Talk:Constitution of the Netherlands

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[edit] Expansion request

 Please help improve this article or section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (January 2007)

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 Eerste Kamer of Parliament 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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.--MWAK (talk) 20:52, 20 April 2008 (UTC)