Jean-Bernard Auby

Aujourd'hui, pour comprendre notre actualit , on se tourne fr quemment vers la p riode de l'entre-deux-guerres en Europe, lorsque les d mocraties lib rales et parlementaires ont t remises en cause et attaqu es, avec l'instauration de r gimes autoritaires et dictatoriaux en Allemagne, en Italie, en Espagne, au Portugal, pour ne citer que les exp riences tudi es dans cet ouvrage. Bien que la France ait maintenu le syst me r publicain, les mouvements antiparlementaires y taient alors tr s puissants. Mais cette m me p riode fut galement tr s brillante et f conde dans les domaines des arts, des sciences et des id es. Toute une g n ration d'intellectuels et de professeurs d'universit se sentit alors suffisamment forte pour formuler une critique s v re du lib ralisme bourgeois et des id es des Lumi res qui le soutenaient. Le parlementarisme lib ral se trouve au centre de ces critiques. Une ligne critique autoritaire, dont Carl Schmitt est l'un des repr sentants, a fini par sombrer dans les eaux noires du nazisme ou du fascisme. Mais une autre ligne critique s'est d velopp e, qui ne visait pas supprimer le parlement, mais l'adapter un nouvel ordre du droit public qui se met alors en place contr le juridictionnel de la constitutionnalit des lois, soumission du l gislateur aux droits fondamentaux selon une conception institutionnaliste issue de Maurice Hauriou et de sa th orie de l'institution, id e de service public - notamment chez L on Duguit - comme l gitimation d'un pouvoir administratif autonome, en marge du parlement. L'ordre politique et constitutionnel dans lequel nous nous trouvons encore en grande partie aujourd'hui s'explique ainsi par les id es alors formul es par les meilleurs penseurs, comme une critique ou une correction d'un parlementarisme lib ral d bord par la d mocratie de masse.

Globalisation, Law and the State begins – as is customary in globalisation literature – with an acknowledgement of the definitional difficulties associated with globalisation. Rather than labour the point, the book identifies some economic, political and cultural dimensions to the phenomenon and uses these to analyse existing and emerging challenges to State-centric and territorial models of law and governance. It surveys three areas that are typically associated with globalisation – financial markets, the internet, and public contracts – as well as trade more generally, the environment, human rights, and national governance. On this basis it considers how global legal norms are formed, how they enmesh with the norms of other legal orders, and how they create pressure for legal harmonisation. This, in turn, leads to an analysis of the corresponding challenges that globalisation presents to traditional notions of sovereignty and the models of public law that have grown from them. While some of the themes addressed here will be familiar to students of the European process (there are prominent references to the European experience throughout the book), Globalisation, Law and the State provides a clear insight into how the sovereign space of States and their legal orders are diminishing and being replaced by an altogether more fluid system of intersecting orders and norms. This is followed by an analysis of the theory and practice of the globalisation of law, and a suggestion that the workings of law in the global era can best be conceived of in terms of networks that link together a range of actors that exist above, below and within the State, as well as on either side of the public-private divide. This book is an immensely valuable, innovative and concise study of globalisation and its effect on law and the state.

Globalisation, Law and the State begins – as is customary in globalisation literature – with an acknowledgement of the definitional difficulties associated with globalisation. Rather than labour the point, the book identifies some economic, political and cultural dimensions to the phenomenon and uses these to analyse existing and emerging challenges to State-centric and territorial models of law and governance. It surveys three areas that are typically associated with globalisation – financial markets, the internet, and public contracts – as well as trade more generally, the environment, human rights, and national governance. On this basis it considers how global legal norms are formed, how they enmesh with the norms of other legal orders, and how they create pressure for legal harmonisation. This, in turn, leads to an analysis of the corresponding challenges that globalisation presents to traditional notions of sovereignty and the models of public law that have grown from them. While some of the themes addressed here will be familiar to students of the European process (there are prominent references to the European experience throughout the book), Globalisation, Law and the State provides a clear insight into how the sovereign space of States and their legal orders are diminishing and being replaced by an altogether more fluid system of intersecting orders and norms. This is followed by an analysis of the theory and practice of the globalisation of law, and a suggestion that the workings of law in the global era can best be conceived of in terms of networks that link together a range of actors that exist above, below and within the State, as well as on either side of the public-private divide. This book is an immensely valuable, innovative and concise study of globalisation and its effect on law and the state.

In a number of important decisions such as Stovin v. Wise,X v. Bedfordshire, Barrett v. Enfield London Borough Council and others, English courts have been forced to grapple with the important issue of tortious liability of statutory bodies. Following the Hill decision, they opted for a wide non-liability rule on a variety of policy and economic efficiency grounds. Yet many of their arguments have been considered and rejected by both German and French courts when deciding factually equivalent situations. This study analyses five leading English cases in a comparative and economic way and questions the validity of their assumptions as well as their arguments in the light of the recent important decision of the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights in Osman v. UK. This thought-provoking book, written by two English academics from Oxford and Cambridge Universities, in collaboration with two leading authorities from the Universities of Paris and Munich, should provide food for thought for judges, practitioners, academics and students for years to come. This book will be essential reading for scholars and practitioners interested in public law, human rights, comparative methodology, and tort law.