Law Commons^™

Appointing Foxes To Guard Henhouses: The European Posted Workers' Directive, Aravind Ganesh

Aravind Ganesh

This note addresses certain complications inherent in governance with regards to posted workers, i.e. workers posted on a temporary basis from one Member State of the Union to another, for the provision of services in the host Member State. In particular, this note attempts to explain how the current Directive 96/71/EC (the "Posted Workers' Directive") sets out mechanisms that produce socially inefficient levels of minimum protections for such posted workers that have to be provided by their employers. This note argues that none of the methods by which host Member States may set such levels of minimum protection (namely positive …

Wild-West Cowboys Versus Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: Some Problems In Comparative Approaches To Extreme Speech, Eric Heinze

Prof. Eric Heinze, Queen Mary University of London

All European states ban some form of hate speech. US law precludes such bans. In view of the political and symbolic importance of free speech, it becomes tempting to assume that trans-Atlantic differences towards hate speech reflect deeper cultural divisions.

However, we must pay attention to comparative methodology before drawing ambitious conclusions about cross-cultural social and political differences that derive solely from differences in formal, black-letter norms. In this volume, Robert Post claims that formal, constitutional requirements of content-neutral regulation reflect a freer public sphere in the US, in contrast to the European public sphere.

Yet a legal-realist approach casts …