Dr. H.J.M. Dana Baldinger has just returned to the Court of Amsterdam after five years as a judge at the Appeal Court in The Hague, the highest court in the Netherlands. She also teaches yoga to children in her spare moments. It was a pleasure and privilege to sit down with her and discuss balancing life as a mum with her very successful career whilst also giving advice on managing imposter syndrome (lacking self confidence / not feeling worth of your accomplishments)

Conversation:

Firstly, I wanted to ask about your journey to becoming a judge in the Netherlands and what motivated you to pursue such a intense career?

Well, at secondary school I was good at languages and I also did a lot of dancing. So my first wish was to become a dancer. I did ballet academy next to secondary school. But in the last year, in 6th grade, I had an accident, and my left knee was injured in a serious way. So I couldn't pursue my career as a dancer anymore. I started studying at university and I studied, Russian and English and later on Ukrainian. Then I started working when I was 22, I started working for a big American telephone company, AT&T.

I worked there first as a translator and interpreter for some years. I think it was about 5 years. After that, I became a contract manager at the same company. I studied law in the evening, just because a colleague advised me to do so. It was getting a bit boring to be an interpreter and translator because you never create something of your own.

It's always being sort of a doorway, you pass on things, but you don't really create anything of yourself. And I was getting bored with it. So I wanted to do something else. And as I was translating, legal texts a lot of the time, I became interested in law and, legal matters.

And then, I met my husband. I was, like, 27, 28. He is from Iran. And he was in the process of naturalisation to become a Dutch citizen after having been recognised as a refugee. And I became very interested in asylum and asylum law, international refugee law, and that part of law.

And I went with him to a couple of hearings, at the Dutch IND, which is the immigration service. And I also went to a court hearing and I thought, wow, being a judge would be so interesting because you're always in the middle. You're not like a lawyer fighting for people, but you're always in the middle and you have to weigh different interests being on both sides.

So, I became interested in that, and then I quit my job at, AT&T. I finished studying law at university in the evening. I was about 29 at that time. Then we have a special vocational training in the Netherlands, which is sort of a combination of school and practical work at the court. So I enrolled there, as a judge trainee. You start in the criminal law section, then you move up to the civil law section and to administrative law. You see the entire system, the entire court system, and you work as a trainee judge, and at the same time, you follow education.

So I did, I passed all the tests. It was rather difficult to, to get a place there.

Yeah. I can imagine they don't just take anyone.

No. They don't just take anyone and it's like, they look at your previous career, but they also look at your personality and they do intelligence tests. But somehow I got through that and then I started as a judge trainee and it took, 4 years. Normally, it takes 6 years. But because of my previous experience in AT&T, also legal experience, they gave me a 2 years sort of discount.

So it was 4 years and then I was appointed as a judge in Amsterdam. I must say that it was sort of difficult, at the same time it wasn't really very stressful all the time.

Some parts of the education are difficult. The civil law section was difficult for example because I didn't know much about civil cases. But the other parts like criminal law and administrative law I liked it, and it wasn't really difficult. Then I was appointed as a judge at the Court of Amsterdam and I started working.

Here, I don't know how it is in Britain, but in Netherlands, it's a very feminine profession because we can work part time.

There's, in fact, no limitation to that. Well, the minimum is, of course, 3 days. Most people work about 4 days to have one day off with their kids, with the family. But it's very much a feminine profession nowadays.

And even when I started as a judge in 2006, it was already very much feminine because you can easily work part time and in the big lawyer offices you can't do that. You need to work full time. And, well, many women don't want it especially when they have families and they want to be sometime at home.

Thats interesting that its more female dominated

Yeah. There is a difference, I think, between the First Instance Courts and the Appeal Courts. Because I've just returned to the Court of Amsterdam after 5 years at the Court of Appeal in The Hague, and the Court of Appeal is more male dominated.

The judges there are a bit older also. They are around end fifties, beginning sixties.

How did you end up working at the Appeal Court (highest court in the Netherlands)?

The funny thing was, until 2019, I worked at the Court of Amsterdam and many of my cases, or many of my decisions were always sort of quashed by the Appeal Courts because the Appeal Court followed very strict and harsh lines in administrative law and the Court of Amsterdam was always sort of fighting against these hard and strict jurisprudence.

And, I was one of the younger judges here who was always in the front, you know, fighting against the appeal court. And one day, I returned from a court hearing to my room in my mailbox, there was a message from, Bart Jan van Ettigoff who was the leader of the Appeal Court, the administrative law division.

And I saw that message and I was like, what does he want from me? Did I do something wrong in a terrible way that he can't tell me? What's going on? I was scared of opening that message. So I went to my team leader, and I said, well, there's a message in my mailbox from the Appeal Court and, I'm sort of scared to open it because I think I did something terribly wrong. And she said, no, no no, they are just looking for new people, so open it and give him a phone call. I was like, oh my gosh.

So I opened the message and it was true. They were they were looking for new, younger people to, fill up vacant places. First of all, I thought, oh, no, no, no, no. I won't go there. It's so strict and I don't like that instance. You know? I don't wanna end up there. It's also sort of the last instance for for judges to to be. It's the highest administrative law court and well, you can't go higher. You must go to Luxembourg or to Strasbourg for the European Court of Human Rights to be higher. But at national level, it's the highest place you can end up in. So I was like, well, no. I'm not going to do that. But then my team leader said just try it because if you don't try it, you never know what it's like. So, in the end, I went there, and I had different talks with people working there. Well and I agreed to go there.

But it was sort of difficult because The Hague is rather far from here. It takes about 2 hours to get there, and 2 hours back and I had to work 4 days at least. They don't want you to work less. So it's indeed more male dominated, and the people are older.

So they don't really have, the sense of what it is like to have young kids at home. So, well, to be honest, it was an interesting time, and I learned a lot and I got more experienced as a judge. And sometimes well, at times, it also gave me a good feeling like, wow, you're the highest.

But at the same time often I was feeling very unhappy about the combination of that type of job and having young kids at home, returning home late, seeing my husband doing the dishes again, the kids working, doing homework, and me coming home late, you know, it was like after, four and a half years, I was like, I don't wanna go on like this anymore.

I really want to go back to Amsterdam and being be able to bike to the court every morning and have more freedom how I divide my time between family and my husband and the yoga and everything else. So last year, before the summer holidays, I decided to go back, and I talked to the the big boss. Fortunately, he understood me very well because, the funny thing is he did exactly the same 10 years ago when his two daughters were, like, teenagers and he had that feeling, like, I'm not enough at home to see what's happening with these two girls.

So he did the same those 10 years ago. He went from the Appeal Court back to the First Instance Court to be closer to home and the kids and to see what's going on and to help them with their homework, etcetera, etcetera. So, I was lucky to talk to him, having had that same experience and he could understand me very well. So he said, no worries, I understand you and just go back, ask the court to take you back and we will be missing you but I fully understand your personal situation, you can only raise the kids once. I mean, you can't afford making too many mistakes there.

I think it's quite, a strong thing to do, to say like, alright this is what I need to do for my own wellbeing, for my own family. I think a lot of people, parents, struggle to find that balance but also struggle to because they have the sort of balance between the guilt of being away from the kids but also ,I think especially for women since they have to work a bit extra harder to meet their career goals, once they've met their career goals and then they're like, oh, but I feel guilty I'm not with my family. But then they feel guilty to leave that something they've worked so hard for. I think it takes strength and courage to make a decision that you know is best for yourself and your family.

Yeah. I remember the moment when I talked to the big boss and when that talk was finished, I was sort of upset. Like, woah, it's a big step to leave this place, this very high position.

And, I've been working many years to sort of end up here, you know, like but at the same time, I felt, like, doing the right thing and making the right choices. And, yeah, life is so much easier now. Although it's still a lot of work also at the First Instance Court, it's more hectic. It's always more chaotic.

At the Court of a Appeal there's more rest, there's more time per case. First instance, it's always a lot of mistakes going on and files missing and chaotic stuff going on. But that's why it's a First Instance Court but at the same time, it gives me much more freedom. It's a feminine culture, so everybody understands that you want to work some of your time at home. Nobody is looking at me like, “oh, here she comes again, laid in [this morning]”.

I think it's a shame that it has to be a feminine culture to sort of humanise the people you work with.

Yeah. We have a team leader. That's a good thing. He's a man, but he has young kids and he has Wednesdays off just like me, the midweek to have sort of a break in the week and take care of the kids. Thanks to the fact that he is the team leader there's sort of an easygoing attitude towards when you come in late you don't have to tell him why or anything.

He will understand that you've been working at home for some hours to be with the kids and then you come to the office a bit later or he understands when you go away a bit earlier, he will know that you will be working in the evening. There's much more freedom and the trust that you'll get the work done and the good thing is that I can bike to work again. So cheesy, Amsterdam culture.

When I leave the court at half past 5, I know that I'm home at 6 and I could cook the food and, you know, make dinner.

That gives, rest and peace at heart.

That's sweet. It probably makes you better at your job if you're feeling better in yourself as well.

Yeah. That's true. And the thing is, you asked, the first question was like, why did you, want to become a judge. Right?

I thought that being a judge would enable me to bring some justice to the world and put things right and also to settle disputes. The funny thing is, it's not always like that, of course. So in many cases you know like I have to follow the law and I can't really help people.

The law is a rather rigid system. It's a yes or a no.

In many cases, I have this feeling like, I'm not really helping people out. The dispute will go on. I render a decision but I'm not solving the deeper problems behind their legal quarrel and that's what makes me think a lot.

There's sort of a feeling that I would want to step out of the whole system. At the same time, I can't do it right now because the mortgage and all the costs around the kids. It's a steady income, of course. It's not a very high income because I work part time now, but I can just pay all the cost of living. But I'm more and more attracted to yoga as a thing which really can, at a deeper level, help people become healthy, peaceful at heart.

So I'm trying to work towards a good balance between yoga, the court, and the family, the kids.

It gives me hope knowing there's people like you within the legal system.

In some cases you can really make a difference, I think. Not in all cases. I do many cases at this moment of homeless people trying to get a declaration of urgency to get a house, for example.

And in many cases you can't really help them out by rendering a court decision. The problem is too big here. There's too big of a shortage of houses and you can't really help them out. Sometimes you can make a difference and that always makes me happy. But sometimes a lot of it can be very rigid.

How do you emotionally handle having to deal with seeing such sad things? I remember before you told me that you've also worked within family law. How do you manage to keep that barrier between what you're doing and how you're feeling as yourself?

It becomes easier with experience, I think. The beginning, when I just started as a lawyer, I found it very difficult. When I started as a judge I found it difficult and I sometimes really felt that the problems of the people appearing in front of me became my own problems. I felt very much responsible. I was dreaming about them, repeating the whole court hearing at night in my head, that happened really often at the beginning. With time, I learned to sort of more separate.

It's a realisation that you can't solve all the misery of the world all the time. And the law is not a medicine which can treat every single, disease or illness or misery or it's also the realisation that sometimes people really make a mess of their lives.

They could could be a bit more responsible and thinking ahead of what they're doing, you know? Sometimes people really make a mess out of things and then I tell myself like, okay, I'm going to do my best to render a good decision but I can't solve the whole thing and also part of it is their own responsibility. But it's becoming more easy with time.

And also maybe it's sort of you get used to it. But at times, it can, of course, be depressing. Especially after a court hearing which is only sad, for example, addicted people appear in front of you and at the end, you think like, “oh my gosh, what a misery all the time”.

It sounds very heavy.

Yeah. It can be heavy. Well, the thing is, I worked for about 4 years in the family law department and I'm definitely sure that I would never want to return there because I really realised when I was working there, it was really like, every decision I had to take, it was like choosing between two evils. Knowing that you would never be able to solve all the deeper problems going on. Never. Whatever decision you would give, it would never stop; addicted parents, violent parents, all the damage done can't be undone by a court decision.

I found that very hard that time. It was also a time when my own kids were still very young. The same goes for the criminal law section. I would definitely not want to go back there again because in the criminal law section, I mean, every case starts with a negative thing, and you always end also with a negative thing because you impose a fine or you impose a sentence, a prison sentence. It always starts with an offence or a crime and it ends with a penalty or a punishment. So it's negative and you make full circle back to negative. It's horrible, I don't want to go there again.

I'm a very empathetic person. Like, even maybe to people who I shouldn't be empathetic towards. Even just when I look at someone, like, I can feel how they feel.

Same goes for me. It was worse when I was younger. When people were in front of me and started crying, for example, I would really feel my own tears coming up.

Me too.

One time, I had a young girl, about 15 years old or even younger, from Rwanda from the war. She told me the whole story of how her parents died in the war and how she ended up alone. I was listening to her and I was like, oh my gosh, we really have to do something positive for this little girl. After that case, I really had to take a break because it really got to me.

With time, it becomes easier. I learned to have a sort of screen between me and all the misery of the world and you get used to it.

Well, I think it's really impressive and inspirational that you took this trait of being an empathetic person and decided, I feel for people so I wanna help people. And I think that's very inspirational because I think you could have gone another direction.

A big commercial law firm for example.

Yeah. So I think it's very inspirational that you've taken this trait you have and made it into something powerful and, you know, you are changing people's lives in positive ways. I find you very inspirational.

I want to ask as well back to, working at The Hague and being the younger person there and being a woman there. I mean it's more advice for me, but a lot of the work I do I'm the youngest and I'm in a more male dominated setting and I constantly have this feeling that I'm not good enough to be there. Or like I'm, why am I here? Why should people listen to me?They've got more experience. They know what they're doing. I also feel that I'm often talked down to because I am a young woman. So I was wondering if you had like any advice on how to manage this imposter syndrome.

How to manage? Oh, I find it a difficult thing. I think yoga helps a lot just to be self confident and, and feel good about yourself, about your qualities. Maybe affirmations? I use them every morning, in fact. I do meditation and yoga every morning. I don't skip one single day because immediately it does something with my self confidence if I skip one day and what I use it's very practical advice maybe. I use the 14 rules of the champion.

The 14 Affirmations:

1. I am sure about myself and peaceful in all circumstances
2. I am patient in an uplifted way
3. I am focused on the positive, always
4. I realise my goals with grace, ease and joy
5. I accept everything in me in a loving way
6. I face my life with courage and strength
7. I am worth everything I wish, and even more
8. I am compassionate and I forgive easily
9. I enjoy life to the fullest
10. I am flexible and make my limits clear
11. I am yin and yang
12. I am powerful in my vulnerability
13. I am emotionally intelligent
14. I process and integrate everything in me with grace, ease and joy

It's 14 affirmations, which you just repeat to yourself while breathing in and breathing out slowly in a meditative way. You repeat those affirmations to yourself and it immediately gives some sort of self confidence, self trust, feeling calm about yourself. Also maybe the best thing is to just be who you are. When I started in this male dominated environment of the Appeal Court, I was, at the beginning, a bit sort of scared to talk about my situation and my young kids, etcetera. But I realised very soon that when I'm just sort of myself and just talk in an open way about the worries I have about my kids and the worries that sort of rule my life at this moment. When I share that, people will also see okay, she's open, she's sincere, not playing a game, not somebody keeping up appearances, just being a normal human being with many doubts about how to raise the kids in a well way and I saw that many male judges sort of liked that and also started sharing.

It must be nice for them, I'm not going to speak on their behalf, but what I see a lot in these sort of environments that are more male led is they see, because of historic toxic masculinity, emotions as weakness. So they're scared to be perceived as weak. So they don't talk about it amongst themselves. So someone coming in and talking about it in a form of just humanity rather than weakness and then I think it gives strength rather than weakness because you connect with people. Yeah. So I think it must be nice for them to be like, oh, I can talk about this and talk about it amongst each other as well.

Yes. I think just really the best advice is to just be yourself, share and be honest and not be afraid of talking about those things. I think that's the best thing to say about it, I hope it helps.

My last question I have, which is also advice, is because you said how you changed careers in your late twenties. So for young people, twenties, or people in school who don't really know what they want to do and don't really have their passion yet. What advice would you give them as far as handling the pressure of that?

Follow your heart.

At secondary school, at first, I wanted to be a dancer. It didn't work out. So I had to do something else. I was good at languages, so I chose languages. For 10 years, it worked well. After that it, first of all, became boring to be a translator and interpreter. Second, I met my husband and I wanted more stability because when I worked at AT&T, we had to travel all over the world all the time. It was nice for in my twenties. But then I was 28, starting to think about kids, marriage, a more stable, fixed place in the world. And, I was like, uh-oh, how can I ever become a mom and travel all over the world at the same time? It won't work.

So that's how I started studying law and switching careers to the court which is stable because you only travel in your own city. Unless you move up to the Appeal Court.

Unless you get too good.

Yeah. Unless you get too good, and you have to move higher up and end up in another city, which takes a lot of commuting time. But, yeah, follow your heart because now I'm at the point that I think, well, shall I stay there for the rest of my career? or shall I try to set up my own company and do things with yoga, vitality coaching, life coaching? I don't know.

It's difficult to give very fixed advice. But, I think with time, your needs will change. Your career needs and your wishes and try to listen to that and follow them.

I think also something that I get from listening to you talk about it is the idea that no decision you make has to be permanent. So you don't have to choose a career path and that's it for the rest of your life.

Nothing is permanent. Yeah. It's impermanence.

Which also takes pressure off. Because in school you get to choose your path, choose your path, make your career and how can you know everything then?

True. That's really nice. Don't think that when you choose a certain path it will last forever and it will be your only possible way to go because your needs will change. Definitely, when I became a mom, my needs changed very much.

When I started as a judge, I was working 80 or even more hours per week at the court.

And people were always like, oh, yeah, if you wanna know something about this or that, go to Dana. She knows everything. She knows all the decisions by heart, all the names of the of the people, or she knows all the jurisprudence, all the international court cases.

She knows all the names go to her. I was like sort of a walking encyclopedia and I loved it but then I also did a PhD.

What was your PHD focus?

There was, a thing going on, an issue between, the European Court of Human Rights and our Court of Appeal, Administrative Court of Appeal. It was a fight on the intensity of judicial scrutiny in asylum cases. And, we were having a lot of trouble with that because the European court told us to do a rigorous scrutiny and our own national Appeal Court told us to do a marginal review on certain aspects, and we didn't like that marginal review. So we were always sort of fighting against that.

And I did a PhD on the obligations flowing from international laws of many treaties. I studied many treaties on what they say to national judges on the intensity of scrutiny. And so it's fair trial, fair trial effective remedy clauses, fair trial clauses in all the international treaties. So it took me between 2007 and 2013. It took me about 6 years. Whilst I was working.

Wow.

I started at a time when I thought I would never have children because I had many miscarriages. I thought well this is probably not for me. It's not for me to become a mum and probably there's something wrong in my body which doesn't allow me to become a mum. So I started, working on that PhD next to being a judge. I was busy for half a year and then all of a sudden I became pregnant and it went well.

So you had the baby whilst working on your PhD whilst being a judge?

Yeah. 2 babies. Both kids. I don't know how I did it, but I did it.

When people ask me how I did it, I always tell them that it was the happiness of the babies. That it gave me wings and allowed me to work day and night and finish that whole project. And the good thing is, it's a good book that I wrote and it's nice, but the good thing is that the jurisprudence of the Appeal Courts, our national Appeal Court, changed after the the PhD.

You are so cool.

Yeah. It was nice to see how this book influenced and gave some more room.

It's not really cool. It was a fight I really had to do, because the jurisprudential line was so unjust. And we were really angry.

A lot of people would say I think a lot of people would say it's unjust, but it's not my problem.

It was unjust and I really, I felt the damage being done in many cases because of that line. And I thought this is it, it's unjust and intuitively I felt that it was not in line with international jurisprudence and I wanted to put it right.

It's not really a finished story because with the Appeal Court still sometimes they can do a bit better there. But some changes took place as a result of the research. And, I remember I was very scared when the defence took place because I was attacking the national jurisprudential line. It was based on in-depth scientific research. So it was not just an attack out of the blue. The basis was solid. It took some years because my defence was in 2013 and in 2016 they changed their lines. It was nice to see that.

It's so nice. I think a lot of the time you don't get to see tangible evidence of the changes you're making.

This was tangible evidence. So that was good. It was only for asylum law, but it was it was good. Yes.

And the amount of people that have would have been impacted from that as well.

Yeah. So it was good to see.

It's very inspirational because a lot of women have uterine issues and have this fear that, they’re not going to be able to have children easily or at all. But wanting children doesn’t mean they aren’t also career driven. So to see you who's had these issues but has beautiful family and you have all these accomplishments within your career as well is very inspiring.

It was a struggle. It wasn't easy, and it's still not easy because it's always sort of a struggle in this. It's always balancing. And sometimes I feel so guilty. For example, when I come back home a bit later from the court because I had a court hearing and it's half past 5 and I know that the kids are home and I phone them and I say “oh, I'm coming, and just wait for me. I'm coming. I will make your dinner and try to do something with your homework, and I will help you in the evening if needed”, but still, even now that they are a bit older I sometimes really feel guilty about that.

I understand that but I think as well it's you're also a good role model to them.

I see the impact because I see that they take their schooling seriously and they really try to work hard on school tasks. And I think they see how I work with my cases and the yoga. They see how I prepare the yoga lessons and study for the yoga classes. I think that has an impact on the kids.

I think one of the best things you can teach your children is how to have a good work ethic, but also to follow your passions and you're showing them that directly which I think is lovely.

Thank you again to Dana for chatting with us and for continuing to be such a bright light in a sometimes grey world.