The Reform of Class and Representative Actions in European Legal Systems: A New Framework for Collective Redress in Europe by Christopher Hodges
| Published date | 01 July 2009 |
| Date | 01 July 2009 |
| Author | Mark Mildred |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2009.00763_1.x |
phers in this lovingly assembled bookare a testament to Michael Taggart’s incom-
parable mapping skills in the landscape of administrative law. A Simple Common
Lawyer is an impressive and richly deserved tribute to one of the titans of Com-
monwealth public law: it functions as a fantastic primer, rather than substitute,for
Taggart’s voracious writings and exempli¢es the enduring virtues of thefestschrift
genre.The obvious diversity yet underlying unity of the subject matter contained
within the volume is an apt re£ection of a scholar who has resolutely demon-
strated that acul tureof justi¢cation should operate in academia as well as in public
administration.
MatthewWindsor
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Christopher Hodges, The Reform of Class and Representative Actions in
EuropeanLegalSystems:ANewFrameworkforCollectiveRedressin
Europe,Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2008, 319 pp, hb d35.00.
This book represents the ¢rst fruits of a project on the globalisationof class actions
led by the author and Professor Deborah Hensler of Stanford Law School. The
text is forti¢ed by references to national reports from a number of jurisdictions
that enable a comparative view to be taken of the historical development of and
structures employed in collective remedies.
The book is divided into three parts: where the EU jurisdictions are now and
how they arrived there; the choices facing European legislators in developing
vehicles for collective redress; and the underlying policy goals that inform those
choices. In fact, those distinctions sometimes blur, one consequence of which is
that there are elements of repetition both in the questions addressed and in the
evidence adduced in the discussion. For example, the same point is made about
the Consumer Association’s unique right to bring proceedings as a designated
body under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 is made
on successive pages. Nonetheless, the material tracing the development of reme-
dies across Europe is comprehensive and very useful forcomparative purposes.
The most interesting part of the book is its re£ection upon the European
Commission’s di¡erent initiatives on enforcement of remedies for anti-competi-
tive behaviour and breaches of consumer regulations, and its analysis of and com-
mentaryon the many o⁄cialpublications in the area. These are set inthe context
of the need to stimulate competition and ensure the e⁄ciency of markets in an
essentially economic Union, the regulation of the market trumping the protec-
tion of consumers who su¡er small losses.
The author sets out to test what may and may not work in practice. His con-
clusion is that the optimum mixture is a system that empowers public oversight
of redress and encourages voluntary compliance, with private law mechanisms
coming a distant third. The ¢rst part of this argument challenges the Commis-
sion’s avowed approach (adopted for reaso ns of economyor because of the under-
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Judge’s Clerk,The Court of Appeal of New Zealand
Reviews
674 r2009 The Authors.Journal Compilation r200 9 The ModernLaw Review Limited.
(2009) 72(4) 669^692
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