PROFESSOR MIES WESTERVELD

Mies Westerveld (1953) is professor Social Legal Aid and senior researcher labour law at the University of Amsterdam. She is also a member of the Senate of the Dutch Parliament. Within the Senate she is the spokeswoman on legislation in the Justice Department (penal law, antidiscrimination law, legal protection and antiterrorist legislation) and in the Department of Social Affairs and Employment.

Westerveld began her career in social legal aid back in her student years where she was working in a legal aid clinic. After she completed her law degree in 1977 she immediately went on becoming a social lawyer and worked in the field for a decade until she finally decided to give up her law practice and join the academia. She did her PhD in 1994 on the evolution of social security pensions in the Netherlands, Germany and England. Thereafter she did research on women’s pensions, labour and care arrangements and the legal dimension of the activating welfare state.

Her inaugural speech she held late last year was entitled “Is social legal aid out-dated?” and she sees her primary academic task is to show to the outside world and, especially, to the Amsterdam law school students that the answer to this question is and shall be “no”.

Currently, Westerveld is the chair holder of the Social Legal Aid Chair, established in cooperation with the Dutch Legal Aid Board, at the law faculty of the University of Amsterdam. The main tasks of the chair include motivating law students to be interested and actively involved in legal aid services, and also to commence academic research on timely and practical issues of access to justice and legal aid within contemporary legal order.