Book Review: The Right to Work. Legal and Philosophical Perspectives
| Date | 01 March 2016 |
| Published date | 01 March 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/138826271601800107 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Book Reviews
88 Intersentia
variety of di erent countries. It o ers an abundance of ndings that are all very
important for assessing the status quo in the particular welfare state in question.
Divergent and convergent trends are depicted and these are undoubtedly worth
examining. Its ma in achievement lies in describing these de velopments rather than in
identifying s omething unexpected and never hea rd of before. Despite its aspiration to
paint a single overal l picture of an emerging new wel fare state, it o ers a lot of small,
sometimes min iscule, pictures of changes of the welfa re state here and there.
Eberhard Eichenhofer
Friedrich-Schiller Universität Jena
Germany
Eberhard Eichenhofer has just retired from his Chair in Civil and Social Law at the
Friedrich Schiller University in Jena and now lives in Berlin. He teaches and conducts
research in European, international and national socia l security law.
Virginia Mantouva lou (ed.), e Right to Work. Legal and Philosophic al Perspectives,
Oxford, Portland, Ore gon: Hart Publishi ng, 2015, 368 pp., ISBN 978–1–84946–
510– 6
Bob Hepple wrote an excellent ar ticle on the right to work 35 years ago (Hepple 1981)
that is sti ll required reading for a nyone interested in this topic. e distinguished
quality of his a rticle is proved by the fact that most authors of the reviewed book cite
it and, for two of them (Freedland and Kountouris, Howe) use it as their ideological
starting point. It is a huge advantage that the editor was able to persuade this unique
scholar to write the foreword to the book . Hepple aptly emphasises that, w ith the
recent increase in unemployment rates in many European states, the debate on the
right to work has become even more importa nt.
e book adopts an interdisciplinary approach and includes contributions
re ec ting legal and phi losophical perspectives. is multidisciplinary dimension
renders this complex issue understand able and clearly widens the ambit of its potentia l
readership. However, since Mantouvalou’s major interest is the adoption of a human
rights’ approach to the employment relationship, human rights law is the dominant
perspective.
Remarkably, the sequence of chapters begins w ith a philosophical contribution by
David Wiggins on the et hical meaning of work, in which he ashes great quotations
from e Merchant of Venice and from the works of Aristotle and Simone Weil.
Wiggins’ statement on page 13 – ‘[i]f there is a right to work it is not a right like any old
other right. It is a right to somet hing momentous’ – creates a challenging foundation
for other contributors.
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