Beleid – A Very Dutch Legal Term

Abstract

Beleid is a Dutch term which is hard to translate. In German or French one has to use a whole sentence in order to produce the same meaning, while the English equivalent policy covers only part of its significance. As a legal term in the technical sense it is unique. It is generally used to describe the policy which a (public) body follows. The government, a community, a public transport corporation, the police, the public prosecutor all conduct activities which are legitimated on the ground that they implement law, but at the same time they follow beleid. The phenomenon per se occurs universally in relation to all written law. Legality seldom means simply and implicitly following the letter of statutes and regulations whenever the conditions they specify are met. It always involves additional guidelines of goal-oriented action. It also needs organization, which by its internal priorities and its very set-up entails the selection of those aspects of written law which are to be put into effect. Such implementation infrastructures are not only selective. They also shift the goals of the written legal texts, partly because they pursue their own interests, but also and to a greater extent because they seek more socially adequate and more realistic ends. Legal language usually neglects these practical necessities of implementation in the interest of the predictability of law. (Rechtssicherheit is the German term for the goal which in the continental legal tradition is often given priority over considerations of social equity).