Legal Studies Research Paper Series Vol. 5, No. 6

The Faculty has published the third edition of 2014, Volume 5 Number 6 of the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Series on SSRN.

This issue includes the following articles:

Simon Deakin: Labour Law and Inclusive Development: The Economic Effects of Industrial Relations Laws in Middle-Income Countries (13/2014)

We use leximetric data coding techniques and panel data econometrics to test for the economic effects of laws governing worker representation and industrial action in the large middle-income countries of Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa. We find that more worker-protective laws on employee representation tend to be correlated with higher scores on the Human Development Index. By contrast, in the case of laws on industrial action, some negative effects on human development indicators are reported. Our findings imply that laws supporting employee voice and collective bargaining may have beneficial social effects in middle-income countries. We find no rise in unemployment due to more protective labour laws.

Neil Andrews: The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and English Court Judgements (23/2014)

The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, which heard its first case in 2009, replaced the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords (sections II and III of this paper). The Supreme Court’s decisions will be binding on all lowers civil and criminal courts in England and Wales and Northern Ireland, and on Scottish civil courts if the appeal emanates from Scotland. The Supreme Court controls its own case load. It decides fundamental questions concerning judge-made law (the 'Common Law', including the auxiliary body of substantive and remedial law known as 'Equity') and questions arising from statute, including human rights legislation and points of European law and European human rights law. But there are powers of extra-territorial recourse to the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg (matters governed by the European Union) and by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (concerning the European Convention on Human Rights). Section IV addresses the problem of excessively long judgments (the problem is exacerbated, as noted in section V, by the tendency for appeal judgments in the British appeal courts, including the Supreme Court, to contain separate judgments by the different members of the relevant tribunal). Section VI examines the occasional difficulty arising from the advocates’ joint decision to confine their submissions to particular legal issues and to refuse to open up for decision wider legal issues, even though those matters are relevant to the dispute and ripe for judicial exposition or re-examination.

Jastine Barrett: What a Difference a Day Makes: Young Perpetrators of Genocide in Rwanda (24/2014)

The participation of children in the Rwandan conflict is well-documented: children were involved in the whole range of acts committed in the course of the genocide. After the genocide, thousands of people were detained following mass arrests across Rwanda, and minors were amongst those arrested. Genocide trials by the formal courts began in 1996 but the majority of genocide suspects were dealt with by the Gacaca courts. Whilst much has been written on these post-conflict judicial mechanisms in Rwanda, there has been very little analysis of the legal and programmatic approach to young génocidaires. Based on an analysis of primary and secondary sources (including domestic legislation and case law) and drawing on the results of empirical research conducted in Rwanda in 2013, this paper provides a comprehensive account of how young perpetrators were dealt with in Rwanda both in law and practice. It seeks to determine whether children were held accountable, whether they were given differential treatment on grounds of their age and if so, what the relevant age thresholds were. These questions are explored in the context of arrests and detentions, the criminal justice mechanisms (both formal courts and Gacaca jurisdictions) and the administrative measures taken to address genocidal acts.

Valia Babis: Fundamentals of Multi-Party or Collective Litigation (27/2014)

This case note discusses Case C-270/12 United Kingdom v European Parliament and Council [2014] (not yet reported), regarding certain powers of the European Securities and Markets Authority under the Short-Selling Regulation.

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