Tag: book launch

Decolonisation, Anti-Racism, and Legal Pedagogy: Strategies, Successes, and Challenges

Posted on by foluke.adebisi

by Professor Foluke Adebisi, University of Bristol Law School

In 2021, I, Suhraiya Jivraj and Ntina Tzouvala undertook a project to curate pedagogical perspectives on teaching legacies of empire in law schools across different continents. The result was an edited collection with a specific focus on post- and decolonial thought as well as on anti-racist methods in pedagogy. Decolonisation, Anti-Racism, and Legal Pedagogy: Strategies, Successes, and Challenges. Taylor & Francis, 2023.

With contributions from diverse jurisdictions, including India, South Africa, Australia, and Canada, the volume aims to critically examine the ways that decolonisation and anti-racism can be innovated in legal pedagogy. We hoped to demonstrate how teaching can be modified and adapted to address long-standing colonial and racial injustice in the curriculum. For more on our initial vision for the volume, see the original call for papers. (more…)

New book on enforcement of labour standards through public procurement

Posted on by legalresearch

By Dr Albert Sanchez-Graells, Reader in Economic Law (University of Bristol Law School).

Smart procurement aims to leverage public buying power in pursuit of social, environmental and innovation goals. Socially-orientated smart procurement has been a controversial issue under EU law. The extent to which the Court of Justice (ECJ) has supported or rather constrained its development has been intensely debated by academics and practitioners alike. After the slow development of a seemingly permissive approach, the ECJ case law reached an apparent turning point a decade ago in the often criticised judgments in Rüffert and Laval, which left a number of open questions.

More recently, Bundesdruckerei and RegioPost have furthered the ECJ case law on socially orientated smart procurement and aimed to clarify the limits within which Member States can use it to enforce labour standards. This case law opens up additional possibilities, but it also creates legal uncertainty concerning the interaction of the EU rules on the posting of workers, public procurement and fundamental internal market freedoms. These developments have been magnified by the reform of the EU public procurement rules in 2014.

This freshly-released book assesses the limits that the revised EU rules and the more recent ECJ case law impose on socially-orientated smart procurement and, more generally, critically reflects on potential future developments in this area of intersection of several strands of EU economic law. The book includes four contributions by Bristol scholars, including Prof Phil Syrpis‘ perspective from an EU constitutional law standpoint, Prof Tonia Novitz‘s reflections on collective bargaining and social dumping in posting and procurement, Ms Nina Boeger‘s thoughts on public procurement and business for value, and my own views on the competition and State aid implications of the use of procurement to enforce labour standards.

The collection of essays includes additional insights by colleagues at Oxford, Cambridge, Turin, Birmingham, Leicester, Warsaw, and the UNCITRAL, and is the result of a conference held at the University of Bristol Law School in May 2016. The papers have been constantly updated and include an assessment of the agreed revision of the Posted Workers Directive in the fall of 2017.

Full details of the book are as follows: A Sanchez-Graells (ed), Smart Public Procurement and Labour Standards–Pushing the Discussion after RegioPost (Hart, 2018).

From the “Democratic Deficit” to a “Democratic Surplus”: Constructing Administrative Democracy in Europe

Posted on by legalresearch

By Dr Athanasios Psygkas, Lecturer in Law (University of Bristol).

When academics, policymakers, media commentators, and citizens talk about a European Union (EU) “democratic deficit,” they often miss part of the story. My new book, From the “Democratic Deficit” to a “Democratic Surplus”: Constructing Administrative Democracy in Europe (Oxford University Press, 2017), challenges the conventional narrative of an EU “democratic deficit.” It argues that EU mandates have enhanced the democratic accountability of national regulatory agencies by creating entry points for stakeholder participation in national regulation. These avenues for public participation were formerly either not open or not institutionalized to this degree.

By focusing on how the EU formally adopted procedural mandates to advance the substantive goal of creating an internal market in electronic communications, I demonstrate that EU requirements have had significant implications for administrative governance in the member states. Drawing on theoretical arguments in favor of decentralization traditionally applied to substantive policy-making, the book illustrates how the decentralized EU structure may transform national regulatory authorities into individual sites of experimentation and innovation. It thus contributes to debates about federalism, governance and public policy, as well as about deliberative and participatory democracy in the United States and Europe. (more…)

Advising in Austerity

Posted on by legalresearch

By Prof Morag McDermont, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies, and Mr Ben Crawford, Knowledge Exchange Fellow (University of Bristol Law School).

Research led by Prof Morag McDermont of University of Bristol Law School has explored the ways in which advice organisations such as Citizens Advice (CA) have become key actors in legal arenas, particularly for citizens who face the most disadvantage in upholding their rights. Findings from a four year study in partnership with Strathclyde University, highlight the importance of free-to-access advice in enabling people to tackle problems and engage with the legal and regulatory frameworks that govern their lives.

The advice sector, however, is under threat, as a new book Advising in Austerity: Reflections on challenging times for advice agencies (edited by Samuel Kirwan and published by Policy Press ) demonstrates. The book, co-written by the research team and advisers in the field, highlights both the possibilities and the challenges for an advice sector that largely relies on volunteers to provide a vital interface between citizens and the everyday problems of debt, health, employment and much more.  Despite the skills and enthusiasm of the workforce, many services are caught between rising demand and large-scale funding cuts, as traditional sources of revenue from local authorities and legal aid are dramatically reduced. Across the network, reductions in core funding are forcing agencies to reduce or reconfigure services. In particular, the face-to-face, generalist advice model that provides a holistic assessment of client’s problems is under pressure as services are reduced in favour of telephone or online support.

(more…)

A law and political science analysis of the reform of EU public procurement rules

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By Dr Albert Sanchez-Graells, Senior Lecturer in Law (University of Bristol Law School).

olykke-reformationMy most recent edited collection has now been published:
GS Ølykke & A Sanchez-Graells (eds), Reformation or Deformation of the EU Public Procurement Rules (Edward Elgar, 2016). It features contributions from a gender-balanced group of 16 young political science and EU economic law scholars based in 9 different EU/EEA Member States, including a number based at top UK universities. It is the result of a two year research project generously funded by the Copenhagen Business School and the Danish Gangstedfonden.

Using an innovative  interdisciplinary ‘law and political science’ methodology, the book carries out a critical assessment of the reform of the EU public procurement rules in the period 2011-2014. It does this by a detailed assessment of the initial Commission proposal for new rules, the travaux preparatoires behind it, as well as the several inter-institutional negotiation and compromise texts that resulted in the 5th generation of EU public procurement directives in 2014. (more…)