aSchool of Law, University of Glasgow. Versions of this paper were presented at the European Social Science History Conference in Lisbon in February 2008 and at a Workshop on Industrial Democracy at the London School of Economics in May 2008. I am very grateful to Nina Fishman for alerting me to the unpublished note on compulsory arbitration cited at n 111 below, and for asking me the question, why did he think as he did? I am also very grateful to Alan Bogg, Emilios Christodoulidis, Paul Davies and Mark Freedland for comments on an earlier draft.
1468-2230/asset/MLR_left.gif?v=1&s=2b5f4c8dadd2fc2abc1d0013ea56daeac2114771)
Otto Kahn-Freund and Collective Laissez-Faire: An Edifice without a Keystone?
Article first published online: 20 FEB 2009
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2230.2009.00741.x
© 2009 The Author. Journal Compilation © 2009 The Modern Law Review Limited
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How to Cite
Dukes, R. (2009), Otto Kahn-Freund and Collective Laissez-Faire: An Edifice without a Keystone?. The Modern Law Review, 72: 220–246. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2230.2009.00741.x
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aSchool of Law, University of Glasgow. Versions of this paper were presented at the European Social Science History Conference in Lisbon in February 2008 and at a Workshop on Industrial Democracy at the London School of Economics in May 2008. I am very grateful to Nina Fishman for alerting me to the unpublished note on compulsory arbitration cited at n 111 below, and for asking me the question, why did he think as he did? I am also very grateful to Alan Bogg, Emilios Christodoulidis, Paul Davies and Mark Freedland for comments on an earlier draft.
Publication History
- Issue published online: 20 FEB 2009
- Article first published online: 20 FEB 2009
This paper describes Otto Kahn-Freund's advocacy of the British ‘collective laissez-faire’ system of regulation of industrial relations, in which regulation proceeded autonomously of the state. It suggests that a weakness of collective laissez-faire as a normative principle was its failure to make adequate provision for the furtherance of the public interest. It links this failure to a more general reluctance, on the part of Kahn-Freund, to conceive of the state as representative of the public interest. And it seeks to explain this reluctance with reference to Kahn-Freund's experiences of living and working as a labour court judge in the Weimar Republic, and of moving to the UK as a refugee from Nazism.