WILLEMSTAD - The legal landscape of Curaçao and the Netherlands mourns the unexpected passing of Willem van Schendel on February 8. Until his death, Van Schendel, a respected figure within the judiciary, served as a deputy member of the Joint Court of Justice. 

After an impressive career, including serving as Vice President of the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam and becoming a justice at the Supreme Court of the Netherlands in 2001, where he was appointed Vice President in 2012, he retired in 2020. 

Despite retirement, he continued to contribute to the judiciary. In December 2022, he, along with Ernst Numann, was sworn in as deputy members of the Joint Court of Justice by President Mauritsz de Kort. Their appointment aimed to strengthen the civil appeals team and assist in addressing backlogs of civil judgments on appeal. 

Van Schendel was last in the news in November of last year when he chaired the special committee within the Dutch Bar Association that assessed election programs against the yardstick of the Dutch constitutional state. The committee found that more than half of the Dutch political parties in their programs did not adhere to the standards of the constitutional state. 

"Ten of the eighteen established parties make proposals in their election programs that poorly relate to the 'minimum standards of the constitutional state'," concluded the Van Schendel committee.