The Paradox of American Critical Legalism

Duncan Kennedy's essay is a reprint from his recently published book. We hope to draw attention to Kennedy's work among students of European integration since we believe his analysis to be relevant both to the specific debate on the impact of European integration upon private law and to comparative legal study in general. European legal scholarship has only recently begun to examine the problems of private legal integration. The late appearance of private law in the integration arena is due to a primarily instrumental understanding and strategic use of law in the European market-building project: only once legal ‘barriers to trade’ were eliminated and national regulatory law replaced by Europeanised norms, did the degree to which the core institutions of ’private‘ law had been (indirectly) affected by the integrationist logic become apparent. Comparative legal research, however, has benefited from this awakening of interest. European Commission projects have widened the scope of and intensified comparative studies in Europe. Equally, experience gained from the ‘Integration Through (Public) Law’ project has led to a new private legal debate on the impact of national traditions, the concept of legal cultures and the social functions of private law. Accordingly, whilst Duncan Kennedy's deliberations on the history of American legal thought and the differences between American and European legal cultures are generally to be commended for their sensitive treatment of the specificities of the civil law system and the common law heritage, they are equally of particular topical concern since in addition to highlighting America's ‘utter faith and utter distrust in law,’ they also investigate the fundamentally different approaches adopted towards ‘the project law’ within each of the member states of the EU. If European private lawyers are to come to terms with the problems of integration and convergence, they must first tackle these deep-seated divergences between their own national legal cultures.     

A scholarly and analytical perspective on the Management of Intellectual Property

‘A book may be good for nothing; or there may be onlyone thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through?’(Samuel Johnson) This section is dedicated to the review of ideas, articles,books, films and other media. It will include replies (and rejoinders)to articles, the evaluation of new ideas or proposals, and reviewsof books and articles both directly and indirectly related tointellectual property law. In this analytical approach to the Management     

Recurring themes in management thought: What every manager should know about management history

This paper examines the content of 23 recognized classic books in the field of management. The sample included books from all major schools of administrative thought and spans the period of 1912-1977. The results of a content analysis illustrated that a series of relatively well defined recurring themes emerged in this period of 65 years. An argument is made that while many innovative management ideas have been and continue to be formulated, administrators should be familiar with the importance of the recurring themes. Moreover, educators should be careful not to “shortchange” these fundamentals in favor of more contemporary and seemingly exciting new ideas.     

Workplace violence in Hong Kong, China: nature, impact, and preparedness

This article reports a survey of workplace violence in Hong Kong. A sizable number of the 1,198 organizations that were questioned reported that they had experienced such violence over the 2 years preceding the study, but the problem was not prevalent. In both the private and government sectors, nonphysical violence happened more frequently than physical violence, and there was a reported lack of preparedness of many organizations to deal with the violence. Compared with private organizations, government organizations experienced more coworker and customer violence, but more private than government organizations believed that workplace violence caused the loss of key employees and clients. Correlation analysis found that a subculture of workplace violence appears to emerge over time, such that the more customer violence is experienced, the more is coworker violence, and the more the nonphysical violence, the more the physical violence. These findings are discussed with reference to international findings.     

State sovereign standing: often overlooked, but not forgotten

Critics of Virginia's challenge to the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act have asserted that Virginia lacked standing to even raise the issue. Such criticism is inconsistent with foundational understandings of the role of states in providing a check on federal power and with the modern standing jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, especially as reflected in the Court's decisions regarding a state's sovereign interest in defending its code of laws. This Article demonstrates that, as a matter of constitutional design and history, as well as under relevant precedents, Virginia clearly had and has standing to bring its challenge.