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In this paper I propose that role of law in Karl Polanyi's concept of the 'always embedded economy' (Block 2003) can be enriched by the application of the lens of community (Perry-Kessaris 2008) developed by Roger Cotterrell (1996-present). I 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...

‘Constitutionalisation’ is the key concept in the search for legitimate governance in the European Union and in the international system. This paper suggests the revitalising of a discipline which is widely neglected in European law and international law scholarship. It does not, however, recommend a return to the conflict of laws (private international law) in the traditional sense. The new type of conflicts law that the paper advocates is not concerned with selecting the proper legal...

This paper examines the extent to which one manifestation of neoliberal transnational legality, represented by the investment rules regime, may be vulnerable to critical resistance in the post-recession environment. If the regime was experiencing a crisis of legitimacy before the global recession set in, it might now be portrayed as having broken down entirely. This paper argues, in contrast, that the regime has a constitution-like resiliency that is intended to adapt and last far beyond the...

The judgments of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) of December 2008 in Viking and Laval on the compatibility of national collective labour law with European prerogatives have caused quite a heated critical debate. This article seeks to put this debate in constitutional perspectives. In its first part, it reconstructs in legal categories what Fritz W. Scharpf has characterised as a decoupling of economic integration from the various welfare traditions of the Member States. European...

This paper sketches out some preliminary thoughts on political economy that stem from problematics that emerge from TWAIL. The TWAIL story of international law is one of frustration and disappointment because of the constant exploitation of the Third World despite all the historic changes in international legal ideas and institutions, but it also a story of hope in the moments of resistance. In order to better debate how particular international institutions should be changed or whether...

This paper will cover a wide range of issues. It will start with a reconstruction of the European Community’s ‘social deficit’, arguing that a credible response to this deficit would be a pre-condition for the democratic legitimacy of the deepened integration project. Such a response can be developed in a re-conceptualisation of European law as a new type of supranational/trans-statal conflict of laws – this is the thesis defended in the second section. This vision is contrasted in the third...

Typically when we think of street markets we think of chaotic places full of energy and vibrating with danger and opportunity. Traders or governments create markets to meet existing and emergent demands as well as the unintended consequences of other policy decisions. It is this institutional design, this governance, this regulatory process that provides access to the market and organizes the vending space therein. Public and private entities operating in fiscally constrained environments...

Latin America is currently undergoing Karl Polanyi's "double movement" at full swing, as most governments of the region are currently experimenting with policies that defy the neoliberal orthodoxy that has been reigning there for almost three decades. One of such governments has been the center-left Concertación governments of Chile, which have been elected since the restoration of democracy in 1990. In addition to poverty alleviation programs, Concertación has been in an ongoing process...

Hardly anywhere is the trend towards a perfection of transnational governance arrangements and their “legalization” more visible than in international trade. Governance arrangements established through and alongside WTO law are both practically important and theoretically challenging. They do not just organise international trade relations. They also affect national and regional (European) regulatory policies partly directly, partly more indirectly. How can we explain and how should we...

This paper explores the intellectual tradition of Max Weber,Emil Durkheim, Joseph Shumpeter and Karl Polanyi — economic sociologists whose work has been largely ignored by corporate governance scholars focused on the more traditional areas of economics. The foundation laid by Weber is the central focus of the paper. Weber's writing in Economy and Society laid the groundwork for an approach to the study of firms and markets that diverges significantly from that in of the neoclassical economic...

Europe continues to search for its - "European" - social model and the search seems to become increasingly urgent. It is no longer just the "democratic deficit", but also and alongside it, the "social deficit" of the EU which needs to be cured. That new concern is, in fact, a rejection of the older answers. According to the ordo-liberal interpretation of the European legal order as an "Economic Constitution" and, successively, in the analyses of the EU as a "Regulatory State", the sphere of...

This article presents information related to market transactions. As a mode of organization, markets are so pervasive in our own lives that it may be hard to think just how novel and contingent (in geologic time) they may be. It was economist Karl Polanyi who sought to isolate a juncture in this process of "becoming a market", the point at which the idea of the market transaction becomes not just a tool or an instrument, but a central organizing principle of social life. But it is not clear...

KM: Our point of departure is Karl Polanyi's classic work on the emergence of industrial capitalism and recent studies that further develop Polanyi's insights. We draw on these analyses to pose a fundamental issue confronting all capitalist societies: the need to restrain the market and prevent the economy from dominating other institutional realms. We explain how this general institutional challenge bear specifically on the problem of crime and crime control

For over a century, jurists have debated as to whether IP rights should be extended to this or that output such as photographs, computer programs, products of data aggregation, virtual objects, natural and organic materials, “creative” algorithms, and genes. What is surprising is the continuing and bifurcating discourse landscape: “IP law protects and rewards creativity” versus “IP law protects investment”. This paper suggests that IP law indiscriminately and simultaneously protected all...

In the pandemic, investors like all responsible citizens share an obligation to keep the community safe. This obligation extends to informed market decision-making which goes beyond self-interest. The current disconnect between financial markets and the economy is a story of two different realities – or perhaps one harsh reality and one expectant gamble. The disconnect cannot just be explained by the different purposes of economic and financial market analysis but rather by the...