New Kid on the Blog

Hello, my name is Bas van der Leij. I'm a New Kid on the Jurisdynamics-Blog, so this is my first short post. I'm Lecturer in Criminal Law at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) and a part time judge at the District Court of Groningen. I'm interested in (Dynamic) System Theory and Legal Development (amongst others). In my opinion (Criminal) Law / (Criminal) Procedure can be described as a system in an ongoing development or change. Changes in the system are not necessarily explained by external forces. Some changes or developments may result from internal dynamics. It is said that if anything like a basic developmental mechanism exists, it is the process that takes its output as its new input, producing new output, which it (the system) takes as input, and so on and so on (see Paul van Geert (1994) Dynamic Systems of Development). For instance, I think we can see this mechanism (called iteration) at work in the development of case law. I'm interested in looking at legal development in this way and want to explore this more. At the moment I''m reading up on the subject of Dynamic System Theory and would welcome al kinds of suggestions and perspectives.