Abstract This article examines the legal and economic effects of the Employment Rights Act 2025. It applies the Cambridge Centre for Business Research Labour Regulation Index (CBR-LRI), together with newly developed subindices, to measure the Act's effect on the strength of labour law protections in the UK, and to benchmark those changes against OECD countries. This legal analysis is combined with time-series analysis for the UK and panel-data analysis for selected OECD jurisdictions. The findings indicate that the Employment Rights Act produces only an incremental increase in the overall strength of labour law protections in the UK, although the subindices reveal more substantial changes in areas where the Act introduces new rights relating to zero-hours contracts, leave entitlements and trade union rights. The time-series analysis indicates that comparable reforms have historically been associated with small but positive increases in the UK employment rate, while the panel-data analysis identifies positive associations between stronger labour laws and higher employment, lower unemployment and higher productivity rates. Overall, this suggests that the strengthening of labour laws can yield positive economic effects.

The use of natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) to analyse the structure of legal texts is a fast-growing field. While much attention has been devoted to the use of these techniques to predict case outcomes, they have the potential to contribute more broadly to research into the nature of legal reasoning and its relationship to social and economic change. In this article, we use recently developed NLP and ML methods to test the claim that judicial language is systematically shaped by economic shocks deriving from the business cycle and by long-term trends in the economy associated with technological change and industrial transition. Focusing on cases decided under the Anglo-Welsh poor law between the 1690s and 1830s, we show that the terminology used to describe the right to poor relief shifted over time according to economic conditions. We explore the implications of our results for the poor law, the theory of legal evolution, and socio-legal research methods.

In this article, through a case study focusing on the evolution of China's insolvency law, we test the 'transplant effect' hypothesis, in particular the claim that transplanted laws can only work when there is local or 'endogenous' demand for them in the 'host' or 'receiving' state. We also test claims made for a 'co-evolutionary' understanding of the law-economy relationship in the context of China's development. In addition to documentary sources, this article draws on interviews we carried out in Wenzhou in September 2017 and December 2018. Our study shows that aspects of the transplant and coevolution hypotheses are in need of some modification if they are to explain China's legal and economic development. It also suggests that formal rules can be operationalised at the level of practice once they are seen as legitimate. While this is a process which takes time, a period of crisis provides opportunities for the learning process around the use of formal rules and procedures to be accelerated.

This article undertakes an analysis of the prospects for global labour law from the perspective of long-run capitalist dynamics associated with phases of industrialisation. The article argues that Britain’s early industrialisation owed much to legal institutions, including the poor law and factory legislation, which supported labour mobility and improvements in productivity. Labour standards constructed around this model achieved a global reach by the middle decades of the twentieth century. Although weakened during the period of neoliberal policy dominance which began in Europe and North America in the 1980s, these institutions have proved surprisingly resilient, and have been strengthened in certain regions. If neoliberalism is ending, and it is not yet clear what will replace it, it is possible to predict that labour law will continue to have a future in mediating the impacts of markets and technology on humans and nature.

This paper reports first results from the extension of the CBR Labour Regulation Index (CBR-LRI) to include changes in labour laws around the world over the last decade. The index, which previously went up to 2013, now codes for labour laws in 117 countries, equivalent to 95% of world GDP, for the period 1970 to 2022. The data show that the steady and incremental improvement of worker protections over time which was previously reported in studies of the index has been maintained. Findings specific to the 2023 update include data on the impact of Covid-19 and the rise of gig work. The Covid-19 emergency led numerous countries to impose controls over dismissals, some of which were temporary, while others have persisted. Efforts to normalize gig or platform work, by extending certain labour law protections to cover the new forms of employment associated with the platform economy, are also identified in the 2023 update. Taking advantage of the new dataset and its extensive year and country coverage, we conduct a time series analysis which aims to understand the dynamic interaction of labour laws with the labour share of national income, productivity, unemployment and employment at country level. In virtually all of the countries we analyse, worker-protective changes in labour laws are positively correlated with increases in the labour share, and in a majority of them they are also positively correlated with productivity.

This chapter analyses the interaction between corporate governance and employment relations by tracing the dominance of shareholder primacy, contrasting it with stakeholder models, and highlighting the implications for firm performance and innovation. It explains theoretical perspectives that frame employees’ position within the firm, the incompleteness of the employment contract, and the role of law in overcoming coordination failures while fostering innovation. The chapter then examines empirical methodologies, particularly Leximetric coding and econometric analysis, which enable systematic, longitudinal study of legal rules and their effects. It presents evidence on long-term trends in shareholder and worker protection and evaluates the economic effects of shareholder rights, board structures, employment laws, takeovers, and hybrid governance across national contexts. Finally, the chapter assesses how strong shareholder protection regimes may undermine long-term investment and innovation, exacerbate inequality, and tilt power away from employees, while worker-protective laws and codetermination mechanisms enhance productivity, innovation, and a fairer distribution of economic gains.

Sir Patrick Elias occupies a unique position in modern British employment law as an academic, practitioner and judge during the period of its expansion from the 1970s to the present day. His insistence on the need for conceptual clarity in legal reasoning has helped prevent the law falling into atrophy and confusion during a time when the volume and granularity of statutory texts was increasing year on year. His employment status case law, while clear, is nonetheless cautiously expressed and is consistent with an approach more widely shared across the British judiciary, of avoiding purpose-orientated reasoning when interpreting legal concepts in their statutory context. A tendency towards formalism in legal reasoning does not necessarily make the law more predictable or straightforward to apply. The emergence of a highly elaborate jurisprudence on the employment status question has fuelled litigation over matters which could have been settled more straightforwardly had a more policy-aware approach to interpretation been adopted. There are historical precedents for retiring the courts from the task of determining employment status to which policy makers might wish to give due consideration.

Contemporary populism is widely understood as a response to rising inequality and insecurity engendered by the neoliberal reshaping of labour and financial markets since the 1980s. Less is known about what populist governments do once in office. To address this question, we undertake a cross-national study which combines recently created datasets on populism and legal change. We find that populist governments, compared to non-populist ones, strengthen workers’ rights and weaken those of shareholders. However, a closer look at the types of labour and corporate laws adopted by populists tells a more nuanced story. Populist governments (both left- and right-wing) avoid taking steps to restore legal rights to trade unions, while the laws they adopt in the corporate sphere have the effect of protecting pro-populist business elites. This finding is consistent with the view of populism as less a rejection of neoliberalism than a mutation or adaptation of it.

This introduction to the special issue on the future of work and working time offers an overview of issues of relevance to present-day debates on working time. The aim is to bring together two divergent debates, the first on working time reduction for full-time workers and the second on the diversification and fragmentation of working time. It considers the history of working time including the forces that led to the establishment of the standard employment relationship and to reductions in standard working hours. It addresses contemporary trends and examines why there has been both a stalling of working time reduction and a diversification of working time norms. Some limitations of focussing only on clock time are considered as well as some of the benefits, from more meaningful work to better health and well-being, that stem from both regular and non-excessive working time. The final section turns to the case for reform: it argues that policies are required to address the fragmentation of working time, and that these policies should be combined with a focus on shortening standard working hours that could increase the sustainability of working time in a dual-earner society and even limit the supply of labour for jobs offering only fragmented working time.

Abstract This chapter examines the process through which foundational concepts in labour law developed in the long durée from the end of the Middle Ages to the dawn of modern capitalism. The juridical forms of slavery, service, and employment coevolved with colonization and industrialization. In the early Anthropocene, slavery was underpinned by legal reasoning which made it possible to treat some human beings as the property of others. The concept of service, which came to the fore with the destruction of the guild and rise of the factory, had a contractual base which was, however, combined with a subordinate status for labour. The modern contract of employment retains elements of subordination while incorporating the social rights recognized by the mid-twentieth century welfare state. Capitalism is not monolithic, but variegated by time and space. One consistent feature, nonetheless, has been its active shaping by the law of work.

Japan has identified corporate governance as an important element in its attempt to reform its economic system. A combination of political will and sustained implementation by civil servants has produced a corporate governance code and associated mechanisms to sustain and refine the changes that have been introduced in order to raise corporate profitability and stimulate the whole national economy. Meanwhile, the direction of reform has shifted from an initially principles-based approach towards an increasingly proscriptive, rules-based one, favouring the interests of investors over those of other stakeholders. Whether this will achieve the desired results is increasingly being questioned within Japan and runs counter to experience from markets where shareholder primacy already prevails. Japan's own prior experience of trying to transplant laws and institutions from these markets suggests a need for caution.

The concept of the ‘Capitalocene’ draws attention to the origins of the climate crisis in capitalist dynamics, and specifically to the need for natural resources to be reproduced for less than their true cost if firms are to remain profitable. This insight suggests that the environmental crisis, manifested by extreme climate events, and the crisis in labour law, manifested by wage suppression and rising inequality, have the same root cause. Bringing production and reproduction back into balance will require changes of a structural kind to the global economy, and a rethinking of the law-nature nexus. Labour Law, Extreme Climate Events, Human-Induced Climate Change, Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Rising Inequality, Law-Nature Nexus

The practice of corporate management is not wholly prior to the legal interventions which have sought to shape it since the first emergence of modern industry. A genealogical case study of mine safety legislation discloses the coevolutionary dynamic through which corporate law and practice have been mutually adjusted over time. Revealing the juridical roots of management highlights the importance of law as a normative grounding for the economy. It also validates a neo-realist conception of corporate law, which understands law to be part of the social reality which it constructs. Viewing law this way clarifies the issues at stake in notions of corporate responsibility, both in history, when the vertically integrated business corporation was in the process of being formed, and under current conditions, when it is fragmenting.

Abstract We study attitudes to legality and the rule of law in Russia through analysis of interviews with legal and business professionals conducted in 2013–14, the high point of the stabilisation of the Russian economy and polity following the transition of the 1990s. The annexation of Crimea occurred during the course of our fieldwork but the effects of the cooling of relations with the west and the introduction of sanctions were yet to be felt. We observed a perception that the administration of civil justice was not uniformly corrupt, but that in ‘political’ cases, that is, those involving state officials or powerful private interests, judicial decisions could in effect be bought and sold. This commodification of civil justice was the result of an empowered but predatory state. While the state was strong enough to engage in predation, however, it was seen as lacking the capacity to manage the economy in an effective way or to deliver essential public goods. We consider the implications of our findings for a conception of the rule of law as an emergent social norm. We conclude that the 1990s policy of weakening the state through privatisation and the removal of regulatory controls, a policy designed to ensure that the command economy did not return, has left Russia with a dysfunctional public order, under which the ‘normality’ envisaged by the reforms of the 1990s is a distant prospect.