Misbruik van recht volgens Scholten, Eggens en Meijers'

In my contribution to this liber amicorum I describe from an historical and legal-philosophical perspective some of the contours of the 20th century Dutch debate in private law on the topic of rights abuse. The views of three private law scholars are elaborated and compared. These are respectively Paul Scholten, Jannes Eggens and Eduard Meijers. This article forms the first part of my broader research on the topic of the abuse of constitutional rights, to be continued in 2012. One of the conclusions of my article is that although the notion of rights abuse has given rise to the lot of controversies over the years (even among those three contemporaries), it is surely not impossible to theorize on it. I hope to demonstrate further on in this year that some of the insights gained from this private law-debate may be made applicable to the current debate on constitutional rights.