Calling Power to Account: Law, Reparations and the Chinese Canadian Head Tax Case by David Dyzenhaus and Mayo Moran (eds)
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2007.00659_1.x |
| Published date | 01 July 2007 |
| Author | Adam Tucker |
| Date | 01 July 2007 |
seen if the recent Enron convictions will have any impact oncorporate standards in
America).It may be that moralcycles have some relationto busi nesscycles, with peo-
ple losing moral control during volatile upswings in prosperityand again when inse -
curity exacerbates during downturns. In the New Deal era, for instance, there was a
wide perception that the existing business culture had failed and tough legal and
moral regulation of the economy followed. Professor Frankel might return one day
to explore the crucial role of the public sphere; it could be that governmental retreat
since the 1980s from market regulation and discipline, and the ending of noblesse oblige
concepts of public-service careers in the developedwestern economies, is a signi¢cant
long-term cause of the rash of fraud that she now perceives.
Trust and Honesty concerns itself mainly with the US but Frankel’s insights will
still be of great interest to non-US readers, and not just because America sets the
pace (and writes the rules) for much of the global economy.We have seen spectacu-
lar frauds in Europe in the same period, such as the Parmalat insolvency in Italy, the
Elf corruption scandal in France, and the BCCI and Barings collapses in Britai n.
The scale of corruptions of the post-Communist privatized economies is only
beginning to be seen. So it is not hard to ¢nd fraud and incompetence on agrand
scale by business executives, politicians and regulators outside the US and a conco-
mitantrise in cynicism and distrust, evenwithout an in£uential law-and-econom-
ics professoriat or a right-wing ¢nancial press egging the process on.
Tr u s t a n d H o n e s t y e¡ortlessly combines Frankel’s detailed expertise in ¢nancial
law and business culture with wide reading in ethics, psychology, sociology and
economic theory, all expressed in an engaging and inviting style. Her work ben-
e¢ts all students of law, business, economics and government, whether interested
directlyin the evolutionof US business culture orconcerned with thepathologies
of market behaviour elsewhere. In a short and accessible book Frankel has sug-
gested many avenues for further research and re£ection, and one may hope that
teachers of contract, commercial law and company law in the UK will expose
their students - tomorrow’s business lawyers ^ to her work.
Joshua Getzler
n
DavidDyzenhausandMayoMoran(eds), Calling Power to Account: Law,
Reparations and the Chinese Canadian Head Tax Case,xvþ471pp, pb
d27.00,Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005
This fascinatingcollection of essays focuses on the Canadian response to a parti-
cular instance of legally sanctioned injustice, but the issues raised are of general
interest and thebook deserves a wider readership than its subject matter and sub-
title would suggest.
Between 1885 and 1923, Chinese immigrants to Canada were subject to an
explicitly racist head tax, payable on arrival. Ultimately, the tax proved ine¡ec-
tive as a deterrent and was replaced in 1923 with an outright ban. Following an
n
St Hugh’sCollege and Faculty of Law,University of Oxford.
Reviews
705
r2007 The Authors.Journal Compilation r2007 The Modern Law Review Limited.
(2007) 70(4) M LR 701^712
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