EDITORIAL

It has been several months since the last EJCL issue was published. The sad reason for this is that our Assistant Editor Hildegard Penn, who was a member of the original project team that set up the journal, passed away after a period of illness.

Hildegard studied English and psychology at Utrecht University. After graduation (1978), she worked in Tanzania as a volunteer, among other things teaching English. Over the past 20 years, she (copy-) edited and proofread academic texts in English, and translated (academic) texts into English. These texts covered various disciplines, such as economics, econometrics, sociology and history. Working for publishing houses both in the Netherlands and in Ireland, Hildegard gained experience in the various stages of publishing – from copy to book/journal. Over the past ten years, her interest focused on the fields of law and philosophy.

One of the early lessons for everyone involved in the EJCL project was that even an electronic journal cannot function without having a physical contact to touch base with, a person who acts as an intermediary between the members of the Editorial Board, who takes care of contacts with authors and who is responsible for putting the journal on the Internet. Given that ten years ago, when the journal was established, there was hardly any experience with regard to the management of an electronic journal such as the EJCL, we all had to acquire the skills involved in electronic publishing. The role of the Assistant Editor proved to be crucial. Hildegard gradually became the organisational centre of our journal.

When she fell ill, she continued working for the EJCL. In fact, taking care of the publication of the last issue was one of the very last things she did. Her work was greatly valued by both the Editorial Board and authors. She will be missed deeply by all of us who have been involved in the EJCL over the years.We are grateful for her work and we will remember her fondly.

New Assistant Editor

The Editorial Board is very fortunate to have found a new Assistant Editor at fairly short notice. His name is Dick Broeren (e-mail: [email protected]). We already have come to know him as enthusiastic and very involved in the EJCL. We are very much looking forward to working with him.

Download availability of articles

Starting with this issue, full articles will be available in PDF and Word format only for downloading purposes. We feel that PDF offers a number of userfriendly features advantages that can be particularly useful to researchers: any document downloaded in PDF format will look the same everywhere; the page numbering will make citation easier; and notes, URLs, and the table of contents are clickable. Naturally, the download facilities with regard to earlier issues of the EJCL are maintained.

A word of thanks

At this point, we would like to extend our most sincere thanks to Rebecca Scholte from Tilburg University IT Services for her technical support of our late Assistant Editor Hildegard Penn and, more recently, her indispensable assistance of our new Assistant Editor in publishing this issue.

Curriculum update

The advisor to the Editorial Board, Hans Roes, has been appointed Director Information Resources and Multimedia at International University Bremen, Germany. Hans will continue to be involved in the EJCL.

This issue

In this issue, you will find an analysis of the discussion about the necessity of a constitutional court in Sweden and Finland by Mr Hautamäki of Joensuu University. Bernard Rudden has written another highly interesting review article, this time about a book by Simon Whittaker on liability for products comparing English and French law in the context of European harmonization. Finally, this issue contains two conference announcements.

Sjef van Erp,
Editor-in-Chief