Various of our academic board analysed employment law cases from last year. |
Search result: 280 articles
Case Law |
2022/1 EELC’s review of the year 2021 |
Journal | European Employment Law Cases, Issue 1 2022 |
Authors | Niklas Bruun, Filip Dorssemont, Zef Even e.a. |
Abstract |
Article |
Is a whole-school approach necessary? The potential for alternative models of restorative justice in education |
Journal | The International Journal of Restorative Justice, Issue 1 2022 |
Keywords | restorative justice, procedural justice, student voice |
Authors | Heather Norris |
AbstractAuthor's information |
Evaluations of restorative justice frequently report that only a minority of schools succeed in adopting a whole-school approach. More common are a consortium of practices necessitating the evaluation of schools not implementing the whole-school model but still achieving positive results. Previous research established that unconventional models have successful outcomes, yet little is known about the contextual factors and the causal mechanisms of different practices. This study finds that models of restorative justice facilitating student voice and consequently procedural justice have promising outcomes. Importantly, alternative models may be less resource-intensive, making them more feasible to fully implement. |
Article |
AI in the Legal ProfessionTeaching Robot Mediators Human Empathy |
Journal | International Journal of Online Dispute Resolution, Issue 2 2021 |
Keywords | ADR, AI, ML, mediation, digital technology, value alignment |
Authors | Linda Mochon Senado |
AbstractAuthor's information |
What benefits do AI technologies introduce to the law and how can lawyers integrate AI tools into their everyday practice and dispute resolution? Can we teach robot mediators to understand human empathy and values to conduct a successful mediation? While the future of AI in the legal profession remains somewhat unknown, it is evident that it introduces valuable tools that enhance legal practice and support lawyers to better serve their clients. This paper discusses the practical ways in which AI is used in the legal profession, while exploring some of the major concerns and hesitation over value alignment, morality and legal formalism. |
Article |
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Journal | Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy, Issue 2 2021 |
Keywords | Global solidarity, Pandemics, Global Existential Threats, Collective Intelligence, CrowdLaw |
Authors | José Luis Martí |
AbstractAuthor's information |
Some of the existential threats we currently face are global in the sense that they affect us all, and thus matter of global concern and trigger duties of moral global solidarity. But some of these global threats, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, are global in a second, additional, sense: discharging them requires joint, coordinated global action. For that reason, these twofold global threats trigger political – not merely moral – duties of global solidarity. This article explores the contrast between these two types of global threats with the purpose of clarifying the distinction between moral and political duties of global solidarity. And, in the absence of a fully developed global democratic institutional system, the article also explores some promising ways to fulfill our global political duties, especially those based on mechanisms of collective intelligence such as CrowdLaw, which might provide effective solutions to these global threats while enhancing the democratic legitimacy of public decision-making. |
Article |
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Journal | East European Yearbook on Human Rights, Issue 1 2021 |
Authors | Martin Fertmann and Matthias C. Kettemann |
AbstractAuthor's information |
Terms-of-service based actions against political and state actors as both key subjects and objects of political opinion formation have become a focal point of the ongoing debates over who should set and enforce the rules for speech on online platforms. |
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Journal | East European Yearbook on Human Rights, Issue 1 2021 |
Keywords | artificial intelligence, chatbots, CRM, data protection, privacy |
Authors | Konstantinos Kouroupis, Dimitrios Vagianos and Aikaterini Totka |
AbstractAuthor's information |
In the new digital era as it is formed by the European digital strategy, the explosion of e-commerce and related technologies has led to the formation of tremendous volumes of customer data that could be exploited in a variety of ways. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems can now exploit these data sets to map consumers’ behaviour more effectively. As social media and artificial intelligence widened their penetration, firms’ interest shifted to chatbots in order to serve their customers’ needs. Nowadays, CRM and bots are developed in a parallel way. With the help of these virtual personal assistants, CRM establishes a virtual relationship with consumers. However, the extended collection and use of personal data under this scope may give rise to ethical and legal issues. In this article, the term CRM is defined, followed by an analysis of the way chatbots support CRM systems. In the second part, the legal context of chatbot use will be highlighted in an attempt to investigate whether there are personal data protection issues and whether certain rights or ethical rules are somehow violated. The draft AI Regulation, in combination with the provisions of GDPR and e-Privacy Directive, offers a significant background for our study. The article concludes by demonstrating the use of chatbots as an inherent part of the new digital era and lays special emphasis on the term ‘transparency’, which seems to penetrate the lawfulness of their use and guarantee our privacy. |
Article |
Legislative Effectiveness From a Legislative Drafter’s PerspectiveAnalysing the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 |
Journal | European Journal of Law Reform, Issue 3 2021 |
Keywords | Effectiveness Test, legislative quality, drafting process, Transgender persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 |
Authors | Devika Gulati |
AbstractAuthor's information |
This article discusses the effectiveness of Transgender persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 and tests the legislation against Dr. Maria Mousmouti’s Effectiveness Test. The author first attempts to trace the real purpose of the Act in terms of specific and broad purposes, and the micro, meso and macro goals. Secondly, the author examines the content of the Act in terms of the legislative techniques used, compliance and enforcement mechanism, and legislative communication. Thirdly, the author studies the context of the Act in terms of its coherence, accessibility and the choice of superstructure. |
Developments in European Law |
The PSPP Judgment of the German Federal Constitutional CourtThe Judge’s Theatre According to Karlsruhe |
Journal | Hungarian Yearbook of International Law and European Law, Issue 1 2021 |
Keywords | German Constitutional Court, basic law, ultra vires, European Central Bank, primacy of Union law |
Authors | Maria Kordeva |
AbstractAuthor's information |
The PSPP decision of 5 May 2020 rendered by the German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) does not constitute a break with the earlier jurisprudence of the FCC elaborated since the Lisbon Treaty judgment of 30 June 2009. Even though qualifying the acts of the Union as ultra vires has been likened to a warlike act, one should beware of hasty conclusions and look closely at the analysis of the Second Senate to form a moderate opinion of this decision decried by European and national commentators. Should the PSPP judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court be classified as “much ado about nothing”, despite the procedure started by the European Commission, or, on the contrary, will the CJEU in the next months, sanction Germany for its obvious affront to and breach of the principle of the primacy of Union law? The (final?) power grab between the European and national courts remains to be seen. We can criticize the German FCC that it put the fundamental principles of the Union in danger. Yet, it is worth reflecting on the possible encroachment of competences by European institutions, because, in this case, the red line between monetary policy and economic policy is more than thin. |
Developments in European Law |
Applicability of the GDPR on Personal Household Robots |
Journal | Hungarian Yearbook of International Law and European Law, Issue 1 2021 |
Keywords | artificial intelligence, robots, personal data, GDPR, scenarios |
Authors | Gizem Gültekin Várkonyi |
AbstractAuthor's information |
Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics point to a close future collaboration between humans and machines. Even though the use of personal robots is not yet a phenomenon, findings in technical and legal literature highlight several possible risks inherent in the processing of personal data by such robots. This article contributes to the current discussions on the applicability of the GDPR to AI technologies from three aspects: (i) first, it encourages the use of a scenario method to predict possible future legal problems related to new technologies; (ii) second, it analyzes considerations with the support of the relevant case-law and present comparative expert opinions for overcoming the weak points of the GDPR relevant to AI; (iii) and finally, proposals made in the recommendations part aim to contribute to a better application of the GDPR to AI technologies in personal use. |
Developments in European Law |
The Possibility of Using Article 72 TFEU as a Conflict-of-Law RuleHungary Seeking Derogation from EU Asylum Law |
Journal | Hungarian Yearbook of International Law and European Law, Issue 1 2021 |
Keywords | Article 72 TFEU, internal security, conflict of law, Common European Asylum System, relocation decisions |
Authors | Ágnes Töttős |
AbstractAuthor's information |
The purpose of this article is to examine how the CJEU circumscribed the room for maneuver of Member States for safeguarding their internal security and whether the use of and reference to Article 72 TFEU changed over the past years. The starting point of the analysis is the Hungarian asylum infringement case: the article looks back at earlier case-law and identifies how the reference to Article 72 TFEU shifted from considering it an implementation clause to the attempts at using it as a conflict-of-law rule. Although the article finds that the CJEU reduced the scope of possibly using Article 72 TFEU as a conflict-of-law rule and practically excludes its application by the setting high standards for this unique form of application, the article examines some extreme situations from 2020 where it could be validly referred to. |
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Journal | Erasmus Law Review, Issue 2 2021 |
Keywords | strategic culture, international law, ISIS, parliamentary debates, interdisciplinarity |
Authors | Martin Hock |
AbstractAuthor's information |
This article presents an interdisciplinary comparison of British and German legal arguments concerning the justification of the use of force against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). It is situated in the broader framework of research on strategic culture and the use of international law as a tool for justifying state behaviour. Thus, a gap in political science research is analysed: addressing legal arguments as essentially political in their usage. The present work questions whether differing strategic cultures will lead to a different use of legal arguments. International legal theory and content analysis are combined to sort arguments into the categories of instrumentalism, formalism and natural law. To do so, a data set consisting of all speeches with regard to the fight against ISIS made in both parliaments until the end of 2018 is analysed. It is shown that Germany and the UK, despite their varying strategic cultures, rely on similar legal justifications to a surprisingly large extent. |
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Journal | Erasmus Law Review, Issue 1 2021 |
Keywords | big data, big data analysis, data life cycle, ethics, AI |
Authors | Simon Vydra, Andrei Poama, Sarah Giest e.a. |
AbstractAuthor's information |
The adoption of big data analysis in the legal domain is a recent but growing trend that highlights ethical concerns not just with big data analysis, as such, but also with its deployment in the legal domain. This article systematically analyses five big data use cases from the legal domain utilising a pluralistic and pragmatic mode of ethical reasoning. In each case we analyse what happens with data from its creation to its eventual archival or deletion, for which we utilise the concept of ‘data life cycle’. Despite the exploratory nature of this article and some limitations of our approach, the systematic summary we deliver depicts the five cases in detail, reinforces the idea that ethically significant issues exist across the entire big data life cycle, and facilitates understanding of how various ethical considerations interact with one another throughout the big data life cycle. Furthermore, owing to its pragmatic and pluralist nature, the approach is potentially useful for practitioners aiming to interrogate big data use cases. |
Article |
Cancelling proposed debatesAgenda Setting, Issue Ownership and Anti-elitist Parliamentary Style |
Journal | Politics of the Low Countries, Issue 3 2021 |
Keywords | agenda-setting, parliaments, anti-elitism, issue-ownership |
Authors | Simon Otjes and Roy Doedens |
AbstractAuthor's information |
The Dutch Tweede Kamer is unique among parliaments because here the agenda is actually determined in a public, plenary meeting of all MPs. In the Dutch Tweede Kamer 30 members of parliament (MPs) can request a plenary debate. Many opposition parties request these debates, but only 23% of these are actually held. We examine the question ‘under what conditions do political party groups cancel or maintain proposals for minority debates?’ as a way to gain insight into the black box of parliamentary agenda setting. We examine two complementary explanations: issue competition and parliamentary style. We trace all 687 minority debates that were proposed between 2012 and 2021 in the Netherlands. This allows us to see what proposals for debates MPs make and when they are retracted. We find strong evidence that anti-elitist parties maintain more debate proposals than do other parties |
Editorial |
Parliaments in the Low Countries: Representing Divided Societies |
Journal | Politics of the Low Countries, Issue 3 2021 |
Authors | Benjamin de Vet and Tom Louwerse |
Author's information |
Article |
Risk, restorative justice and the Crowna study of the prosecutor and institutionalisation in Canada |
Journal | The International Journal of Restorative Justice, Issue 2 2021 |
Keywords | restorative justice, institutionalisation, risk, prosecutor, Canada |
Authors | Brendyn Johnson |
AbstractAuthor's information |
In Canada, restorative justice programmes have long been institutionalised in the criminal justice system. In Ontario, specifically, their use in criminal prosecutions is subject to the approval of Crown attorneys (prosecutors) who are motivated in part by risk logics and risk management. Such reliance on state support has been criticised for the ways in which it might subvert the goals of restorative justice. However, neither the functioning of these programmes nor those who refer cases to them have been subject to much empirical study in Canada. Thus, this study asks whether Crown attorneys’ concerns for risk and its management impact their decision to refer cases to restorative justice programmes and with what consequences. Through in-depth interviews with prosecutors in Ontario, I demonstrate how they predicate the use of restorative justice on its ability to reduce the risk of recidivism to the detriment of victims’ needs. The findings suggest that restorative justice becomes a tool for risk management when prosecutors are responsible for case referrals. They also suggest that Crown attorneys bear some responsibility for the dangers of institutionalisation. This work thus contributes to a greater understanding of the functioning of institutionalised restorative justice in Canada. |
Article |
Democratic Scrutiny of COVID-19 LawsAre Parliamentary Committees Up to the Job? |
Journal | European Journal of Law Reform, Issue 2 2021 |
Keywords | parliament, scrutiny, committees, COVID-19, rights, legislation, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom |
Authors | Sarah Moulds |
AbstractAuthor's information |
In response to the complex and potentially devastating threat posed by COVID-19, parliaments around the world have transferred unprecedented powers to executive governments and their agencies (Edgar, ‘Law-making in a Crisis’, 2020), often with the full support of the communities they represent. These laws were passed within days, sometimes hours, with limited safeguards and a heavy reliance on sunsetting provisions, some of which are dependent on the pandemic being officially called to an end. While parliaments themselves have suspended or reduced sitting days (Twomey, ‘A Virtual Australian Parliament is Possible’, 2020), parliamentary committees have emerged as the forum of choice when it comes to providing some form of parliamentary oversight of executive action. |
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Journal | European Journal of Law Reform, Issue 2 2021 |
Keywords | emergency legislation, sunset clauses, post-legislative review, COVID-19 |
Authors | Sean Molloy |
AbstractAuthor's information |
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, leaders across the globe scrambled to adopt emergency legislation. Amongst other things, these measures gave significant powers to governments in order to curb the spreading of a virus, which has shown itself to be both indiscriminate and deadly. Nevertheless, exceptional measures, however necessary in the short term, can have adverse consequences both on the enjoyment of human rights specifically and democracy more generally. Not only are liberties severely restricted and normal processes of democratic deliberation and accountability constrained but the duration of exceptional powers is also often unclear. One potentially ameliorating measure is the use of sunset clauses: dispositions that determine the expiry of a law or regulation within a predetermined period unless a review determines that there are reasons for extension. The article argues that without effective review processes, far from safeguarding rights and limiting state power, sunset clauses can be utilized to facilitate the transferring of emergency powers whilst failing to guarantee the very problems of normalized emergency they are included to prevent. Thus, sunset clauses and the review processes that attach to them should be approached with caution. |
Article |
Reducing Ethnic Conflict in Guyana through Political Reform |
Journal | European Journal of Law Reform, Issue 1 2021 |
Keywords | Guyana, race, ethnic conflict, political power, constitutional reform |
Authors | Nicola Pierre |
AbstractAuthor's information |
This article discusses using constitutional reform to reduce ethnic conflict in Guyana. I start by exploring the determinants of ethnic conflict. I next examine Guyana’s ethnopolitical history to determine what factors led to political alignment on ethnic lines and then evaluate the effect of the existing political institutions on ethnic conflict. I close with a discussion on constitutional reform in which I consider a mix of consociationalist, integrative, and power-constraining mechanisms that may be effective in reducing ethnic conflict in Guyana’s ethnopolitical circumstances. |
Article |
Unwrapping the Effectiveness Test as a Measure of Legislative QualityA Case Study of the Tuvalu Climate Change Resilience Act 2019 |
Journal | European Journal of Law Reform, Issue 1 2021 |
Keywords | effectiveness test, legislative quality, drafting process, Tuvalu Climate Change Resilience Act 2019 |
Authors | Laingane Italeli Talia |
AbstractAuthor's information |
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Article |
Comments and Content from Virtual International Online Dispute Resolution Forum1-2 March 2021, Hosted by the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution (NCTDR) |
Journal | International Journal of Online Dispute Resolution, Issue 1 2021 |
Authors | David Allen Larson, Noam Ebner, Jan Martinez e.a. |
Abstract |
For the past 20 years, NCTDR has hosted a series of ODR Forums in locations around the world. For 2021, the Forum was held virtually, with live presentation over a web video platform, and recorded presentations available to participants. A full recording of the sessions can be found through http://odr.info/2021-virtual-odr-forum-now-live/. The following items are narrative notes from some of the presentations: |