Talk:Constitution of the Netherlands

Expansion request

The very end of this story says that the Minister of Justice is deciding whether or not a new law is Constitutional. How does this system work? -- Beland 22:57, 4 February 2006 (UTC).

As far as I know there is not official institute which specifically checks the constitutionality of laws. The dutch judicial system lacks judicial review. There are three institutes which can however declare a law 'unconstitutional' and strike it void: first the Raad van State (council of state, a council of experts, which checks the quality of laws) can prevent laws for such reasons, second the Senate is mandated to asses the quality of laws, it also sees itself as the forum in which the constitutionality of laws, but has no official mandate for this, thirdly the European Courts can declare a law incompatible with European Laws.

The current minister of Justice, Donner, was a member of the Council of State before he became a minister, and is a very conscientious person, who will personally take care to make every law he proposes constitutional.

So in short, no official institutes can check whether a law is compatible with the constitution, but a lot of institutes still do so. I hope this explains.

C mon 00:18, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

You are almost right C mon. The Council of State is however not in a position to strike a proposal void. It's 'only' an advisory body, albeit one with a lot of weight. It may point out that a new law is unconstitutional, but it cannot strike it. This situation would in practice probably mean the proposal will never survive both houses of Parliament, but it can not actually be stopped by the Council.--Dengo 20:34, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

POV sentence

In practice, the election is put off until the end of a normal election term, by which time the proposed changes are usually snowed under by the political vagaries of the day.

This does not sound neutral to me. If it's true, it would be a good idea to say something similar in a neutral fashion, by referring to specific elections in which this happened, and quoting critics expressing this sentiment. -- Beland 04:19, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm the author of that line. You have a good point. I have added a more factual sentence instead. – gpvos (talk) 20:18, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Full text

According to Netherlands copyright law, the Constitution and other government works are not protected by copyright. The English translation could be added to Wikisource by copying the text out of the PDF, to make it more reader-friendly. -- Beland 04:19, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Statute of the Kingdom

I rewrote this section and removed the stub-tag. I don't think an article on the Dutch constitution is the place to say much more about the Statute, apart from the legal relation between the two.--Dengo 21:13, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Which is quite significant since the Statute leaves a lot of things to that Constitution (Which is still therefore called the Constitution of the Kingdom of the Netherlands"). Gerard von Hebel (talk) 12:58, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

History

As much as I appreciate all the work User:MWAK has done on the history section so far, I would like to pose the open question whether we all agree on his/her contributions. At first glance, I don't think there will be any problem with the actual content of that section, but I do feel that some discussion may be useful about such questions as 'what do we regard as the first constitution?' or 'which developments are actually useful to this article?' Any thoughts?--Dengo 11:02, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I think his edits are fine. It discusses previous constitutions supplying background, next would be to describe the actual changes in the current constitution. C mon 11:28, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, while pondering these fundamental questions it's good to keep two things in mind:

1. The word "constitution" is not a simple synonym of Dutch Grondwet. So fundamental law treaties and bills of right are to be included.
2. In constitutional theory one of the basic issues is the validation process by which constitutions are legitimised. So historical details about this process are not mere curiosities.

--MWAK 10:17, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

As a historian by education, I would never claim that historical details about anything were 'mere curiosities'. My question focused mainly on the first part of the history section in which several predecessors of the 1815 constitution are dealt with. Since this is the one still in force today (albeit heavily amended in 1848), I was merely considering starting a history of THE Dutch constitution in 1815, rather than the 16th century. However, after careful consideration of your contribution I can see the relevance of the constitutions in the French age. These are essential as the groundwork for the 1815 one. I still have a problem with the one from the 16th century, since the whole idea of basic freedom was developed only slowly over the next 100 years. I'm not going to argue about one sentence here though. As for me: discussion closed.--Dengo 19:29, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Absence of a preamble

The typical terminology of the trias politica is not absent in the Dutch Constitution. The executive power is attributed to the King and the ministers (in cooperation, while the ministers are responsible for the King): article 42. The legislative power is attributed to the executive (i.e. King + ministers) and the States-General combined (article 81). Judgment in civil, administrative and criminal cases is attributed to the judiciary (articles 112 and 113). It is true that the various institutions are not explicitly created in the Constitution, but the powers are attributed to the organs of the State. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.229.158.129 (talk) 14:34, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

The terminology as such is absent; obviously the executive and legislative powers are attributed — but they are not explicitly mentioned as such.--MWAK (talk) 20:52, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Current article

MWAK has spend a lot of time on the article but with some of his additions I agree and with some I don't. I will here list my three major concerns

1. The article is on many issues to broad. For instance it discusses indepth the cabinet formation process. But this is not part of the constitution! And is also discussed indepth on Politics of the Netherlands and Cabinet of the Netherlands. The information there should be shortened and perhaps merged into a separate Formation of the cabinet the Netherlands-article. Likewise I think a lot of the information on the civil rights is too long and should perhaps be merged into, a very short stub of mine, Human rights in the Netherlands. Information on the workings of lower governments should be incorporated into Provincial politics of the Netherlands and Municipal politics of the Netherlands.
2. The article lacks links to other pages. Like above, the current text does not seem to written with the idea that there are other articles on wikipedia.
3. The article is unsourced.

Moreover I have made a list of individual issues I have problems with, which I changed but got reverted without much explanation. Let's discuss them one by one:
A. "no modern party has ever obtained a majority by itself." What is a modern party? are there ancient parties? medieval parties? No political party has ever gained a majority by itself.
B. "As Dutch political parties readily change alliance, and hesitate to commit themselves to a coalition before the elections, a competent King can have a decisive personal influence on what coalition is formed." The Dutch political parties are not organized in alliances. Parties therefore cannot switch alliances. Look up Italian and French politics to see what actual political alliances are. I think the word "alliance" may be should be "allegiance".
C. "Common weal" - it's one word commonweal. Moreover the article does not mention the welfare of the people (Oxford English dictionary's definition) but does mention social security.
D. "Environmental rights" - the article does not mention rights but a duty of government to care for the environment.
E. "House of Orange" vs "Royal House" the article house of orange links to the royal house that matters, the article royal house to royal houses in general

Let's discuss stuff before we revert! - C mon (talk) 21:22, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

These are interesting points. I'll try and answer them:

1. It might seem that the scope of the article is too broad, but only to someone not intimately acquainted with Dutch constitutional law. The process of cabinet formation is part of the unwritten constitutional law. A constitution is not simply a number of written rules; it is the legal framework within such rules function. I've really simply summarised the main textbook about the subject, Koekkoek's (e.a.) de Grondwet, which (like other Dutch constitutional law textbooks) treats the subject quite extensively for the same reason it should be included here: that the written constitutional law can only be understood in relation with the unwritten rules and that the cabinet formation is a central issue within this context.
2. The information about the civil rights (nót the human rights — that's a treaty-related term) is really very limited. It's useless to render the content of the Constitution by simply rephrasing its articles: some minimal explanation should be given. And sometimes that information must be a bit more extensive, as in the case of Art.23, which must be utterly baffling to the average reader :o).
3. Links are alway useful. You've already done a very good job in this respect. But they were not totally absent ;o).
4. I'll give the references. But, as the text is mainly a summarisation of Koekkoek (and Kortmann's Constitutioneel recht), completely sourcing it by in-line citations would be (apart form very time-consuming) of little practical value.
5. With "modern party" I meant to differentiate from the 19th century kiesvereniging. The liberals or the conservatives often had a majority — but they weren't "modern" parties.
6. Yes, perhaps an alliance you switch too easily, is not a real alliance. And of course in a system without real constituencies ties need not be very strict. But "allegiance" isn't right either, as it has a strong connotation of hierarchy.
7. Yes, I tried to be a bit archaic here, having a famous saying by Charles I in mind. But "commonweal" (or welfare of the people) really is what the article is about — be it in an egalitarian interpretation. Social security (sociale zekerheid) is mentioned in subarticle 2, but subarticle 1 doesn't refer to a legal social security system but to generally organising society in such a way that everyone can enjoy some minimal level of wealth.
8. It indeed imposes a duty upon government to secure a good environment. However, this still is a "social right", against which administrative actions can be tested. "Duty" and "right" do not contradict.
9. Yes, but the constitution is of course about the concept "Royal House", not about which particular dynasty happens to provide members for said House. And "House" meaning "dynasty" or "(sometimes) ruling noble family" (as in "House of Orange") is different from "House" meaning a certain organisational complex (as in "Royal House"). E.g Charles II in 1659 was a member of the House of Stuart but not of the Royal House--MWAK (talk) 07:01, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I think we need to compromise on some issues. That means that just repeating our own view points get us very little. And insulting people for not knowing enough about the Dutch constitution does not solve anything either.

Too broad: Let me just start by saying the following: "This page is 82 kilobytes long. It may be appropriate to split this article into smaller, more specific articles. See Wikipedia:Article size." The article is getting huge! Maybe the best way to solve that is by separating articles out and leaving summaries here. Just like politics of the Netherlands. We can do that two ways: 1) by merging the constitutional information with the relevant already existing articles, such as cabinet of the Netherlands, provincial politics of the Netherlands etc. 2) creating separate articles for instance: freedom of education (Netherlands). I think per paragraph we can decide on different tactics, but currently the article is just getting way to long.

Civil rights: see above. The information could be separated out. We can rename human rights in the Netherlands if you want to, but I named it after human rights in the USA, which is about treaty as well as national law.

references: great!

modern party: I think you are getting confused here. The kind of relevant entity in the 1800s you are referring to is a kamerclub (kinda like a fractie) and not a kiesvereniging (kinda like an afdeling). Anyway the term "modern party" seems to be original research.

alliance: okay so it is the wrong term, then let's not squabble about what terms to use, but just describe the situation.

Common weal: The term is still really strange to me. And might even be original research if used like this. How about "Redistributive justice" or "Duty of the government to provide for welfare/an income/redistributive justice". Or just "Welfare State:

Environmental rights: let's stick to the letter of the law, which does not talk about rights. How about: "Duty of the government to protect the environment". Or just "The Environment"

Royal house: do you have a relevant example from Dutch constitutional law?

- C mon (talk) 07:43, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

We are in complete agreement as regards the necessity to compromise, argue our points and avoid insults ;o). From that happy consensus we might tackle the substantial issues:

1. Yes, it's long (I don't know about huge: a law-related article like Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy has 138 kb). But that's simply because I relate the content of the consititution, per article. Now, merging with articles which have a larger (political, historical, sociological etc.) scope is not desirable: the typical legal point of view, the constitutional aspect would be subordinated to that larger scope and a coherent and somewhat adequate treatment of the content of the constitution would no longer be given. Where's the gain in that? Using summary style extensively is possible, but awkward as it would mean creating articles like Chapter 1 of the Dutch Constitution, the name alone of which makes clear that they do not really form subjects that are sufficiently independent. What we could do however, is separate the core of this article from the rest and create a Commentary on the articles of the constitution of the Netherlands of 1983 (the name would be a bit grand; perhaps just Articles of the Constitution of the Netherlands of 1983 is better), which would, when the last chapter is added, be about 68 kb long. We could then replace the core with a summary, with a bit of detail about the relation of the constitution with other laws and treaties.
2. Let's take the example of civil rights: no, your article should not be changed in name. It should give a coherent, as it were multidisciplinary, description of the human rights situation: what demands are made by the treaties, how has the European Court of Human Rights ruled on Dutch and related cases, what changes might the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union bring, what have Dutch and other scientists written about it, what reports have international and Dutch organisations published, what is the official position of the Dutch government etc, etc. And part of that whole should be the safeguards the bill of rights provides. But a technical, point by point, article by article, treatment of Chapter 1 is not needed for such a lemma and would even be rather irrelevant on some points.
3. I was taking more of a "bottom-up" approach: typically Dutch modern party formation in the 19th century is described as a process starting from local kiesverenigingen. A top down approach, from e.g. the kamerclub, would be valid also. But obviously you know all this perfectly well, having dedicated several articles to it? ~:o| With "modern party" I simply meant "party in the modern sense", like a party part of a "modern party system". All kinds of earlier political associations have been called parties.
4. "Commonweal" can be replaced by "welfare of the people". "Duty of the government to ensure sufficient subsistence, inevitably implying some redistribution of wealth" is closer, but a bit long :o). "Redistributive justice" is too philosophical (the Dutch don't read Aristotle) and "Welfare state" too narrow. Welfare in that sense is the subject of subarticle 2. Subarticle 1 might cover measures like promoting full employment by lowering the wage level — hardly typical of the Welfare state.
5. Well, the letter of the law doesn't contain the word "duty" either: the article speaks of "concern". Might this mean the relevant ministers may limit themselves to worrying a lot about the subject ;o)? Texts have no meaning without an interpretation. Legal interpretation tells us that indeed a duty is imposed on government. The writers of the 1983 constitution, commission Cals/Donner, saw the article as also entailing a right. The governments that proposed the law agreed (Art 21 is thus one of the sociale grondrechten) , but, to be fair, thought this was mere verbiage. However, there is no doubt among legal writers that they fooled themselves: such rights can be enforced by appealing on them against administrative action. So Art. 21 both in the formal and the material sense confers a right. It is not simply an instruction norm for government.
6. As regards the Royal House, we must differentiate between a more general use of the term and the strict Dutch legal use, embodied in the Wet lidmaatschap koninklijk huis. In the Dutch use the terms "House of Orange" and "Royal House" are not congruent, not even in their denotation. A perfect example would be Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld who as prince-consort was a member of the Royal House, but not a member of the House of Orange-Nassau. The opposite is also possible, as exemplified by Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau, who since 2002 is no longer part of the Royal House but is still a member of the House of Orange-Nassau (be it now only as a count).

ad 1 & 2: I disagree with your general "let's keep law separate from the rest of wikipedia approach. This is not a legal encyclopedia, but an interdisciplinary encyclopedia. I think the best thing is to write separate articles on freedom of education in the Netherlands, politics of the Dutch provinces etc.

ad 3: I think we can settle on a more precise description in the text.

ad 4: I can live with "welfare of the people" (BTW Aristotle didn't write about redistributive justice...)

ad 5: I think we should settle on environmental protection or something

ad 6: you've convinced me. the best way to solve this is by creating a separate article on the Royal House of the Netherlands.

C mon (talk) 08:52, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, taken as a whole Wikipedia is indeed interdisciplinary. But this does not imply that articles covering a certain subject from the line of approach of a single discipline are invalid. Thus we may have England — yet also Geology of England. Likewise the legal aspect of the, very legal, phenomemenon "Constitution of the Netherlands" is deserving of its own treatment. The reader is told the history of the constitution but may also want to be informed about the content. Perhaps he merely desires a quick summary — and applying the principle of summary style, we might provide it. This would be a very good argument for splitting off the core. But perhaps he wants to be informed of the full content, so we must give a minimal treatment of it, that however, given the length of the constitution will still require a considerable absolute size, though not a prohibitive one. Splitting that core again, will be counterproductive to an effective information transfer and generally not result in articles of sufficient independence.

Of course, the constitution refers to subjects that most certainly are worthy of a separate article, such as "freedom of education in the Netherlands" or "political organisation of the Dutch province". It would be a good thing if each of these existed. But even if they were very complete, when trying to relate the content of the constitution we can't limit ourselves to just referring to such other lemmas: that would do the reader a great disservice, forcing him to painfully assemble what we should have given him in a neat well-arranged summation. And if the other lemmas are indeed complete, the sections of such a summation would be little else but summaries themselves. The constitution after all merely provides the first basis for a further legal elaboration: each constitutional article typically founds a host of lesser laws and regulations justified by delegation, not to mention the case-law.

On the other points we seem to have reached a compromise. And you're right about Aristotle of course...Let's rephrase my point: the Dutch, not even having started on the tenets of distributive justice, in 1983 certainly hadn't read up to Rawls and Dworkin yet :o).--MWAK (talk) 15:42, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Three things:

1. I feel that there is a difference between a summary of the constitution and its interpretation and an article that goes too much into detail. I think one of my problem of the length of the article is that there is a lot of information which not relevant from the perspective of constitution law. If we trim that, we could get closer to a shorter article. That information could be separated out into smaller articles. Two examples: the fact that too politicians want to remove article 1 hasn't penetrated into the interpretation of article 1, I hope; and the fact that platonic schools exists is not part of the constitutional order, but rather an interesting factoid for Freedom of Education in the Netherlands
2. We also agreed on references, you could provide.
3. The history of the constitution part is not as good as the piece on the Dutch wiki. Perhaps that could be translated ...?

C mon (talk) 19:22, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I just removed non-essential remarks (indeed there is little sympathy among legal professionals for a change of Art. 1 :o) and gave the promised references. Expanding and reordering the history part would be nice. But, if the length of the article is a problem, it would only make sense if the core is split off.--MWAK (talk) 06:16, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Terminology

User Tdls has changed "First Chamber" to "Senate" and "Second Chamber" to "House of Representatives". I understand this has the advantage of using concepts that are more commonly used in the English language. However, given that their denotation is unambiguous, I feel that it is superior to use the terminology of the Constitution itself, instead of some interpretation, especially if the equivalence is doubtful: is the First Chamber really a Senate?

Why "General Audit-Office", which is the normal English term, should be replaced by Court of Audit, which is a Belgian/French concept, not a Dutch one, I fail to understand.

An anonymous user has replaced "King" by "monarch"; again this is inferior, because the Constitution itself speaks of a King.--MWAK (talk) 08:40, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I see, the Rekenkamer itself uses this term while presenting itself in English. Embarrassing (to them I mean :o). Should we really stoop to their level? I like to emphasize that such uses do not constitute some "official" terminology.--MWAK (talk) 08:57, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Revision of the constitution

As far as I understand, somebody mixed this section of the Constitution with its last temporary section. In the section "Revision of the constitution" one has to write the same that is now in the section "Amending the Constitution". --D.M. from Ukraine (talk) 15:22, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Use of language

From earlier discussions on this Talk Page I understand that this article came about mainly as a summary and translation of a Dutch academic text regarding the constitution. That's fine in and of itself, but someone really has to go through this article and review the use of language (which is rather bad, I'm sorry to say). Right now the article consists partially of "Dutch with English words" and on the whole reads like it was written for legal students.

I've made some changes already, but much more work is needed. -- BenTels (talk) 21:44, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles

I somewhat updated the Statute of the Kingdom section to reflect the changes within the kingdom. These (and possibly other sections) should be reviewed by someone with more knowledge about this subject to check if it's correct. Styath (talk) 20:52, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

How is it a constitution?

If laws can't be tested against the constitution, then how is it a constitution at all? That violates the whole principal of "fundamental law that can't be broken" if there is no system to make sure it isn't broken. 174.58.138.200 (talk) 20:15, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Because it describes how the laws come about. The fact that laws can't be tested against the constitution by a judge (lawmakers can and have to do it however and are sworn in on an oath to that effect). is a feature of the constitution. Many constitutions throughout the world have similar features. Mostly however to give treaties with a foreign power that right. Gerard von Hebel (talk) 13:13, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

It's not a real constitution, there is just no better word to translate the word grondwet. They have been trying to change this for decades but the ruling parties decided they wanted an EU constitution. Which ironically is not called a grondwet, while it technically is. 188.206.70.159 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 11:37, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Needs update: King no longer involved in forming government

I'll flag this article for being outdated. The King is no longer involved in forming a new government, at least not to the extent that he used to be. The information from the webiste of the Dutch national government clearly contradicts the article. (http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/kabinetsformatie/formatie-nieuw-kabinet)

I have no legal expertise, so someone else will have to rewrite the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mostlyniceties (talk • contribs) 18:10, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Nothing in the Constitution changed. The King still appoints the ministers by Royal command. Gerard von Hebel (talk) 21:02, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

History too concise, 'content' section too long and smells of OR

Compared with the article on the German Wikipedia, the history section is too short and awkwardly written. And how were the last changes made in 2005, when the proposed revision was rejected by the Senate? The content section smells of Original Research and seems overly long. For instance, the section on article 23 goes in on the deep end about the peculiarities of the Dutch education system, without citing any sources for its analysis. Oskkar (talk) 18:49, 10 February 2021 (UTC)