There is a growing European trend toward the adoption of consent-based definitions of rape. A number of countries recently reformed their rape law or are in the process of doing so, thus raising questions about the way consent is understood as well as the motivations that are provided for such reforms. This article focuses on the Netherlands where the reform process is ongoing. It provides a close-reading of the preparatory documents and finds that (1) legislators initially motivated the reform to ‘lower the threshold’ for the prosecution, but the frame of the threshold recedes to the background as the objective of the reform shifts and the definition of consent widens; (2) the shift of ‘social norm’ regarding unwanted sex is both the main justification and key goal of legal reform, and (3) the new law introduces negligent crime for rape and sexual assault and discussion centres on mental state.

In the Netherlands, a pretrial forensic mental health report (FMHR) can be requested to inform the court whether a mental disorder was present at the time of the offense, whether this disorder affected behaviour and decision-making at the time of the offense, how this disorder may affect future behaviour and advise on possible treatment measures. However, a substantial number of defendants refuse to cooperate with FMHRs to avoid being sentenced to a forensic psychiatric hospital for at least two years (TBS). With an experimental vignette study among law and criminology students (N = 355), we tested whether TBS is less likely for an uncooperative defendant than for a cooperative defendant. Second, we tested whether an uncooperative defendant receives a longer prison sentence when TBS is not imposed. Results showed that refusing to cooperate reduces the likelihood of a TBS measure and that this is compensated by a slightly longer prison sentence. Extending international research, we explored whether type of disorder and recidivism risk in an FMHR had an effect on sentencing. Results show that schizophrenia led to TBS more often than antisocial personality disorder regardless of recidivism risk. Type of disorder or recidivism risk did not substantially affect the prison sentence regardless of whether TBS had been imposed. Recommendations for research and practice are discussed.

There is a growing interest in judicial communication – i.e. the interaction of judges with parties in court and the communicative quality of (written) judicial decisions. The aim of our research was to find out more about the role of these communicative aspects, specifically of specific text elements in judicial decisions, in outcome justice judgments of – different types of – litigating parties.
Respondents in this research were three types of parties involved in administrative court proceedings: citizens, their lawyers, and the officials that represent the government. When receiving the written judicial decision in their case, they also got our questionnaire.
All types of litigants in our research perceived a higher level of outcome fairness when the decision was favorable for them. Apart from that, the perceived outcome fairness also depended on the respondents’ trust in judges and their judgments about the judicial communication during the court hearing (interpersonal justice) and in the written court decision (informational justice).
For citizens, outcome favorability did not influence the effect of these factors on perceived outcome fairness. In this respect a clear difference between non-professionals and professionals was found. For both types of professionals involved (the lawyers and the government representatives), trust in judges was more important with low outcome favorability. Only for government officials interpersonal justice was more important in perceived outcome fairness if the outcome was unfavorable.
This means that good interaction with the judge during the court hearing and an understandable and convincing court decision always matter for citizens, regardless of the outcome. At the same time, citizens are the least satisfied litigants when it comes to judicial communication. Also their general trust in judges is lower. As legitimacy of the judiciary is an important goal of judicial communication, the Dutch judiciary is rightly investing in better communication with (litigating) citizens.