's another level where the cooperation is directed also to the feelings
of the minority or the loser.
But, Aaron, within that context, it actually means that also accepting a loss
is also done within a codex, where you also know, if I don't accept a loss,
it has certain consequences, certain courses of action I can take with a certain
cost associated with that.
That, while if I accept this within the codex that exists, I also in some sense
accept that the cost of continuing is higher than just giving in.
So that raises the question to what extent within the legal system and the rule
of law actually implicitly there are incentives and suggestions of how this
cooperation should take place.
Yes, but don't forget the rule of law is not a fixed thing.
I mean, the law, the rule is fixed, but the law is developing all the time.
The law is developed by treaties. The law is developed by decisions of the European
Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
The law is developed by the national legislator, sometimes by the government, and by the judges.
So, this is a continuous confrontation of certain powers,
krachten.
Sometimes it goes a little to the left or sometimes it goes a little to the right or up or down.
It's a result of the mentality of an era as well.
We accept things now broadly and even gladly, which a century ago wouldn't have been accepted at all.
And all these.
Opinions and all these conventions influence the law, the broad law, and the more concrete,
legislation which is ruling us all.
I understand, but I was shooting for something a bit more specific in the sense
that within the system of law,
there are also very clear guidelines defined of how you are supposed to cooperate
with each other as actors in that system and with the system.
So, I would like to understand what these specific rules, implicit or explicit,
are. For instance, you already know that you could go, let's say,
you can contest a decision of a lower court.
And that, in some sense, suggests, look, I can still cooperate within the broader
system of law, but I don't need to accept this decision at this point in time.
I can go to the next level in the court system. So that's an example of how
you build guidelines inside the jurisprudence and your legal system to make people cooperate.
But there will be more examples of that.
Yeah, well, that's, of course, important. Well, I once heard someone say, or write,
that one of the essentials of democracy is that no decision ever is definite.
Everything you decide, you can, in future, recall, review. view.
So the decision of a judge, like the day before yesterday, this ruling on Shell,
for example, that's a legal opinion.
It's not just an opinion, but it's in force at this moment.
But the court of appeal can have another opinion and come with another decision.
And then And the Supreme Court, again, can review that.
So that's essential for a democracy that nothing...
Yeah, of course, at a certain point, there is a definite decision, but...
After the Supreme Court has given a decision, very often the legislature can
overrule that with a new law.
Because the judge is only giving a decision in the framework of the law as it is.
And the law can change because that's democracy.
And of course, since you want to have the best decisions there are,
the legislation process is very, in fact, it takes much time.
The government is bind by all kinds of rules rules, and restrictions,
and the decision of the judge can be reviewed as well.
Right. But that would mean that this whole system is floating on a shared belief
that that system is effective.
So that would mean that, certainly in the Supreme Court, you have to balance
multiple goals, because that would mean what is just, in some sense,
given our legal framework, work, but also how do we maintain credibility?
And these two goals are not necessarily always aligned. No, that's correct.
Therefore, being a judge or a Supreme Court justice is not always very simple.
Because sometimes you must say, well, the law is the law, be it that way,
but we can't comply here, we have to find a way out.
A good example is, that was not the Supreme Court, but the,
Raad van State, the highest court in administrative law matters,
in the affair of what you call in Holland the Toeslagenaffaire,
where it was about allowances for parents for payment for the...
It was child support. Yeah, child support for access, especially the kindergarten,
where they put the children at the daytime when the parents were working.
There was a very strict legislation that there was no possibility if you did
anything wrong, you had to pay it,
all the the complete amount back which you ever received and um there was no
way for the for the for the for the government to uh to pardon uh to say well
okay that's uh leave it by.
Repaying this and and i'm that was all in the legislation loud and clear no
no such things And then finally,
the judges said, well, yes, but here the consequence is absurd and unfair,
and even, well, not complying with the rule of law.
Yes, sometimes legislation is not complying with higher principles,
and then it's up to the judge to correct it.
So that these things do something and another problem is that sometimes the the.
The the the the I should give you a word yeah the the stand of the technique
the state The state of the art,
the state of the legal art is sometimes developed in some decades or sometimes.
It must be nuanced,
it must be fine-tuned, it must be changed even, because developments in the society require that,
have a need for new rules.
And if the legislature doesn't offer them, then the judge sometimes has to do it.
We saw that in the Netherlands already in the 60s and 70s with the.
Jurisprudence, the legislation. No, there was no legislation,
but the jurisprudence case law on strikes.
In the industry, there was no rule at all about strikes at the time.
And there was no, what we have now, the European social, how to call it, social hunt fest.
There was nothing. So, it was the judge who had to find a way to find conditions
under which a strike was allowed.
Another example is euthanasia, another example is abortion.
For a long period, there was no legislation at all, but there was a social need for new rules.
And then it was the judiciary who had to find out.
And very often you see that the legislation then happy that they don't have
to figure it out themselves. Take it out.
This is a very interesting case, Ernst, because you said earlier that in a democratic
society, in a sense, every rule, every decision has at some point to potentially to be unmade.
We could almost see the democratic society as being the collaborative society par excellence.
And I think what you're describing here is a situation where the overarching
goal is no longer the rule of law per se, but there is something that seems
to be, in a sense, more important or not formulated yet in the rule of law.
That one needs to adhere to in order to move forward.
So there is a rule of law. And what would define that?
How do you navigate in those situations where the rule of law isn't there or
somehow seems to be unfitting for that situation?
Because it suggested the idea that at the end of the day, it's the rule of law
that decides. Yeah. But the first step.
You might have to have a two-formal conception of the rule of law, of the law.
The law is not the written legislation found in the publications of the legislator,
but the law is much broader.
That's the complete set of legal notions and legal principles.
On the matter of strikes, I mentioned,
if everybody or a majority in the society feels that there are circumstances
that you are allowed to have a strike in a company,
in the industry, But the
legislator is not able to make a revision of the law which gives the conditions
under which a strike is possible.
At the time it was discussed in Parliament for years, a new law on strikes.
People were convinced that something must happen, must change,
because traditionally strikes were forbidden as such until the 60s.
And then there was a
legal feeling that
that's not correct there are there are situations that a
strike is very much justified but the
legislation couldn't do it then you you
can't say that the rule of law implies that that strikes
are not um allowed that's that's
not true it it then has to be the judge because there's nobody else then to
to to find a way to find and that's what happened then the the the the the The
courts didn't say under this and this situations,
when the interests are this or this, you are allowed to strike.
No, they formulated procedures that if you want to strike, you must at least...
Give notice and you have a majority of the workers or whatever.
They formulated principles of procedure which gave a certain guarantee that strikes were
serious and well considered without telling when a strike or for what kind of
interest a strike was allowed.
Now that could then, the courts could do so, but it was all in the framework of the rule of law.
I think the instance of a strike is very interesting because you could see the
strike as a situation where the collaboration breaks down, at least temporarily, right?
And we are very interested in what happens when collaboration breaks down.
And here it seems to be a matter of, in a sense, creating a framework that allows
the collaboration to break down in such a way that it can actually be restarted or be moved forward.
And it would be very interesting to hear something, and I think the law and
the juridical system seems to be critically involved in,
so to say, buffering those situations where collaboration sort of ends and yet it has to restart.
And what do you do in that middle period? How do you avoid it to go completely
way higher while still respecting the positions of the different people?
And it seems to me that the position that you describe here is critically important
to create that space for collaboration to both break down and continue underneath
it. And that would be very interesting for us to understand.
Well, it depends. In the first place, to start with, you can say that every case,
every procedure between two civilians has to do with the failure of cooperation.
But mostly, you can restore the cooperation by saying, well,
the law tells you that you are wrong and you have to comply with Article 24 of this code.
Vote, but when it's on a more level state level.
The judge is not a magician,
but what you can do,
and the example of strikes give so,
So you can give the powers a way to give a path that they should walk
in order to find a way of coexist.
If that is the best thing that can be reached at the time.
Coexistence is,
not cooperating, but not the contrary either. That's between the two probably.
But with that, what you're saying, Arjen, is hidden in what's called a rule
of law is actually not so much a singular rule of law,
but a system in which coordination among many parties can take place that is rational,
and just, however we define that.
But in that process, like in your example of the strike,
you said, and rightly so, that it was the,
judiciary arm of the trias politica who influenced the change in the legal system
so that strikes could be accommodated.
But now, in principle, in the trios politica, this step has to be taken by the
legislature, parliament.
So did that also happen then? Was this like a hint to parliament to change legislation?
Or that's where just the developing jurisprudence is enough to maintain a credible rule of law?
Well, I think what happened here was that the courts didn't feel that they were
able, or at least not entitled,
to tell under which circumstances which interests may be served by a strike.
And there was no legislation at all. So they formulated the procedural rules to follow.
And if you would follow them, then in general, the strike was not forbidden.
Nobody said it was justified, but it is not forbidden.
And then what came then was,
if my memory is well, Well, it's that the national legislator didn't find a solution.
There is still today no law on strikes, but there is a European treaty,
het Europees Sociaal Handvest.
Handvest in English. Hoe heet het? Handvest van de Verenigde Naties.
Will it be a code? No, it's more than that.
I'm not sure. Let me look it up. You can cut this out.
That's a nice word for it.
Chart.
Charter. It's a European social chart.
That this legislation tell under which circumstances which interests may be
served by a strike and what is allowed and what is not allowed.
That came to existence and ever since when there are cases, trials about strikes,
this is applied applied.
But this all was in the framework of the rule of law.
Because the unions, when
they lost their case or the companies,
the employers, when they lost their case, they complied with the decisions of the court.
And that's essential for the working, the.
The working of the machine of a society, and therefore the rule of law is essential
for a good working society.
In Belarus, there is no rule of law. There is just power.
And this society isn't working.
So, just one follow-up on this question here, because what you describe is the
juridical system and the judge, not just as someone who becomes an arbiter,
but also as someone who can facilitate a path forward.
And in a sense, set a path in motion that you can't control,
but that potentially allows things to go in other directions.
And I'm very interested in that process as well. So could you say a little bit
about both the intellectual but also the, in a sense, emotional stages one goes
through when you have to follow such a process?
What is it that happens when you're trying to open up such a space and then seeing what happens?
Yeah, well, what you see is that judges always can be very emotional about certain legal questions.
That's possible, but most judges
are of the type who don't allow their emotions to guide them too much.
You always work in an illegal framework.
Also, if there is no clear legislation, no, not a law where you can find in
Article 48 the answer on your question,
you work in the framework of legislation of different sources.
But, of course, believe me, in the framework of that legal system,
you can give quite different,
decisions if you want to. So there is always,
very often, an aspect of the possibilities that the law gives me. What do I want?
And what do I want? Why?
In order to have a system which works or which is fair or can be executed.
Execute it.
Is it possible? Is it fair?
Is it not too expensive for certain parties?
Is everybody surviving with this? and all kinds of things like that.
Is it compatible with what we decide on another field?
Isn't it strange when we decide here this and here that, and now that?
You want to keep a system, to uphold a system, because otherwise everybody is getting get lost.
But now, that's some of the questions you can be forced to answer first.
But, Arendt, you now listed a number of criteria that might come forward in
such a discussion, and you mentioned, for instance, fairness.
I mentioned? You mentioned fairness. You said fairness is fair.
But that seems to be a tremendously subjective notion, isn't it?
Does that bring you in this emotional space that Andreas was talking about?
But it's not always the fairness, your personal idea of fairness,
but on a more general level, that you give protection to victims of traffic accidents,
pedestrians against cars.
Mars, there is an idea of fairness that the weak party is protected.
That's a matter of fairness as well, and that's not so subjective.
Well, of course, it would relate to also your social-cultural context.
Certainly, certainly. Certainly, but judges function in a certain cultural context.
Of course, they have to.
Yeah, but now, did you ever experience situations in your career that you felt
this is the moment that the cooperation is breaking down in the system?
That you felt that you really hit the wall, this is a breakdown,
and what would be the cause of such a breakdown?
Well, I cannot say that I have experienced in my, what is it,
37 years of being a member of the judiciary,
that I have experienced a situation like that.
But, of course, there was one during the occupation in World War II.
What should the judge do? What should the Supreme Court do confronted with what
happened then with the Nazis implying,
rules which were not only inhuman, but also contrary to the Land-Oorlog-Reglement,
some international treaties about that,
should you accept it?
Should you remain in your position or should you step down?
And then if you don't step down, do you have to accept it unconditionally or
not? What happened in Holland?
That was a very bad outcome because the Supreme Court at the time decided that the legislation,
of the occupier, the court couldn't review them to international treaties,
they had not the authority, so accepted them as the law, which was very much criticized,
at that time and after the war even more.
But those.
Situations like that are very, very difficult, very difficult.
Where should you put up a barrier?
That's the point of no return, and we won't pass that point.
That's difficult. You showed that in that period, you show fragility of the
rule of law, that actually very easily could be switched around.
So, then post the Second World War, were new laws adopted in order to prevent
that from happening? Yes.
Both on the level of treaty, for example, the European Treaty on Human Rights,
Convention on Human Rights.
But also in our own constitution,
we have the unique situation
that a Dutch court is
not entitled to review a legislation of the national legislation to the own
constitution. We're not.
We are not. Judges are not.
I'm not in judgment, so I shouldn't say we. A judge is not allowed to say,
well, this legislation by the Regering and the Tweede Kamer is not complying
with Article 6 of the Dutch constitution.
Simply not simply not entitled to say so but if.
The judge would be correct in that assessment what are the options well the options are the options,
are thank god are there because one of the measures taken after the world war
was that in the constitution is this possibility of reviewing is possible,
allowed when it comes to international treaty.
So Dutch legislation can be reviewed,
in view of the European Treaty on Human Rights, or the European Union Charter of Human Rights.
The European Union has its own charter now, more or less the same as the European Convention.
So, that gives the judge an instrument the court during the Second World War didn't have.
But now, I could imagine that would keep you up at night if you're a Supreme
Court judge, because now you are anchoring the coherence of your own legal system
into an even more complex operative process,
which is the developing European Union, with its own fragilities.
So how solid is that link then? And this layer of legislations we have,
national, European, international, is sometimes very complicated. Okay.
But as far as the European Convention and the European Charter are concerned,
there are judges to interpret those rules.
There is the European Court of Appeal of the European Union in Luxembourg,
who is the final authority to explain what the European rules really say,
and we have the court in Strasbourg to say what the German convention says.
Right. It means. But now, Aaron, so given that you're retired,
you can do whatever you want.
So if now it would become your project to bring down the rule of law,
how would you go about doing that?
Breaking down the rule of law? Yeah.
Well, I haven't thought of that yet. But you, you of anyone should know how
to do that. So how would you do it?
Well, the rule of law is, although many rulings of judges'
decisions can be executed by bailiffs and you name it, essential for the rule of law is,
at the end, the trust of the people in the system.
So it's a very important task of a judge to do everything to maintain,
uphold the trust of the people, not every single individual,
but the people in general in the system, because otherwise the system collapses.
But then in the face of this onslaught of industrial scale disinformation,
how much chance does the system really have?
Yeah, good question. I don't know. I don't know.
My hope is that people more and more, when the time develops,
time goes on, realize what misinformation is and how to find it.
But this is a threat to the rule of law, certainly. Certainly.
But I would have expected... Through democracy as well. Absolutely.
I would have expected that you would say something like that also legal decisions
should be better explained and propagated on social networks that are also abused for disinformation.
There's a place of information out there, but it seems the legal system stays
stuck in very old-fashioned traditions of communication and trust-building without
responding to the world around it?
Would that be a fair criticism or do you think they are responding?
Well, no, I do not agree with your opinion that it's old-fashioned.
The judiciary is giving good efforts to explain decisions,
to discuss them, not by individual judges.
That's not very simple, but to have them discussed also on the regular TV channels and in the media.
Media, the Supreme Court has a Twitter account and we make press releases for
important decisions and so do other courts.
This Shell decision of the day before yesterday had it as well, a press release.
You must explain what you
do although sometimes when you
look at the case law of the Supreme Court there are many many decisions who
are very technical about bankruptcy law for example very difficult to explain plain, but.
You can always tell what the importance of a certain ruling is and what is said and very important,
what is not said in a certain decision.
And I think that the judiciary understands very well that it's important for
the trust in the judges to do so.
Do you think that now the preceding period, the COVID-19 period,
also of confinement, of emergency law, are there important lessons in this period
for this aspect of cooperation that we have been discussing?
Keep your head calm, be as open as you can be.
And don't accept everything from everybody.
Okay. That's how I am. But now, would you believe, so we discussed rule of law,
which is an abstract concept, right? It's not something we can touch.
It's an evolving concept with lots of contextual elements to it.
But do you believe that humans are able to have a sustainable cooperation under
this notion of rule of law?
Or would you predict, look, it's just a matter of time before it will break
down again, as it did 75 years ago or 80 years ago during the Second World War,
or now in other countries, also in Europe?
The rule of law and democracy as a other side of the same metal is very vulnerable
very very vulnerable and.
It's I think it's an illusion to think that what we hear talking only about
Western Europe be very careful only Western Europe, that is forever.
No, I'm afraid it's not.
It can be... 80 years ago, we have seen how quickly it can be completely overthrown.
It won't disappear forever, but it's vulnerable.
There is no automatism that it comes back, that it returns.
If you would have this magic wand to change one thing about humans in order
to make them more constructive contributors to this kind of property,
what would the one thing be you would change in humans as we are today?
Good memory.
All right. That's the night I want to end on. Thank you very much for this.
That was great. Okay. Thank you very much.
What's actually interesting, we speak about collaboration, and you speak of
cooperation, also because in Holland, collaboration has a very specific… Yeah,
that's working together with the enemy. Exactly.
Oh yeah, my English is not very good as you've said.
I'm sensitive to this as well, but where did that differentiation come from?
Because I know if we speak about constructive collaboration in Holland,
we would never use that word collaboration.
There is not such a collaboration in Dutch, specifically what happened during World War II.
Working together with the occupying.
And otherwise, we speak of cooperation, samenwerking. Exactly.
I'm not sure. Of course, I'm not a native speaker, but I don't think in English
you would make that differentiation. Collaboration is a much more neutral connotation,
as my Danish colleague will confirm.
And I think we have the same distinction in Danish, actually.
So we would also talk of a collaborator, someone who worked with the occupation
during the Second World War.
Right. And the word collaborator, we use samarbeider, which is like you're a samverker.
So in that sense, they're interconnected. But now there's another issue,
Ernst, that we should think about.
It's the role of humans in the whole process.
Because, for instance, there's this famous case of they followed the judgments
of Israeli judges over the day.
And at what time of day they would give what kind of decisions.
And that is not uniformly distributed. Like they gave much more severe punishments
just before lunch than after lunch.
Yeah, I know. Yeah, there are many researchers on that, I think, can be correct.
For example, also, how is a
judge influenced by the fact that he has a bad relation with his partner?
Or stomach ache more do you ever when you were in chamber with the Supreme Court
would you sometimes say look okay let's discuss this that's another point in
the day or let's do this tomorrow when everybody is rested this happens,
but mostly because you reach a point that you don't get any progress let's bring
it back next week because
we want to rethink it or exchange some papers on this.
And sometimes you might say, listen, this is going to be,
we don't get any progress, let's have lunch now. Yeah.
Yes. Yes, but not on 10 o'clock in the morning.
So did our questions help you to formulate your thinking about cooperation?
Or did we miss certain questions? Did we miss things that you feel are really
critical to understand?
No, no, I don't think so. It's always good to see the system from different
points of view, from different entries.
And this was another one because it was not so much about the brain.
The neural rule of law doesn't exist.
Maybe it does exist. I will convince you otherwise. Just give me some time.
After lunch. I will convince you after lunch. Okay.
Okay, Erik, so really, thank you very much. This was great.
Hi, you listened to one of our podcasts in the series on collaboration produced
by the Ernst Trommel Forum and the Conversion Science Network.
You can find more episodes on our website.