ABSTRACT
In 1996 the Czech Union of Judges asked a number of Dutch judges and the first author to contribute to a seminar on judicial ethics in the Czech Republic. The Czech judges were struggling with practical questions of professional ethics. More important for judicial ethics is that development psychologists such as Kohlberg and Piaget have shown, and also set as ideal, that social norms become internalized in the course of a child’s development. The language used is an important ‘marker’ of norms that are meant to be aspirational and norms meant to be minimal. Any judiciary that starts making a code will understand something of its functions, and the problems it should address on a common sense level. The Netherlands is one of the oldest and most stable modern nation-states. This long-term success has been achieved by avoiding political alliances and instead focusing on economic aims, getting rich quietly, focusing on the problems at hand rather than on high principles.
