Corporate liability for environmental harm

Book synopsis; This wide-ranging and comprehensive Handbook examines recent developments in international environmental law (IEL) and the crossover effects of this expansion on other areas of public law, such as trade law and law of the sea. The contributors offer analysis on foundational issues in IEL, such as responsibility for environmental damage, sustainable development and the precautionary principle, alongside studies in topical subject areas like marine protection and the law of international watercourses

Reading the story of law and embeddedness through a community lens: A Polanyi-meets-Cotterrell economic sociology of law?

In this article I propose that the role of law in Karl Polanyi’s concept of the “always embedded economy”1 can be enriched by the application of the “lens of community”2developed by Roger Cotterrell.3I begin with Polanyi’s suggestion that economic action and interaction are always “embedded” in wider social life. Reading through the lens of community, we can be more specific: any actor is at once engaged, to different degrees (from fleeting to stable), in multiple types (whether focusing on instrumental, traditional, affective and/or belief-based action) of social life. I then explore a second, implicit, cornerstone of Polanyi’s argument: that analytical and normative approaches to economy may become disembedded from wider social life. Reading through the lens of community we can again be more specific: in the transformation to a market society, the analytical and normative approaches that are central to economic actions and interactions are confused with, and privileged over, those that are central to non-economic actions and interactions. This confusion and privileging can have what we might call a performative effect on action and interaction. Finally, I explore Polanyi’s story of law as a facilitator both of disembedding movements and of re-embedding counter- movements. The application of a law-and-community lens suggests some additional details of that storyline and that there are additional plotlines to be pursued. The practical potential of this Polanyi-meets-Cotterrell economic sociology of law is briefly illustrated with references to two twenty-first-century cautionary tales: the World Bank’s investment climate programme and the 2008 financial crisis

Global business, local law: the Indian legal system as a communal resource in foreign investment relations

This volume establishes a theoretical framework for exploring the role of host state legal systems (courts and bureaucracies) in mediating relations between foreign investment, civil society and government actors. It then demonstrates the application of that framework in the context of the south Indian city of Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore). Drawing on the 'law-and-community' approach of Roger Cotterrell, the volume identifies three mechanisms through which law might, in theory, ensure that social relations are productive: by expressing any mutual trust which may hold actors together, by ensuring that actors participate fully in social life and by coordinating the differences that hold actors apart. Empirical data reveals that each of these legal mechanisms is at work in Bengaluru. However, their operation is limited and skewed by the extent to which actors use, abuse and/or avoid them. Furthermore, these legal mechanisms are being eroded as a direct result of the World Bank's 'investment climate' discourse, which privileges the interests and values of foreign investors over those of other actors. Book description from publisher website at: http://www.ashgate.com

Making sociolegal research more social by design: Anglo-German roots, rewards and risks

In this moment of ‘social distancing’ the need for sociologically-informed approaches to understanding, responding to and shaping our changing world has never been clearer. This paper makes the case for a sociologically-informed approaches to legal design. It argues, firstly, that sociologically-informed approaches allow us to conceptualise legal design as aform of social relations, and that this opens the door to understanding the roles of legal design in social relations, and the potential of legal design to work for particular forms of social relations. Secondly, it argues that sociologically-informed approaches emphasise the social dimensions of doing legal design, focusing on one emergent field of legal design—that is, the application of designerly ways in a sociolegal research context

Collecting value/valuing collecting

A visual essay exploring the concept of value in the context of a special issue on value

Access to Environmental Justice in Bangalore: Legal Gateways in Context

This paper forms part of a larger comparative study on Access to Environmental Justice in Asia and Africa. The project involves a comparison of seven cities (Accra, Bangalore, Cape Town, Karachi, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, and Xiamen), with a focus upon the extent to which citizens are able to use law and legal institutions to shape the physical environment in which they live. In the research project generally, and in this paper in particular, there is no normative statement of what 'justice' should entail. Rather, our preferred approach is to identify what types of environmental claims are made by citizens, and evaluate the extent to which those claims may be pursued, and are pursued, in a legal context. Nor do we adopt a restrictive definition of 'environment'. Since we are concerned mainly with the perceptions of activists and citizens's groups, the applicable definition of environment must have a subjective element – the environment is what people say it is. For the purposes of comparison, there is a commitment to examine at least four areas of concern: 1) land use and functional or public space, 2) quantity and quality of the water supply, 3) the quality of air, and 4) waste and waste disposal. The purpose of this paper is to examine the context in which the citizens of Bangalore can, and do, seek to use legal gateways to get environmental justice, in order to provide a springboard for further research under the Access to Environmental Justice project. It also offers thoughts on possible avenues for further enhancing access to environmental remedies. This account is based upon relevant legislation, newspaper accounts, and a series of personal interviews conducted by Amanda Perry in April-June 1995 and Michael Anderson in March 1996. Finally, it should be added that this paper represents a snapshot of work in progress, and that a more detailed set of findings will be published at a later date

The re-co-construction of legitimacy of/through the Doing Business indicators

The present paper argues that the Doing Business indicators, their legitimacy (their ability to be defended through some logic or justification arising from standards) and the wider notions of legitimacy (the standards) that they promulgate are all best understood as social or, better still, ‘econosociolegal’ constructions. It tracks their, primarily post-financial crisis, re-co-construction within and beyond the World Bank from servant of the private sector and discipliner of states to something approaching social champion. But it warns that the perceptions of legitimacy that have been generated by those indicators may well linger

The Case for a Visualized Economic Sociology of Legal Development

Legal development work suffers from a general lack of interdisciplinarity and from the associated dominance of economics. A more sociologically informed meta-framework, such as that offered by the emergent field of economic sociology of law (ESL), is required. But if it is to be robust, widely applicable and open to challenge, such an econo-socio-legal approach to development must be accessible across disciplines; and among academic, practitioner, and public audiences. The reach of such a new approach could be radically improved using graphic design techniques such as typography and information design

Legal design for practice, activism, policy and research

This paper offers an integrated introduction to how, conceptually, to think about what design can do for law; where, empirically, to find examples of legal design; and how, normatively, to assess it. It begins by highlighting three lawyerly concerns: the need to communicate; the need to balance structure and freedom; and the need to be at once practical, critical and imaginative. Next the paper highlights three features of designerly ways: a commitment to communication, an emphasis on experimentation, and an ability to make things visible and tangible. It is proposed that designerly ways can directly improve lawyerly communication; and that they can also generate new structured-yet-free spaces in which lawyers can be at once practical, critical and imaginative. The paper then provides examples of legal design in action across four fields of lawyering: legal practice, legal activism, policy-making and legal research. Emphasis is placed throughout on the need for a critical approach to legal design—that is, for legal design to be thought about and done with a commitment to avoiding, exposing and remedying biases and inequalities. In that spirit, the paper concludes with an assessment of some of the risks associated with legal design

The pop-up museum of legal objects project: an experiment in "sociolegal design"

This article explores the strategies underlying the Pop-Up Museum of Legal Objects, a project based on two collaborative events in which design-based practices were deployed to further socio-legal research. Like other endeavours focusing on legal objects, the Pop-Up project produced a collection of object-based commentaries of diverse geographical, historical and material origins – from Australia to Canada to Egypt, 1200 BCE to the present day, bark to gold to plastic. What renders the Pop-Up project distinctive among interventions in the ever-deepening legal object landscape is, first, that it aims not only to generate new knowledge about objects and about law, but also to transform research behaviours; and, second, that it pursues those aims by adopting design-based practices and experimental attitude. The paper sets out the specific roles played by model-making in each event and the experience design underpinning the project as a whole. Participant feedback collected during and after the events is used to widen the perspective throughout. The article concludes with an indication of how such model-making might extend beyond the museum into fieldwork, using an example from the author’s own practice around an ox-hide copper ingot from Cyprus