Professor emeritus at Osgoode Hall Law School and former president of Toronto’s York University, Harry W. Arthurs is one of the world’s most widely respected scholars, educators, and policy makers. His enormous academic and institutional productivity has extended to administrative and labour law, legal pluralism and legal theory, and legal education. Bringing together scholars of law, history, and political economy, The Daunting Enterprise of the Law applies the framework of Arthurs’s extraordinary scholarship to a series of themes running through current legal, economic, and political thought. Contributors from around the globe engage with Arthurs’s work in several fields and sub-fields and consider the past and future of industrial democracy, globalization, labour law, legal education, and legal theory in the twenty-first century. Through the process of surveying, evaluating, and reflecting upon Arthurs’s ideas and intellectual contributions, they further advance the reader’s understanding of labour law and industrial relations. Remarkable in breadth and scope, The Daunting Enterprise of Law is both a celebration of Arthurs’s institutional achievements and policy leadership and an important contribution to contemporary scholarship.

Harry W. Arthurs is a name held in high esteem by labour lawyers and academics throughout the world. Although many are familiar with Arthurs's contributions and accomplishments, few are acquainted with the man himself, or how he came to be one of the most influential figures in Canadian law and legal education. In Connecting the Dots Arthurs recounts his adventures in academe and the people, principles, ideas, motivations, and circumstances that have shaped his thinking and his career. The memoir offers intimate recollections and observations, beginning with the celebrated ancestors who influenced Arthurs's upbringing and education. It then sweeps through his career as an architect of important reforms in legal education and explores his research as a trailblazing commentator on the legal profession. Arthurs analyzes his experiences as a legal theorist and historian and his pivotal role as a discordant voice in debates over constitutional and administrative law. Along the way, he muses on the intellectual projects he embraced or set in motion, the institutional reforms he advocated, the public policies he recommended, and how they fared long term. Framed with commentary on the historical context that shaped each decade of his career and punctuated by moments of personal reflection, Connecting the Dots is a humorous, frank, and fearless account of the rise and fall of Canadian labour law from the man who was at the centre of it all.

At the core of all societies and economies are human beings deploying their energies and talents in productive activities - that is, at work. The law governing human productive activity is a large part of what determines outcomes in terms of social justice, material wellbeing, and the sustainability of both. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that work is heavily regulated. This Handbook examines the 'law of work', a term that includes legislation setting employment standards, collective labour law, workplace discrimination law, the law regulating the contract of employment, and international labour law. It covers the regulation of relations between employer and employee, as well as labour unions, but also discussions on the contested boundaries and efforts to expand the scope of some laws regulating work beyond the traditional boundaries. Written by a team of experts in the field of labour law, the Handbook offers a comprehensive review and analysis, both theoretical and critical. It includes 60 chapters, divided into four parts. Part A establishes the fundamentals, including the historical development of the law of work, why it is needed, the conceptual building blocks, and the unsettled boundaries. Part B considers the core concerns of the law of work, including the contract of employment doctrines, main protections in employment legislation, the regulation of collective relations, discrimination, and human rights. Part C looks at the international and transnational dimension of the law of work. The final Part examines overarching themes, including discussion of recent developments such as gig work, online work, artificial intelligence at work, sustainable development, amongst others.

Gerald Le Dain (1924–2007) was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1984. This collectively written biography traces fifty years of his steady, creative, and conciliatory involvement with military service, the legal academy, legislative reform, university administration, and judicial decision-making. This book assembles contributions from the in-house historian of the law firm where Le Dain first practised, from students and colleagues in the law schools where he taught, from a research associate in his Commission of Inquiry into the non-medical use of drugs, from two of his successors on the Federal Court of Appeal, and from three judicial clerks to Le Dain at the Supreme Court of Canada. Also reproduced here is a transcript of a recent CBC documentary about his 1988 forced resignation from the Supreme Court following a short-term depressive illness, with commentary from Le Dain’s family and co-workers. Gerald Le Dain was a tireless worker and a highly respected judge. In a series of essays that cover the different periods and dimensions of his career, Tracings of Gerald Le Dain’s Life in the Law is an important and compassionate account of one man's commitment to the law in Canada. Contributors include Harry W. Arthurs, G. Blaine Baker, Bonnie Brown, Rosemary Cairns-Way, John M. Evans, Melvyn Green, Bernard J. Hibbitts, Peter W. Hogg, Richard A. Janda, C. Ian Kyer, Andree Lajoie, Gerald E. Le Dain, Allen M. Linden, Roderick A. Macdonald, Louise Rolland, and Stephen A. Scott.

For forty years the international watchword has been deregulation of labour law and of social security. Now, however, the rise in unemployment and lack of employment security, the dizzying inequality gulf, and the environmental disasters and mass migrations caused by this deregulation are generating an impetus that defines social justice no longer merely in terms of the equitable distribution of resources, but also – and often primarily – in terms of the just recognition of persons. This collection of incisive essays recognizes that the growing interdependence of all of the people of the earth demands that labour rights are understood as an aspect of human rights, and thus envisaged at the international level. Contributions by twenty outstanding labour law scholars from a range of countries worldwide provide in-depth analysis of such aspects of the debate as the following: – collective action in the interests of market effectiveness as well as fair outcomes for workers; - right to strike; - resilience of trade unions and collective bargaining as mechanisms of labour market regulation; - importance of national policy, despite the influence of global market forces, in shaping national outcomes; - work as the locus of the relationship between humans and nature; - search for a legal foundation for corporate social responsibility; - litigation as an alternative to collective bargaining; - the role of collective labour relations for immigrants and disabled people; - lessons that developed countries could learn from mechanisms pioneered in developing countries in coping with conditions of austerity; and - the trap of soft law and of declarations of intent that weigh lightly in the face of the power of the interests at play in international trade. The essays take stock of the dimensions of the current situation and also explore paths leading to a better achievement of social justice in labour law. These essays recognize that economic development and the pursuit of social justice are interwoven in a quest for social progress that includes mechanisms designed to eliminate unjustifiable inequality. For lawyers and other parties committed to the emerging political will to not only respect fundamental rights, but more broadly improve labour and environmental protection, this book opens abundant avenues that can be pursued in practice and in policy. The volume is based on a selection of papers presented at the 21st World Congress of the International Society for Labour and Social Security Law in Cape Town in 2015.

Since the mid-twentieth century, 'international law' and 'international development' have become two of the most prominent secular languages through which aspirations about a better world are articulated.. They have shaped the both the treatment and self-understanding of the 'developing' world, often by positing the West as a universal model against which developing states, their citizens, and natural environments should be measured and disciplined. In recent years, however, critical scholars have investigated the deep linkages between the concept of development, the doctrines and institutions of international law, and broader projects of ordering at the international level. They have shown how the leading models de-radicalise, if not derail, initiatives to redefine development and pursue other forms of global well-being. Bringing together scholars from both the Global South and the Global North, the contributions in this Handbook invite readers to consider the limits of common normative and developmentalist assumptions. At the same time, the Handbook demonstrates how disparate but still identifiable set of ideas, imaginaries, norms, and institutional practices - related to law, development and international governance - shape today's profoundly unequal material conditions, threatening the future of human and nonhuman life on the planet. The book focuses on five distinct areas: existing disciplinary frameworks, institutions and actors, regional theatres of international law and development, competing social and economic agendas, and alternative futures. Offering a unique overview of the field of international law and development and assembling major critical, historical, and political economic insights, this Handbook is an unmissable resource for scholars of international law, international relations, development studies, and global history, as well as anyone interested in the past, present, and future of our world.

A leading English jurist reflects on the development of his thoughts and writings in legal theory over sixty years.

This volume considers how, based on the examination of cases pertaining to transitional justice settings that resort to local interpretations of crimes against humanity jurisprudence, fragmentation of international law and circumscribed applications of universal jurisdiction are necessary aspects of the grand enterprise to overcome the impasse of the tainted legacy of international criminal law in the Global South. If we are to proceed with adjudication of the most egregious and heinous crimes involving state criminality without facing the charge of neo-colonialist plotting, then we must reckon with localised and domesticated interpretations of international criminal law, rather than pursuing strict forms of legislative dictation of international criminal law.

This book aims to connect narratives associated with the past to the international regime that protects property and contract rights of foreign investors. The book scrutinizes justifications offered to sustain practices associated with colonialism, imperialism, civilized justice, debt, and development, revealing that a number of the rationales offered in support of investment law disciplines replicate those arising out of this discredited past. By revealing these linkages, the book raises concerns about investment law's premises. It would appear that the normative foundations for today's regime reproduces discursive practices that are less than compelling. The book argues that citizens deserve something more than historically discredited reasons to justify the exercise of power over them – something more than mere pretext.

The aim of this book is to explore labour law's conceptual and normative narrative. If labour law is informed by the wider political and economic landscape within which it operates, then given the declining prevalence of the post-war model of full employment within a formal welfare state regime, what shape does or should labour law assume in response to the transformation of the political economy in countries of the global North? Correspondingly, what is the proper role to be played by labour law and labour relations institutions in the development process within industrialising countries of the global South, where informal employment has long been, and remains, the predominant form? Drawing on the expertise of leading labour law scholars, this collection addresses those questions by examining the growth and continued prevalence of informality. Offering research that is both empirically grounded and doctrinally astute, the book explores the changing character of labour law in the global North and South.