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In the dark days of the 1980s and 1990s, the abolition of capital punishment was virtually unthinkable. However, a new form of abolitionism – which I call Rule of Law abolitionism – has raised the hopes of death penalty opponents. In this chapter, I elucidate the logic of the Rule of Law abolitionist argument, distinguishing it from its more familiar doctrinal and moral variants. I then assess its strengths and weaknesses. On the basis of this critique, I indicate the route Rule of Law abolitionism must travel to bring about the demise of the death penalty.

This paper aims to analyze the ex ante and ex post economic efficiency of the preventive agreement (concordato preventivo) or composition with creditors as defined by the Italian Bankruptcy Law. This study examines four possible outcomes of the procedure: homologation (confirmation); the degree of dissent/consent of creditors; the revocation, admissibility or inadmissibility; the declaration of the company bankruptcy in preventive agreement.

This paper uses data from 728 Italian companies which filed for preventive agreement in 2016. In reference to each of the four possible outcomes, this study applies nine logit regressions to analyze the effects of a series of efficiency variables ex ante (corporate-based drivers) and ex post (procedure-based drivers).

Results show the relevance of the debt structure, ownership structure and virtuous behavior, corporate governance and management systems, as well as effectivity of the court control on the preventive agreement outcome.

This paper draws on original data of bankruptcy in Italy and gives empirical evidence of the ex ante and ex post factors on the outcomes of the preventive agreement.

This article explores how legal intermediaries facilitate or inhibit social change. We suggest the increasing complexity and ambiguity of legal rules coupled with the shift from government to governance provide legal intermediaries greater opportunities to influence law and social change. Drawing from new institutional sociology, we suggest rule-intermediaries shape legal and social change, with varying degrees of success, in two ways: (1) law is filtered through non-legal logics emanating from various organizational fields and (2) law is professionalized by non-legal professionals. We draw from case studies in the United States and France to show how intermediaries facilitate or inhibit social change.

After considering the material before me, I have formed the opinion that it shall be permitted for the petitioner to examine the file under scrutiny. Deliberation on the case did not take place behind closed doors and there is no lawful prohibition to the examination…in addition I accept the position of the respondent, according to which in spite of the fact that a large portion of the details of the affair were published in the judgment…the file contains material whose revelation can cause unnecessary harm to the central witness…the examination considered will be contingent on an undertaking in writing…according to which the petitioner will not publicize anything that will damage the privacy of the victims and their families beyond the damage that already occurred by the court judgment. (Decision of magistrate Yigaal Marzel, 2006 in the matter of C.A 125/50 Yaakobowitz v. Attorney General)

The question of health and safety at work is a central issue for trade unions. In Britain it is an area of concern where there were important legislative initiatives in the 1970s and 1980s, although surprisingly this has received relatively little attention in the debates about trade unionism. This neglect results in an aspect of union activity about which little is known. Explores through a detailed longitudinal study of a middle‐range engineering firm, from the late 1970s into the 1990s, the ways in which trade unions organize and act on health and safety questions. Argues that it is almost “routine” that workers face dangers and hazards at work, a central feature of the work and employment experience of most workers. However, this is often difficult to deal with as individual issues, or as matters which are subject to collective consideration. On the one hand, workers often appear to accept the dangers and hazards they face. On the other hand, managements are preoccupied with questions relating to production and finance, rather than the day‐to‐day problems faced by workers. This tension suggests that the future wellbeing of workers in unionized workplaces lies not so much with legislative provisions and rights at work, but in education and the organizing ability of workplace unions, raising and addressing what often seem like individualistic problems in collective ways.

Considerations of the legal rights of incarcerated juveniles are often concerned with the myriad ways in which due process rights are circumscribed, abridged, or undermined by the operations of the juvenile court (e.g., Berkheiser, 2016; Cleary, 2017; Feld, 1999; Rapisarda & Kaplan, 2016). Studies of youth legal consciousness have additionally sought to explore the role of media, legal status, court experiences, and even parents in the formation of youth attitudes about the justice system (e.g., Abrego, 2011; Brisman, 2010; Greene, Sprott, Madon, & Jung, 2010; Pennington, 2017). This chapter builds on this work by exploring the way rights shaped the everyday lives of incarcerated youth. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in a juvenile hall, this chapter explores three different moments outside of a formal legal context where the invocation of due process rights limited the self-expression and exploration of incarcerated youth. In each of these cases, the invocation of protecting due process rights by adults served to stifle youth efforts to remake juvenile hall as a place open and receptive to their needs. These three moments demonstrate that rights project a particular legal vision onto a world that does not neatly conform to the reality in which youth lived. For these reasons, the consideration of legal rights for youth must also consider how these rights can forestall the very transformation in circumstances that many youth seek.

We investigate how firing notification procedures influence wage growth. Using a sample of 33 countries over the period 2006–2015, we show that administrative requirements in cases of dismissal have a positive and significant effect on wage growth. The result is robust even after controlling for the endogeneity of the firing notification restrictions, the involvement of third parties in the wage bargaining process, the minimum wage, the firms' training policy, and the composition of employment. These findings suggest that firing notification procedures foster the growth of wages by increasing the bargaining power of incumbent workers.

The paper articulates common organizing narratives which recur within alternative movements in law, and posits the art of dispute resolution as an experimental reconstructive methodology for engaging conflicts, while incorporating a critique of classical liberal thought. The paper offers a reading of conflict resolution approaches, including Alternative Dispute Resolution; Therapeutic Jurisprudence; Restorative Justice, and Transitional Justice, in search of a new legal culture or jurisprudence which emerges from the following narratives: emphasis on process; emphasis on constructive conflict intervention; deconstruction and hybridization; a search for an underlying layer; emphasis on relationship and acknowledgment of emotions; community work and bottom-up development.

International asset recovery proceedings may be hindered by several obstacles, especially in the case of “failed states” or of states that experience a regime change. In this context, Switzerland, a country with extensive experience in asset recovery, attempted two legislative leaps forward, the first in 2011 and the second in 2016. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the legislative innovations in Switzerland, with special reference to their strengths, weakness and compatibility with human rights standards.

This paper draws on legal scholarship, jurisprudence, reports and other open source data, to analyze two important legislative innovations in Switzerland [Law on the Restitution of Assets of Criminal Origin of 2010 (LRAI) and law on assets of illicit origin (LVP).

The two Swiss legislative initiatives that will be examined (LRAI and LVP) are innovative in nature, but serious weaknesses and obstacles to asset recovery remain unaddressed. Despite their flaws, these two legislative innovations can inspire positive change in international and national norms. They can be viewed as part of a work-in-progress for the reinforcement of asset recovery proceedings and international cooperation in this domain.

Since the new law on asset recovery (LVP) came into force (July 1, 2016), this has been the first study examining the strengths and weaknesses of the adopted text, its compatibility with human rights standards and its potential influence on international standards of asset recovery.

This chapter examines the barriers posed for smaller and poorer World Trade Organization (WTO) members to challenge trade barriers under the WTO's dispute settlement understanding. It first addresses the implications of the judicialization of the WTO's dispute settlement system. It next examines reasons why participation in the WTO's dispute settlement system matters. It then summarizes the results of studies of the system's use and, in light of these findings, posits explanations for smaller developing countries' lack of engagement.