Aristotle's discussion of legal change in Politics II.8 is the subject of this article. The aim is to show that Aristotle viewed legal change positively, when changes to the law are required, and that his discussion was mainly concerned with the two rather distinct roles of the demos and of the legislator. The analysis involves a re-examination of 1268b 25ss in book II of Aristotle's Politics and its connection with book III. The analysis is also extended to Aristotle's Rhetoric and Nicomachean Ethics, and to Plato's Politicus and Laws.
Aristotle's discussion of legal change in Politics II.8 is the subject of this article. The aim is to show that Aristotle viewed legal change positively, when changes to the law were required, and that his discussion was mainly concerned with the two rather distinct roles of the demos and of the legislator. This essay deals with a re-examination of 1268b 25ff. in book II of Aristotle's Politics and its connection with book III. The analysis is also extended to Aristotle's Rhetoric and Nicomachean Ethics, and to Plato's Politicus and Laws. ; La discusión de Aristóteles sobre el cambio legal en Política II.8 es el tema de este artículo. El objetivo es mostrar que Aristóteles vio el cambio legal positivamente, cuando se requieren cambios a la ley, y que su discusión se refería principalmente a los dos roles bastante distintos del demos y del legislador. El análisis implica un nuevo examen de 1268b 25ss en el libro II de la Política de Aristóteles y su conexión con el libro III. El análisis también se extiende a la Retórica de Aristóteles y la Ética a Nicómaco, y al Político y las Leyes de Platón.
Institutions matter both for long-term economic evolution as well as for more short-termed economic performance. The law is particularly important in shaping the institutional framework for economic activities. This paper gives an overview of typical evolutionary explanations of legal change, i.e. the generation and dissemination of legal innovations over time. The main actors, the key determinants, and the central mechanisms are identified. In addition to approaches which deal primarily with statutory respectively judge-made legal change, the concept of legal paradigms and path dependence, the co-evolution of law and technology and the impact of institutional competition on legal change are discussed.
International audience ; The world is facing climate change, which impacts on the international community at large. Such a problem requires a global response followed by local actions to deal with this new challenge. This response is characterized by the crossing of mitigation measures, in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and adaptation measures for reducing the risk and damage from current (ex post aspect) and future (ex ante aspect) harmful impacts. Among the different effects compiled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we could note for instance rising sea level or more frequent flash floods and marine submersion. Statistical studies have shown that natural disasters will be increasingly important in the next few years. Therefore, it is urgently necessary to draw up adaptation and risk reduction measures and all the instruments of public policy, such as normative instrument / law, have to be mobilized.These last years, France has established a real adaptation to climate change policy through the development of the National Climate Change Adaptation Plan (PNACC) provided for in the Grenelle Act of 2009. Indeed, this plan is consistent with the European strategy of adaptation to climate change adopted in 2013 by the European Commission, which invites every Member State to adopt comprehensive adaptation strategies.When analysing on a legal point of view these different plans or strategies adopted at national or European level, one may see there weak normative force. Even if the Grenelle Act of 2009 makes provision in Article 42 for "the preparation of a National Adaptation Plan for a variety of areas of activity by 2011", one may say that it has no legal value. Indeed, the plan has not been adopted by the French Parliament or the Government through a regulatory act. Only a consultation was carried out in 2010 bringing together panels from the Grenelle Environment Forum (elected representatives and local authorities , the state , employers, employee unions and non-profit ...
International audience ; The world is facing climate change, which impacts on the international community at large. Such a problem requires a global response followed by local actions to deal with this new challenge. This response is characterized by the crossing of mitigation measures, in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and adaptation measures for reducing the risk and damage from current (ex post aspect) and future (ex ante aspect) harmful impacts. Among the different effects compiled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we could note for instance rising sea level or more frequent flash floods and marine submersion. Statistical studies have shown that natural disasters will be increasingly important in the next few years. Therefore, it is urgently necessary to draw up adaptation and risk reduction measures and all the instruments of public policy, such as normative instrument / law, have to be mobilized.These last years, France has established a real adaptation to climate change policy through the development of the National Climate Change Adaptation Plan (PNACC) provided for in the Grenelle Act of 2009. Indeed, this plan is consistent with the European strategy of adaptation to climate change adopted in 2013 by the European Commission, which invites every Member State to adopt comprehensive adaptation strategies.When analysing on a legal point of view these different plans or strategies adopted at national or European level, one may see there weak normative force. Even if the Grenelle Act of 2009 makes provision in Article 42 for "the preparation of a National Adaptation Plan for a variety of areas of activity by 2011", one may say that it has no legal value. Indeed, the plan has not been adopted by the French Parliament or the Government through a regulatory act. Only a consultation was carried out in 2010 bringing together panels from the Grenelle Environment Forum (elected representatives and local authorities , the state , employers, employee unions and non-profit ...
The rise of the #MeToo Movement highlights the inadequacies of Title VII, the federal law that protects against employment discrimination, including sex harassment. Title VII, in its current form, does not adequately address the needs of workers, especially low-wage workers, who already face considerable obstacles to reporting their harassment. While states have made significant strides in this area, the work of advocates for change and for survivors, like the TIME'S UP Legal Defense Fund and the National Women's Law Center, is necessary so that the federal government follows suit to ensure Title VII works for all workers. In this article, we posit that changes need to be made to the time restrictions for filing Title VII claims, the severe or pervasive standard needs to be recalibrated to acknowledge the significant harassment workers face, the damages cap in Title VII should be adjusted for inflation to truly compensate survivors and discourage future misconduct by employers, mandatory nondisclosure agreements should be curtailed to stop silencing survivors, and the retaliation framework needs to place a greater burden on the employer. Until such a time as these changes are made and sexual harassment in the workplace becomes a thing of the past, the TIME'S UP Legal Defense Fund will continue to provide advocacy services to low-wage workers in order to help them achieve workplaces that are safe and respectful.
Defence date: 13 June 2019 ; Examining Board: Professor Stefan Grundmann, European University Institute (Supervisor); Professor Claire Kilpatrick, European University Institute; Professor Peer Zumbansen, Osgoode Hall Law School; Professor Simon Deakin, Cambridge University ; Over the last forty years, legal theory and policy advice have come to draw heavily from an 'evolutionary' jurisprudence that explains legal transformation by drawing inspiration from the theoretical successes of Darwinian natural selection. This project seeks to enrich and critique this tradition using an analytical perspective that emphasizes the material consequences of concepts and ideas. Existing theories of legal evolution depend on a positivist epistemology that strictly distinguishes the objects of social life—interests, institutions, systems—from knowledge about those objects. My dissertation explores how knowledge, and especially non-legal expertise, acts as an independent site and locus of transformation, mediating the interaction between law and social phenomena and acting as a catalyst of legal innovation. Prior work by Simon Deakin has integrated insights from systems theory to show how the interaction between law and economic institutions can only be properly understood by attending to the epistemic frame law uses to interpret economic practice. Using a case study on the impact of 'law and finance' literature on World Bank policy advice and, consequentially, on legal reforms adopted by many developing countries between 2000 and the present, I show that such attention to legal knowledge is inadequate. The case points, first, to the contingency of the intellectual tools used to understand legal institutions. Rather than deploying a determinate rationality, private and public actors address legal, economic, and ethical problems using a variety of paradigms: viewpoints are not determined by realities. More fundamentally, the cases suggest that successful paradigms, rather than economic or political realities alone, shape the dynamics of socio-legal change. My conclusions address some normative questions that arise when researchers in a social scientific mode are implicated in the processes they seek to document.
This paper analyses changes in the legal protection of shareholder and creditor rights in 24 transition economies from 1990 to 1998. It documents differences in the initial conditions and a tendency towards convergence of formal legal rules as the result of extensive legal reforms. Convergence seems to be primarily the result of foreign technical assistance programs as well as of harmonisation requirements for countries wishing to join the European Union. The external supply of legal rules not withstanding, the pattern of legal reforms suggests that law reform has been primarily responsive, or lagging, rather than leading economic development. In comparison, the pre-socialist heritage of transition economies has little explanatory power for the observed patterns of legal change. However, countries with German legal heritage seem to favour creditor over shareholder protection and display substantially better creditor protection than other transition economies. The paper discusses the implications of the response pattern of legal change with externally supplied legal solutions for the prospects of effective law enforcement and compliance with the law in transition economies.
The Interdisciplinary Program in Law and Religion and the Comparative and International Law Institute co-sponsored a lecture titled, "Criminal Law Reform: Ethical and Legal Changes in Austrian Society." In light of the recent terrorist activities in the European Union, the Austrian government has focused on hate speech legislation and hate crimes. Dr. Christian Pilnacek, Director General for Criminal Matters in the Federal Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Austria discussed recent Austrian legislation that criminalized hate speech that has a likelilhood of inciting violence. Following Pilnacek's presentation, Dr. Wolfgang Brandstetter, Federal Minister of Justice of the Republic of Austria, discussed how the Austrian government is reforming the penal law system. A summary of the event is available here.
The Supreme Court in the last few years has resolved some of the most divisive and consequential cases before it by employing the same maneuver: construing statutes to avoid constitutional difficulty. Although the Court generally justifies the avoidance canon as a form of judicial restraint, these recent decisions have used the canon to camouflage acts of judicial aggression in both the statutory and constitutional spheres. In particular, the Court has adopted dubious readings of federal statutes that would have been unthinkable in the canon's absence. We call this move the "rewriting power." The canon has also been used to articulate new constitutional norms and significant breaks from settled doctrine. We call this move "generative avoidance." Both practices are facets of the broader phenomenon of "active avoidance," which is the use of the avoidance canon to usher in legal change. This Article defines and critiques active avoidance by analyzing in detail two recent instances — Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. One v. Holder and National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (NFIB) — as well as providing a briefer analysis of Bond v. United States. In Northwest Austin, the Court rewrote the bailout provision of the Voting Rights Act and gave birth to the "equal sovereignty" doctrine. In NFIB, the Court construed away a constitutional problem with the individual mandate and gave birth to what we call the "antinovelty doctrine": the principle that statutes without historical precedent are constitutionally suspect. The Article demonstrates that the rewriting power can have a countermajoritarian effect equal to — or even greater than — outright invalidation, because of certain features of our legislative process. And it shows how generative avoidance, by undermining some of the structural guarantors of judicial restraint, may encourage the Court to spearhead constitutional change. For these reasons, this Article sounds a cautionary note about the recent judicial temptation to use the ...
This dissertation is a study of the development of property rights in the coal industry as defined by Federal legislation. Previous analyses have argued that property rights develop efficiently and have employed a neoclassical model to study this development in the political market. This study asserts that the neoclassical model is inappropriate for analyzing the political market. This study concentrates on the coal industry, analyzing the historical events surrounding development of the property rights structure. A price theoretic approach is employed to determine whether changes in the property rights structure results in greater efficiency for the coal industry. The evidence provided in the study does not support use of the neoclassical model. The model is too constrained and does not allow the inclusion of nonmarket factors in the analysis. ; Ph. D.
This paper examines how the LGBT Veteran organization, Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Veterans of America, has framed their advocacy for LGBT veterans' rights, including their unique deployment of joint LGBT and military/veteran identities to strengthen their cause. Specifically, this research explores the way that the positive veteran/military identity that intersects with the less positively viewed LGBT identity facilitates both the cause and potential outcomes of their advocacy. While many social movements mobilize around a primary identity, LGBT veterans use their status as "protected veterans" to pursue rights for the LGBT community, both in the military and out. I argue that recognition of the elevated status enjoyed by military veterans is seen in the framing techniques of the LGBT veteran social movement and what I am calling "positive intersectionality". Theories of intersectionality typically regard intersecting identities as limiting in an individual's ability to fight discrimination, but this addendum to intersectional theory that I am proposing encompasses the full spectrum of identity, examining positive outcomes of intersectional identities rather than only negative outcomes.
This paper investigates the determinants of legal change in a public choice framework. An empirical model explaining the timing and probability of decisions to adopt state-operated lotteries is developed. Employing a Tobit estimator and explicitly considering the effects of state-specific constitutional and political structures, spending and tax policies, and federal revenue importation, evidence is presented showing that legal change is much like economic change: Lotteries are more likely to be adopted and to be adopted earlier where the costs are lowest relative to expected benefits. State legislatures appear to be the main beneficiaries of this public choice process.
Der Beitrag setzt sich mit dem wirtschaftlichen Rückgang der shōten-kai, einer Form der Geschäftsorganisation von Kleinunternehmern in Japans städtischen Einkaufsstraßen, und dem Verhältnis dieses Rückgangs zu Rechtsänderungen auseinander. Der Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf der Frage, welche Auswirkungen der Bedeutungsverlust einer Unternehmensform auf den rechtlichen Rahmen hat, der um diese Organisationsform herum entstanden ist. Das Ziel ist, dadurch eine Lücke in der Literatur zum Verhältnis zwischen ökonomischem und rechtlichem Wandel zu schließen, die sich bisher überwiegend auf die Kapitalgesellschaften konzentriert hat. Der herausragende Erfolg der Kapitalgesellschaften als Vehikel zur Strukturierung wirtschaftlicher Aktivitäten hat zur Folge gehabt, dass die Frage, wie das Recht auf einen Bedeutungsverlust bestimmter Organisationsformen reagiert, weitgehend unerforscht geblieben ist.Shōten-kai bieten uns einen etwas ungewöhnlichen Kontext, um dieser Frage nachzugehen. Während die Organisation von Kleinunternehmen und Einkaufsstraßen eine lange Geschichte in Japan haben, finden sich die Wurzeln der modernen shōten-kai am Anfang des Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, als eine große Anzahl von Neuankömmlingen in das Handelsgewerbe in Japans Großstädten eintrat. Durch die Konfrontation, plötzlich mit diesen relativ neuen Marktteilnehmern – Kaufhäusern – konkurrieren zu müssen, begannen sich die Besitzer kleinerer Läden zu sammeln und sich zusammenzuschließen, um so überleben zu können. In den 1930ern wurden zwei Gesetze besonders wichtig für sie: Erstens das Gesetz über Handelsgenossenschaften, erlassen im Jahr 1932, welches von den shōten-kai als Vehikel zur formalen Eingliederung ihrer Vereinigungen als Kooperativen eingesetzt wurde. Im Jahr 1938 hatten sich bereits über 100 Vereinigungen genossenschaftlich organisiert. Das zweite war das 1937 erlassene Gesetz über Kaufhäuser, das den Geschäftsbetrieb von Kaufhäusern streng regulierte und Kleinunternehmen eine entscheidende Stimme im Vergabesystem von Lizenzen zur Eröffnung oder Erweiterung von Kaufhäusern gab, wodurch den shōten-kai ein starker Schutz gegen ihre Rivalen geboten wurde.Dieser Gesetzesrahmen, der sowohl organisatorische als auch Schutzfunktionen für die shōten-kai erfüllte, wurde zwar durch den Pazifischen Krieg vorübergehend ausgesetzt, jedoch in den Nachkriegsjahren wieder hergestellt. In Bezug auf ihre Organisation wurde 1949 das Gesetz über den Genossenschaftsverband mittelständischer Unternehmen erlassen, gefolgt vom Gesetz zur Förderung von Shōten-kai-Vereinigungen im Jahr 1962, welches eine Form der Genossenschaft schuf, die speziell auf die shōten-kai zugeschnitten war. Heute sind mehr als 3.000 shōten-kai nach den Vorgaben dieses Gesetzes organisiert. Das Kaufhausgesetz wurde 1956 überarbeitet, und sein Regelungskonzept im Rahmen einer neuen Gesetzgebung von 1973 auf alle Formen von großen Einzelhandelsgeschäften ausgeweitet.Die eben beschriebene Entwicklung des Rechts entstand in einem Kontext, in dem Kleinunternehmen, überwiegend als shōten-kai organisiert, das Einzelhandelsgewerbe in Japan dominierten. Anfang der 1980er wandelte sich das Schicksal der shōten-kai allerdings zum Schlechteren; die Zahl der Kleinunternehmen begann stark abzunehmen. Dieser Abwärtstrend dauert bis heute an. Einst belebte Einkaufsstraßen gleichen heutzutage in vielen Orten Geisterstädten, in denen langen Reihen von auf Dauer geschlossenen Läden inzwischen zu einem normalen Anblick geworden sind. Der Bedeutungsverlust kann auf eine Vielzahl von ökonomischen und gesellschaftlichen Veränderungen zurückgeführt werden, welche viele der shōten-kai, in Kombination mit der Starrheit ihrer Governance-Struktur, in eine unumkehrbare Spirale der Selbstschwächung getrieben hat.In diesem Beitrag werden drei Trends im Kontext des oben genannten Gesetzesrahmens identifiziert, die aus dem wirtschaftlichen Rückgang der shōten-kai resultieren. Der erste betrifft die organisationsrechtliche Gesetzgebung. Obwohl die shōten-kai mit erheblichen Governance-Problemen konfrontiert sind, haben diese Probleme sich nicht in einer Reform des Gesetzes zur Förderung von Shōten-kai-Vereinigungen niedergeschlagen, das den Governance-Rahmen für diese Vereinigungen bildet. Dies könnte eine Folge der begrenzten Möglichkeiten genossenschaftlicher Strukturen sein, auf die spezifischen Probleme der shōten-kai reagieren zu können. Es könnte zudem auch eine Folge der verringerten Rolle der Kleinunternehmen im Gesetzgebungsprozess sein. Ein zweiter Trend liegt in der in den 1990ern beginnenden Reform der Regulierung von großen Einzelhändlern, in deren Zuge die offizielle Bezugnahme auf Kleinunternehmen entfallen ist. Der dritte Trend besteht in dem Einsatz von Maßnahmen der Stadtplanung zur Überwindung einiger der Governance-Probleme, welche die shōten-kai selbst nicht überwinden können.(Die Redaktion) ; This paper is about the economic decline of shōten-kai, a form of business organization created among small merchants on the shopping streets of Japan's cities, and the relationship of that decline to legal change. The main focus is placed on a consideration of how the decline of a business organization may affect the legal framework that has developed around it. The purpose in doing so is to fill a lacunae in the literature on the relationship between economic and legal change which thus far has largely focused on the business corporation. The perhaps unique degree of success that the business corporation has achieved as a means of organizing economic activity means that this focus has left our understanding of how law responds to the decline of such forms unexplored.Shōten-kai provide us with a somewhat peculiar context in which to explore this issue. While small merchant organizations and shopping streets have a long history in Japan, modern shōten-kai have their roots in the early twentieth century when large numbers of new arrivals to the country's growing cities entered the retail trade. Faced with the need to compete with another relatively new market entrant – department stores – these small shop owners began co-locating and organizing with each other as a means of surviving. By the 1930s two areas of law had come to be of particular relevance to them. First, the Commercial Cooperatives Act, enacted in 1932, came to be used by shōten-kai as a means of formally incorporating their associations as cooperatives and by 1938 more than one hundred had done so. Secondly, the Department Stores Act, established in 1937, placed strict regulations on the operation of department stores and gave small merchants a crucial voice in the system for granting permits for the opening or expansion of new ones, thus providing shōten-kai with a great deal of protection from their main rivals. This legal framework, which served both organizational and protective functions for shōten-kai would be temporarily interrupted by the Pacific War but was re-established in the post-war years. With regard to their organization, in 1949 the Small and Medium Enterprise Cooperatives Act was enacted, followed in 1962 with the Shōten-kai Promotion Association (SPA) Act which created a cooperative specifically designed for shōten-kai. Today more than three thousand shōten-kai are organized under these Acts. The Department Stores Act was likewise revised in 1956 and its system expanded in 1973 under new legislation which regulated all forms of large scale retailer. The development of the law thus described occurred in a context in which small merchants, mainly organized in shōten-kai, dominated Japan's retail system. In the early 1980s, however, the fortunes of shōten-kai took a turn for the worse, with the number of small retailers entering a sharp decline that continues to this day. Once bustling shopping streets in many cities now look more like ghost towns as long rows of permanently shuttered shops have become a common sight. The decline can be attributed to a number of economic and social changes which, in combination with a rigidity in the governance structure of shōten-kai, have placed many in a self-undermining spiral which they cannot reverse.This paper identifies three trends in the above noted legal framework which have come about in conjunction with this economic decline of shōten-kai. The first relates to their organizational law. Shōten-kai face significant governance problems yet these have not spurred changes to the SPA Act, the main piece of legislation that provides their associations with a governance framework, to address them. This may be the result of the limits of the cooperative form upon which it is based to address the unique problems they face, and also the result of the weakened role of small merchants within the law making process. A second trend has been an overhaul of the regulation of large scale retailers beginning in the early 1990s which has formally removed reference to small retailers. The third trend has been the use of urban redevelopment law by city governments in ways that overcome some of the governance problems that shōten-kai themselves are unable to deal with.
The major changes that have taken place in the New Zealand labour market since 1984, and which are reflected in recent changes to the welfare system, are not unique and follow trends that have developed in other OECD countries in the last decade. One of the most significant of these trends is legislative and other moves to encourage greater "efficiency" in the labour market. Deregulation, involving the withdrawal of legal guarantees of employment protection and union organization, is only one of the techniques which governments have used in an attempt to promote labo,ur market flexibility over the past decade. In continental Europe new forms of employment and the flexibilization of working time have been encouraged without dismantling the framework of employment rights. In many cases this has involved an extended role for collective bargaining and worker representation at plant and company level. In the US and Britain, by contrast, flexibility has been pursued at the cost of destabilizing the employment relationship, undermining training and job quality.
