A “New Normal”: Legality in Times of Necessity: French Administrative Law under the Health Emergency

States of emergency test the limits of constitutionalism and our commitment to the rule of law (Dyzenhaus 2012). They tell us something about the ultimate power in a society and the very nature of state powers. French constitutions have a long history of arising from crises, revolutions and overthrows. The current political regime was born in 1958 at the time of the Algerian war of independence. More recently, the French have lived under a sustained period of emergency regulations following the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015. Now that a state of health emergency has been declared and extended it is possible to reflect on how key principles relating to the rule of law, such as legality and judicial control, are being re-shaped. This helps us to reflect on how the state seeks to command compliance from its citizens and how a balance is struck between necessity and legality. Key stages can be identified: a first stage when (judicial) control is muted and a second stage when judges re-assert their role once the risks linked to the pandemic have been curbed. This differentiation both confirms the risk of normalising an executive state of emergency (at the time of the peak) and the possibility of a judicial state of emergency emerging (once the first wave is over) (Ginsburg and Versteeg 2020). This brings into question how the next steps in the health emergency can be made subject to robust scrutiny and accountability mechanisms as necessity evolves

Sanctions on digital platforms - Beyond the public-private divide

Against a background of extensive literature examining how digital platforms are regulated through ‘soft’ mechanisms, this paper analyses the ‘hard law’ techniques, such as sanctions, which are also very much used on digital platforms to police undesirable behaviours. It illustrates the use of these sanctions, suggesting that it is possible to find three different categories of sanctions: sanctions that find their source in hard (international and domestic) law, sanctions that find their source in digital platforms’ own normative production, and sanctions used in the course of disputes. Platform operators can have an intense power of norm-setting and sanctions, with a tendency to concentrate power within themselves or with unclear arrangements for dividing it across different entities. This can deeply affect individual freedoms. This paper suggests that the ways in which the power to set, decide and enforce sanctions is exercised in the digital space transform the public–private divide: the allocation of roles between sovereign public bodies and free private actors is reshaped to become ‘hybrid’ when it comes to enforcing rules and monitoring compliance through a wide range of sanctions on digital platforms. This paper frames the legitimacy questions arising from sanctions and suggests that the public–private divide may have to be bridged in order to locate a possible source of legitimacy. A future framework for assessing how platform operators set norms and ensure compliance through sanctions needs to start from individual users to see how best to protect their freedom when checks and balances around platforms’ powers and sanctions are developed. These individual users are the ones who suffer from the economic, social and reputational consequences of sanctions in both the digital world and the physical world

Uber in London: The battle between public and private regulation

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Sanctions on digital platforms: Balancing proportionality in a modern public square

This paper asks which legal tools digital operators could use to manage colliding rights on their platforms in a digitalised and transnational space such as the Internet. This space can be understood as a “modern public square”, bringing together actions in the digitalised world and their interactions with actual events in the physical world. It is then useful to provide this space with a discursive framework allowing for discussing and contesting actions happening on it. In particular, this paper suggests that two well-known legal concepts, proportionality and sanctions, can be helpfully articulated within that discursive framework. In a first step, proportionality, a justificatory tool, is often used to suggest a way for managing colliding rights. This paper argues that for proportionality to be useful in managing colliding rights on digital platforms, its role, scope and limits need to be better framed and supplemented by an overall digital environment which can feed into the proportionality test in an appropriate way. This can be provided, thanks to a second step, namely labelling in law the actions digital operators take as sanctions. Sanctions are the reactions organised by digital operators to bring back social order on the platforms. The labelling of these reactions under the legal category of “sanctions” offers a meaningful tool for thinking about what digital operators do when they manage colliding rights by blocking or withdrawing contents and/or accounts. As different types of sanctions can be distinguished, differentiated legal consequences, especially in relation to managing colliding rights, can be identified. Here the role played by the proportionality test can be distinguished depending on the type of sanctions. In any case, for sanctions and proportionality to help address colliding rights on the modern public square, a discursive framework needs to be developed, which depends on the existence of relevant meaningful communities engaging in reflecting on the use of sanctions and proportionality

La lutte contre le dumping social dans la sous-traitance de marchés publics

SOMMAIRE : Introduction / 1. Concurrence et politiques sociales : l’encadrement européen / 1.1. Marchés publics : libre concurrence versus considérations sociales / 1.2. sous-traitance, détachement de travailleurs et marchés publics / 1.3. substitution régulatoire au niveau européen ? / 2. Le système belge de lutte contre le dumping social dans la sous-traitance des marchés publics / 2.1. Historique du système / 2.2. cadre législatif et réglementaire actuel : le double paradigme de la concurrence "effective" et de la concurrence "loyale" / 2.2.1. Transparence de la chaîne de sous-traitance par l’identification des sous-traitants / 2.2.2. Vérification des motifs d’exclusion / 2.2.3. Exclusion de la sous-traitance totale et limitation de la chaîne de sous-traitance / 2.2.4. Agréation des sous-entrepreneurs dans les marchés de travaux / 2.3. Garantir l’effectivité du système : l’architecture administrative / 2.3.1. Les trois volets de l’architecture administrative / 2.3.1.1. Le volet pédagogique et informatif / 2.3.1.2. Le volet technique / 2.3.1.3. Le volet répressif / 2.3.2. Pistes d’évaluation / 2.4. Evaluation provisoire de La substitution régulatoire en Belgique / 3. Evaluation de la conformité du système belge au regard du droit européen : vers une possible juxtaposition des principes de concurrence "effective" et de concurrence "loyale" / 3.1. Jurisprudence européenne récente en matière de sous-traitance de marchés publics / 3.2. Au-delà du test de proportionnalité, la réalité concrète de La concurrence effective ? / 3.3. Les techniques belges de concurrence "loyale" en matière de sous-traitance de marchés publics : une nouvelle voie conforme au droit européen ? / 3.4. vers une substitution des instruments ou des priorités ? / Conclusion : de la substitution régulatoire à la juxtaposition des paradigmes

Transnational Climate Change Law – A Case for Reimagining Legal Reasoning?

This contribution focuses on the concept of “transnational climate change law” in situations involving interactions between distinct legal systems. The discussion highlights the practical dimension of law as a means to address complex global challenges. It also underscores the need for transnational climate change law to consider non-legal processes and sources of normativity, including social practices, to effectively deal with the issue. The contribution explores the legal, regulatory, and ethical considerations involved in addressing transnational climate change challenges, by assembling case studies from both transnational infrastructure projects and climate change litigatio

'Quarante ans d’évolution des relations entre les citoyens et l’administration au Royaume-Uni’

info:eu-repo/semantics/inPres

Comparative administrative law in Europe: state-of-the-art overview and research agenda

This article provides an overview of the scholarship in comparative administrative law in Europe, starting with general trends in the field and then reviewing systematically the key topics covered in the scholarship devoted to public administration and judicial review of administrative action. It concludes by offering some suggestions about an agenda for future research