The Predicament of Modern Law: Parker's History of a Law Without a History that Matters

Kunal Parker's Common Law, History, and Democracy in America, 1790–1900: Legal Thought Before Modernism shows how nineteenth‐century thinkers thought about law and history differently than do post‐Holmesian modernist sociolegal scholars, whose ahistorical law appears contingent on politics, power, or will. Understanding time and history to be essential to law, nineteenth‐century jurists conceived of a common law that was able to work with and to shape democracy, Parker argues. Contra modernist histories then, Parker claims that the common law was not a reactionary force that stood in the way of democracy and economy. His history of legal thought before modernism suggests, further, the predicament of antifoundationalist modern law and modernist scholars: stripped of time and without its own history, how can law be anything other than politics, power, or will?     

Disability Discrimination Law in the United Kingdom and the New Civil Rights History: The Contribution of Caroline Gooding

This article concerns the theoretical and practical contribution of radical lawyer, feminist, and disability activist, Caroline Gooding to disability rights in the United Kingdom. It assesses the impact of her published work in the 1990s and translation of her insights into practice through her work on the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and later at the Disability Rights Commission, not least in securing in legislation a positive disability equality duty. In particular, it seeks to situate Gooding's contribution within the ‘new civil rights history’, with its emphasis on the role of lawyer as mediator, facilitator, and ‘gatekeeper’. It argues that through her engagement with strategic law enforcement, law reform, and the wider mobilization of the law, Gooding created ‘alternative visions and accounts’ of disability and so forged a decisive connection between disabled people as a social movement and the law, in ways of exemplary value to social movements more generally.     

The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006: A Legitimisation of Age Discrimination in Employment

The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations, which implement theFramework Directive on Equal Treatment and Occupation, takeeffect in October 2006. Tackling age discrimination is seento be a means of achieving a more diverse workforce, yet intrying to achieve this objective there have been compromiseswith the principle of non-discrimination. During the consultationexercises preceding the Regulations there have been importantdifferences of approach between employers and trade unions.The Government has, mostly, adopted the approach supported byemployers. The result is a set of Regulations, which, althoughan important step forward in tackling age discrimination, havenumbers of exceptions which effectively legitimise some aspectsof age discrimination at work.     

The Emergence of Career Politicians in Post‐Communist Democracies: Poland and the Czech Republic

Abstract: Despite party system fluidity and high rates of electoral volatility in the first decade after the transition to democracy in Poland and the Czech Republic, career politicians are emerging. Using data on all parliamentary candidates in the last election before the fall of communism and in all elections since then, we show that, in both countries, parliamentary carryover rates have risen substantially, a growing number of incumbents are seeking reelection, and an increasing proportion of candidates for legislative office have competed in previous parliamentary elections. Moreover, we demonstrate that prior political experience has a persistent and positive effect on winning office. We argue that the rise of career politicians facilitates the consolidation and effectiveness of these new democracies.     

商法探源——论中世纪的商人法

对商法史的考察和分析历来是我国商法学研究的薄弱环节。本文采用史论结合的研究方法 ,对中世纪商人法的产生背景做一些宏观考察 ,并尝试概括出其几个世纪以来演进的基本特点 ,希望可以收到正本清源、以史鉴今之效果。     

The Revised Provisions on Sex Discrimination in European Law: A Critical Assessment

Abstract:  The recently revised provisions on sex discrimination in European law are critically evaluated. The evaluation is focused on substantial issues, technical issues such as consistency and clarity, and on the problems observed in the implementation of discrimination provisions in the national legislation. The consistency of different language versions of community legislation is also covered. The problematic issues observed in the evaluation are discussed, and possible cures are briefly outlined.     

The History of Genres: Reaching for Reality in Law and Literature

Genres are historical formations; their ability to generate knowledge depends on their interrelationships within a culture. Since law, too, can be viewed as a genre, studies of specific historical relationalities between law and other genres are necessary for law's own history and theory. This essay discusses differentiations between Victorian law and literature, starting out from the recent publication of Ayelet Ben‐Yishai's Common Precedents: The Presentness of the Past in Victorian Law and Fiction (2013), which reveals some of that history. I examine two points: differentiations in legal and literary approaches to probabilistic knowledge, and differentiations in the author functions in law and literature. These differentiations bear multiple implications. I discuss implications for evidence‐law debates about probabilistic evidence, for contract‐law debates about the centrality of autonomy and self‐authorship, and for understandings of legal reasoning itself—the elusive notion of “thinking like a lawyer.”     

历史视野中的古希伯莱法

希伯莱人具有悠久的历史与文化传统,作为人类社会最为古老的法律之一,希伯莱法的演进历史先后经历了摩西时期、经典时期、犹太传教时期、中古时期,在此一历史进程中,出现了一些著名的国王、先知和法学家,经过他们对法律的传授、记录和整理,终于促成了极为发达的古代法学研究。     

Woodcock v Cumbria Primary Care Trust: The Objective Justification Test for Age Discrimination

This note discusses the limits to the defence of objective justification when applied to direct age discrimination, specifically with regard to situations where the employer attempts to rely on cost‐saving as a legitimate aim. The author examines the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union (formerly the European Court of Justice, ECJ) on which this case relies, and considers whether the defence has been interpreted too widely, opening up the possibility of cost‐saving as a defence to discrimination on the grounds of this particular protected characteristic. The note concludes that, while cost‐saving cannot be the sole justification for less favourable treatment by employers, it may nevertheless form part of an overall legitimate aim when coupled with additional factors.     

Worth a Thousand Words: The Unwritten History of Law as a Jurisprudence of Text and Pictures

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique -     

Ideologies in Law Time: The Oxford History of the Laws of England

In the introduction to the new Oxford History of the Laws of England 1820–1914, the authors suggest that their task is to tell the “history of the law itself.” This review essay examines what can be learned from a history told from law's internal point of view rather than through the perspectives of other disciplines, such as economics or philosophy. It considers whether and how the common law responded to industrialization and laissez‐faire ideology, the influence of salient philosophical movements—such as utilitarianism—on statutory change, and how all history is an exercise in ideology. In considering the public sphere, it suggests that this work should form the inspiration for further inquiry.     

诚信法律规制的完善——以我国劳动法律实施绩效的提高为视角

法律规制的“日臻完美”并没有使法治水平随之提高,而这不能不是诚信法律规制的不尽人意所致.弱势不是倾斜弱者的根据,更不是给予弱者——劳动者不诚信自由的理由,劳动法律关系主体在诚信上的差异并不是权利、义务上的,充其量只是责任上的、主客观诚信上的不同.诚信既是对不当劳动契约自由的限制,又是对得当劳动契约自由的保障,劳动法律规制得当及其有效实施不得不涉及自由与诚信关系的处理.诚信之帝王之位并不具有私法专属性,劳动法治更需要它.此外,为确保法律实施绩效,尚需提高诚信植入劳动法律的技术水平、尚需将诚信作为用人评价指标并使之法律化.