Reviews
| Date | 01 November 1986 |
| Published date | 01 November 1986 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1986.tb01718.x |
818
THE
MODERN
LAW
REVIEW
[Vol. 49
perspective may give rise to untenable overgeneralisations as to the extent
to which industrial relations is or was subject to legal
regulation.67
It is important to retain these aspects
of
Kahn-Freund’s vision both in
analysing developments and devising future strategies.
Labour and the
Law
and the insights into Kahn-Freund’s work provided in
Building
on
Kahn-Freund
will therefore retain their value however much future
developments transform the state
of
British labour law. In extending the
subject
to
the expanded horizons suggested by Davies and Freedland both
in their Editorial Introduction to the third edition
of
Labour and the Law
and their own
Text and Materials
the point becomes even more important.
In assessing the actual impact of the law and its relative importance
as
a
factor influencing behaviour it is necessary to show an awareness
of
its
limitations in the past, even though these may change over time. While
the protagonists
of
British industrial relations will undoubtedly have to
learn to live in an ever changing legal environment, the labour lawyer
must never be blind to the limits
of
the law however much circumstantial
evidence seen from a blinkered legal perspective may suggest that it is and
therefore always can be an overriding force. BOB
SIMPSON*
REVIEWS
CONFLICT
OF
LAWS
AND
EUROPEAN COMMUNITY LAW: With
special reference
to
the Community Conventions on private
international law. By
IAN
F.
FLETCHER. [North-Holland
Publishing Company. 1982. Price not stated.]
FOR
quite a considerable time now the European Community has been
active in the field
of
private international law. The Commission seems to
have taken the view that unification, or at least harmonisation,
of
the law
in this area will contribute to the objectives of the Community, a view
partly supported by Article
220
of
the E.E.C. Treaty, which requires the
Member States to negotiate conventions for the following purposes:
granting foreigners the same legal rights and protection as nationals;
abolition of double taxation; mutual recognition
of
companies, retention
of
legal personality on the transfer
of
a company’s seat to another country
and the facilitation
of
trans-national mergers; and recognition of judgments.
These are all worthy objectives and others, such as the unification
of
choice-of-law rules in the area of obligations, have been added. How
much has been achieved? This book helps
us
to find out.
Dr. Fletcher’s book is divided into two parts, a General Part which
contains a survey
of
the effect on conflict
of
laws of the emergence
of
the
Community and a Special Part which covers the various conventions. The
General Part is concerned with the special characteristics
of
the Community
legal order and its implications for conflict
of
laws. The author distinguishes
three types
of
conflict: those between Community law and national law;
those between the laws
of
the Member States
inter se,
and those between
Community law and “the general body of legal systems
of
the world,
67
e.g.
that the law was totally absent from British industrial relations before
1971,
a
*
Senior Lecturer in Law, London School of Economics.
view responsible for many errors
of
analysis and prognosis in the last two decades.
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