In deze bijdrage staat de activiteit van bewijzen in strafzaken centraal. Betoogd wordt dat de vigerende rationalistische opvatting van strafrechtelijk bewijzen eraan voorbij gaat dat het bewijzen zich allereerst voltrekt op een vóór-reflectief niveau. Het primaire blikveld van de mens is namelijk niet het objectiverende kennen, zoals in de rationele bewijstheorieën wordt voorondersteld, maar de praktische relatie tot de wereld. In dit kader wordt eerst de filosofische achtergrond van de rationalistische bewijsopvatting in kaart gebracht, in het bijzonder de invloed van Aristoteles en Descartes. Vervolgens worden de daaruit voortkomende bevindingen aan de hand van ideeën en inzichten die zijn ontleend aan de existentiële fenomenologie kritisch gewaardeerd. Dit leidt tot de uiteenzetting van een hermeneutische opvatting van strafrechtelijk bewijzen.

The central question in this article is whether an empirical-legal approach of victimhood and victim rights could offer a sufficient basis for proposals of legal reform of the legal system. In this article, we choose a normative-critical approach and raise some objections to the way in which part of such research is currently taking place in the Netherlands, on the basis of two examples of research in this field, one dealing with compelled apologies as a possible remedy within civil procedural law and the other with the victim’s right to be heard within the criminal legal procedure. In both cases, we argue, the strong focus on the measurable needs of victims can lead to a relatively instrumental view of the legal system. The legal system must then increasingly be tailored to the wishes and needs of victims. Within this legal-empirical, victim-oriented approach, there is little regard for the general normative principles of our present legal system, in which an equal and respectful treatment of each human being as a free and responsible legal subject is a central value. We argue that results of empirical-legal research should not too easily or too quickly be translated into proposals for legal reform, but first become part of a hermeneutical discussion about norms and legal principles, specific to the normative quality of legal science itself.

Huls has argued that the idea that judges are truth-finders is misleading. In the first part of the paper I put his claim to the test. Against Huls I argue that the aim of procedures in criminal lawsuits is not only to guarantee binding decisions but also to help to find the truth. In the second part of the paper I investigate the role expert-witnesses play in truth-finding. Cleiren and Loth have argued that experts fail to understand the differences between legal and scientific ways of truth-finding. It turns out that Cleiren does not offer an argument for her claim and that Loth’s claim fails too, since it confuses coherence as truth and coherence as epistemic justification. I conclude that legal scholars, rather than experts, fail to understand the nature of legal and scientific truth-finding.

In their book De slapende rechter (The sleeping judge) Dutch legal psychologists W.A. Wagenaar, H. Israëls and P.J. van Koppen claim that Dutch judges wrongfully convict suspects in certain cases because these judges generally fail to understand the way hypothetical reasoning works in relation to empirical evidence. This article argues that Wagenaar, Israëls and Van Koppen are basically right in their claim that reasoning on evidence in criminal cases should have the form of hypothetical reasoning. However, they fail to apply this form of reasoning to their own analysis of Dutch criminal cases and the causes of wrongful convictions. Therefore, their conclusion that a form of revision of convictions outside of the criminal law system should be introduced does not meet their own methodological standards.