Labour Law, with Keith Ewing and Aileen McColgan
(Cambridge University Press, 2012)
Building on their successful cases and materials book, Collins, Ewing and McColgan present an entirely restructured and freshly written new textbook on employment law. Comprehensive and engaging, it combines detailed analysis and commentary on the law with short contextual extracts to fully equip the labour law student. Carefully balancing clear exposition of legal principles with critical and scholarly analysis, this is the definitive textbook on the subject written by the UK's foremost employment law scholars. The book's 20-part structure maps logically onto either a full or half module employment law course. Chapter introductions and conclusions and an uncluttered text design carefully guide the student through the material. Innovative case studies show the law 'in action' and discussion of the globalised workplace gives the work a contemporary feel. Put simply, this is required reading for all students of the subject.
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Networks as Connected Contracts, by Gunther Teubner,
edited with an introduction by Hugh Collins (Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2011).
Business networks consist of several independent businesses
that enter into interrelated contracts, conferring on the parties many of the
benefits of co-ordination achieved through vertical integration in a single
firm, without creating a single integrated business such as a corporation or
partnership. Retail franchises are one such example of a network, but the most
common instance is a credit card transaction between a customer, retailer, and
the issuer of the card. How should the law analyse this hybrid economic
phenomenon? It is not exactly a market relationship– because that overlooks the
co-ordination, relational qualities and interdependence of the contracts–nor is
it a type of business association or company, since it lacks a centralised
co-ordinating authority that receives the residual profits. This book is a
translation of Gunther Teubner’s classic work on networks, setting out his novel
legal concept of ‘connected contracts’. In it he explains how this concept
addresses the problems posed by networks, such as the question whether the
network as a whole can be held legally responsible for damage that it causes to
third parties such as customers. A substantial introduction by Hugh Collins
explains the analysis of networks in the context of German law and the systems
theory.
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Employment Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)
2nd edition
This updated edition offers a fresh approach to the law
governing employment relations, emphasising the contemporary policy themes of
social inclusion, competitiveness, and the rights of citizenship in the
workplace. It acts as a succinct and accessible overview for those new to the
subject as well as an excellent summary for students.
Employment Law covers all the main areas of the
subject including contracts of employment, anti-discrimination law, trade
unions, industrial action, and human rights in the workplace. It also discusses
how UK law, under the influence of EU law and international protection of human
rights, has been transformed for the twenty-first century by pursuing new goals
such as helping to achieve a better balance between work and life, to improve
the competitiveness of business through partnership institutions, and to provide
superior protection for the basic rights of employees in the workplace. Offering
frequent comparisons with the law of other countries, including the United
States, the book also discusses the effectiveness of employment regulation as
well as examining the different national and transnational methods available.
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Standard Contract Terms in Europe, ed. Hugh Collins (Kluwer,
2008)
Ever since the Directive on Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts
of 1993, the European project has been working intensively towards harmonization
of contract law across all EU Member States. To date, virtually none of the many
problems that have arisen have been resolved. The SECOLA Annual Conference
convened in Prague in 2005 to consider the specific topic of unfair terms and to
imagine ways in which the obstacles raised by this provocative issue might be
overcome. In this book, which presents revised versions of the papers presented
at that conference, fourteen outstanding European scholars examine basic
questions about the differing conceptions of contract law in the national legal
systems of the Member States, divergent legal techniques such as interpretation
of contract and divergent approaches to legal reasoning, and contrasting views
about the nature of the problems presented by unfair terms in contracts.
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The European Civil Code : The Way Forward (Cambridge University Press,
2008)
Argues
that the European Union should develop a civil code to provide uniform rules for
contracts, property rights and protection against civil wrongs, thus drawing
together the differing national traditions with respect to the detailed
regulation of civil society. The benefits of such a code would lie not so much
in facilitating cross-border trade, but in establishing foundations for a denser
network of transnational relations of civil society, which in turn would help to
overcome the present popular resistance to effective and functional political
institutions at a European level. These principled foundations for a more
inclusive and less 'balkanised' civil society in Europe also provide elements of
a required European Social Model that offers necessary safeguards for consumers,
workers and disadvantaged groups against the pressures of market forces in an
increasingly global economic system.
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Labour Law: Text and Materials 2nd edn (Hart Publishing: Oxford, 2005)
(with K.D. Ewing and A. McColgan) 1093pp.
The
second edition of this book examines the law relating to employment, industrial
relations, and labour market regulation in the United Kingdom, including
relevant dimensions of EC law and policy. The text introduces selected extracts
from cases, statutes, reports, official statistics, and academic commentary and
analysis, and the whole is designed to provide all the materials needed for
courses in labour law or employment law. The text emphasises recent developments
including the expansion of legal regulation, new forms of work, the integration
of labour law with broader policies aimed at the enhancement of competitiveness
and the prevention of social exclusion, equal opportunities and the protection
of rights in the workplace, and new mechanisms for worker participation in
decisions.
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The Law of Contract, 4th edition (Butterworths, London,
2003) 441pp.
Previous
editions of this text have consistently been a favourite amongst common law
lawyers. This new edition has been brought fully up to date and will be of
interest to those studying 'advanced' obligations/common law modules.
Undergraduates who study contract courses with a strong socio-legal tradition
will also find this text invaluable as it uniquely grounds the nature of
contract law in its social and political context
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Regulating Contracts (Oxford University Press, Oxford,
1999) 386pp.
Using
an interdisciplinary approach involving economics, sociology and law, Regulating
Contracts explores fundamental questions about the purposes and effects of legal
regulation of contractual relationships. What kind of social relation do
contracts create, or, more precisely, how do contracts govern social
interaction. How are contractual relations, or more generally, markets
constructed? Does the law play a significant role in particular practices, and
in particular, what do lawyers, courts, and legal sanctions contribute to the
contractual social order? For what distributive purposes does the law attempt
regulation?
The controversial conclusions of this study suggest that the
law plays an insignificant role in the construction of markets, and that law and
lawyers could provide better assistance by using indeterminate regulation that
permits the recontextualization of legal reasoning. Legal regulation of
contracts concerned with redistributive tasks, such as redressing unfairness,
countering unjust power relations, and improving access to justice, is evaluated
both with respect to the objectives of regulation and the search for the most
efficient and efficacious form of regulation.
The argument in the book is that control of unfairness is both
desirable and practicable, that power relations should be modified for the sake
of efficiency, and that better access to justice is unhelpful to the resolution
of contractual disputes.
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Justice in Dismissal: The Law of Termination of Employment
(Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992) 277pp.
Marxism and Law (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1982)
159pp.
In
this introduction to Marxism and the law, Hugh Collins presents a unified and
coherent view of Marxism, which he uses to examine the specific characteristics
of legal institutions, rules, and ideals. He pays particular attention to the
place of ideology in law, the distinction between base and superstructure, and
the destiny of law in a Communist society.
His principal theme is the Marxist critique of the ideal of the
Rule of Law. He argues that the main purpose of a Marxist theory of law is to
expose the belief in the Rule of Law as being a subtle and pervasive ideology
which serves to obscure the structures of class domination within the State.
The author frequently subjects the Marxist approach to
criticism and he shows that many of the Marxist claims about law are unproven or
misconceived. The book is written in straightforward non-technical language
which requires no knowledge of either Marxism or law.
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'Flipping Wreck: Lex Mercatoria on the Shoals of Ius
Cogens' [FORTHCOMING]
'The Hybrid Quality of European Private Law' [FORTHCOMING]
'Cosmopolitanism and Transnational Private Law' European
Review of Contract Law (2012) 8 (3) pp.311-325
Discusses the conflicting judgments reached by English and French courts in proceedings to enforce an arbitral award in Dallah Real Estate & Tourism Holding Co v Pakistan, based on whether the arbitral tribunal had jurisdiction to determine a dispute concerning a trust set up by the Pakistan Government, despite the Pakistan Government's assertion that it was not a party to the contract or the arbitration agreement. Considers the power of the English courts under the Arbitration Act 1996 s.103(2). Asks whether the French or the English courts arrived at the right result, or whether neither did.
'Compensation for dismissal : in search of principle'
Industrial Law Journal (2012) 41 (2) pp.208-227
'Constructive Dismissal and the West Lothian Question:
Aberdeen City Council v McNeill' Industrial Law Journal (2011) 4
pp.439-450
'Theories of Rights as Justifications for Labour Law' in G.
Davidov and B. Langille, The Idea of Labour Law (Oxford University
Press, 2011) pp.137-155
'The Constitutionalisation of Private Law as a Path to Social
Justice' Hans-W Micklitz (ed), The Many Concepts of Justice in European
Private Law (Edward Elgar, 2011) [FORTHCOMING]
'The Impact of Human Rights Law on Contract Law in Europe'
European Business Law Review 4 (2011) pp. 425-436; University of Cambridge
Faculty of Law Research Paper No. 13/2011
This article examines the impact of human rights law on the
implementation of contract law. While human rights law has focused on the
relationship between citizen and state, the private law of contract has been
viewed as governing the economic relations among citizens and business entities.
The article examines the thesis that in Europe, this division is being broken
down, as a result of two intellectual movements within legal thought.
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'Harmonisation by Example: European Laws against Unfair
Commercial Practices' Modern Law Review, 2010 73 (1) 89-118
This examination of the implementation of the European Union's
Directive on Unfair Commercial Practices in the United Kingdom by the Consumer
Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 assesses the likely impact on
the national law governing the marketing practices of rogue traders, including
its ambition to simplify and extend legal protection, and the likely success of
the Directive in achieving the harmonisation of the laws and practices
regulating marketing in Europe. In particular, the discussion evaluates the
regulatory strategy of the Directive in its attempt to secure uniform laws
through the combination of principles, rules, and concrete examples of
prohibited practices. The paper also investigates the likely impact of the
Regulations on the private law of contract and tort and the possibilities for
improvements in a consumer's personal right of redress.
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'Lord Hoffmann and the Common Law of Contract' European
Review of Contract Law, 2009 5 (4) 474-484
Examines how the leading opinions by Lord Hoffmann in the House of Lords have affected the development of the common law of contract, including his statements on: (1) the rule that the courts should not interfere with a contractual agreement on the ground of fairness; (2) party autonomy; (3) the use of the default rules of contract law as aids to interpretation; (4) the need to respect the settled law; and (5) the principles of contractual interpretation and the discernment of implied terms. Assesses the legacy of his jurisprudence.
'Private Life and Dismissal' [co-authors: Virginia
Mantouvalou and Hugh Collins] Industrial Law Journal, 2009 38 (1)
133-138.
'Does Social Justice Require the Preservation of Diversity in
the Private Laws of Member States of Europe?' Private Law in European Context
Series, Volume 10 (2007) pp. 155-176
'A Workers'Civil Code? Principle of European Contract Law
Evolving in EU Social and Economic Policy,' in M.W. Hesselink (ed) The
Politics of a European Civil Code (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2006)
55-70.
'Legal Responses to the Standard Form Contract of Employment,'
(2007) 36(1) Industrial Law Journal 2-18.
Having suggested that the advent of standard form contracts of
employment is a neglected aspect of employment law, an assessment is made of two
of the main legal responses to the potential unfairness of terms, namely implied
terms and the application of section 3 the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977. The
Law Commission's proposed legislative reform is also examined. It is concluded
that only by combining terms implied by the law with the statutory protection of
reasonable expectations of employees will the law succeed in devising an
adequate technique for rebalancing contracts of employment.
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'The Protection of Civil Liberties in the Workplace' (2006)
69(4) Modern Law Review 619-631
'The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive' (2005) 1
European Review of Contract Law 417-441
'Harmonisation of European Contract
Law: Citizenship, Diversity and Effectiveness' (2005) 7 Cambridge Yearbook of
European Legal Studies 80-97.
'The Right to Flexibility' in J. Conaghan and K. Rittich (eds), Labour Law, Work, and Family: Critical and
Comparative Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) 99-124.
In
recent years, gender has emerged as an important focus of attention in discourse
in and around labour law. Gender is gradually moving from the margin to the
mainstream of labour law debate, particularly with the development of a
'family-friendly' policy agenda. This book consists of a series of essays from
an international selection of leading legal scholars exploring the shifting
boundary between work and family from a labour law perspective. The object is to
assess the global implications for labour law and policy of women's changing
role in paid and unpaid work.
The approaches adopted by the contributors' are diverse, both
conceptually and geographically, encompassing analyses from Australia, North
America, Canada, the UK, Europe and Japan, and including national and
supra-national perspectives. Key themes informing the collection as a whole are
the re-positioning of unpaid care work as integral to the performance and
structure of productive activity; and consideration of the implications of
recognizing the interdependence of work and family activities. In this way, the
book seeks to develop a central theme from the previously published 'Labour Law
in an Era of Globalization' (Conaghan, Fischl and Klare, eds. OUP), as part of
an ongoing exploration into the distributive implications of economic and
political globalization.
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'The Freedom to Circulate Documents: Regulating Contracts in
Europe'(2004) 10
European Law Journal 787-803.
Evidence collected by the European
Commission indicates that insofar as the diversity between laws of national
legal systems presents an obstacle to trade in the Internal Market, the problem
consists of the inability of businesses to use their standard terms of business
in cross-border trade with confidence. It is suggested that the solution to this
problem lies not in legal integration through harmonisation of the private law
of contract, but rather through the creation of procedures for autonomous
agreements under which representatives of parties to standard types of contracts
can agree upon model contracts containing fair ancillary terms.
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'Discrimination, Equality, and Social
Inclusion' (2003) 66 Modern Law Review 16-43.
Although laws against discrimination
have conventionally been justified and articulated according to various
conceptions of equality, tensions between different notions of equality
undermine the coherence of these explanations. The aim of social inclusion is
proposed as part of an alternative justification for discrimination laws. As
well as exploring the meaning and implications of the policy of social inclusion
for discrimination laws, the extent to which the law already embodies this idea
is assessed with particular reference to the scope of anti-discrimination laws,
proof of discrimination, justification defences, and positive discrimination. It
is concluded that the goal of social inclusion has the potential to provide a
vital ingredient in a more coherent, though not uncritical, account of the aims
of anti-discrimination legislation.
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'Discretionary Powers in Contracts',
in D. Campbell, H. Collins, J. Wightman (eds), Implicit Dimension of
Contract: Discrete, Relational, and Network Contracts (Oxford: Hart, 2003)
219-254.
This
collection of essays, derived from an international workshop, explores the
significance of implicit understandings and tacit expectations of the parties to
different kinds of contractual agreements, ranging from simple discrete
transactions to long-term associational agreements such as those formed in
companies. An interdisciplinary and comparative approach is used to investigate
how the law comprehends and gives effect to the these implicit dimensions of
contracts. The significance of this enquiry is found not only in relation to the
interpretation of contracts in many different contexts, but more fundamentally
in how social practices involved in making contracts should be analysed and
comprehended.
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'Is There a Third Way in Labour Law?'
in J. Conaghan, R.M. Fischel, and K. Klare (eds), Labour Law in an Era of
Globalisation (Oxford: OUP, 2002) 449-469.; reprinted in A. Giddens, (ed)
The Global Third Way Debate (Cambridge : Polity Press, 2001) 300.
Left-of-centre governments are currently in power in many
countries. In greater or lesser degree, all have moved away from traditional
doctrines and policies of the left, recognizing that left values have to be
pursued by different means today. The term 'third way' has become a widely
accepted, if controversial, label understood by many modernizing social
democrats to refer to these attempts at ideological and policy innovation. The
debate that has arisen around these developments is a truly world-wide one,
stretching from the US and Europe through to Asia, Australasia and Latin
America.
Anthony Giddens has been perhaps the foremost contributor to
the global third way discussion. In this book he has brought together some of
the key contributions from around the world. Articles included cover, among
other topics: the development of the third way policies in EU countries; welfare
institutions and welfare reforms; economic and social policy; trust, the civic
order and government; the strains and stresses of democracy; the regulation of
corporate power; ecological modernization; the third way viewed from the South;
global governance.
This book will be of interest to everyone concerned with the
future of progressive politics. It provides perhaps the most comprehensive and
integrated account to date of core developments in leftist political thinking
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'Regulating Employment for
Competitiveness' (2001) 30 Industrial Law Journal 17-47.
It is suggested that the dominant
theme of labour law policy has become the enhancement of the competitiveness of
business, which, at its core, requires the facilitation and stabilisation of
flexible employment relations. Neither deregulation nor mandatory labour
standards adequately achieve this goal. It requires instead different techniques
of regulation of the employment relation, including a revision of the implied
terms of contracts of employment, the creation of new legal institutions of
workplace governance, and the enhancement of the ability of employers to make
credible commitments in return for functional flexibility on the part of
employees.
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Hugh
Collins