Simon Deakin

Recorded on 9 May 2018 at Shaw Library, Old Building Theresa May’s claim that free market capitalism constitutes “the greatest agent of collective human progress ever created” raises a complex question: can markets pursue social values? Julia Black is Pro Director for Research and Professor in the Department of Law, LSE. Simon Deakin is Professor of Law, University of Cambridge and Director of the Centre for Business Research.

This article describes the author’s plans for and design of his research project upon the Personal Work Contracts in European Comparative Law; it seeks consultation with the readership about those plans and that design; and it develops two linked aspects of the theoretical infrastructure for that project, namely the analysis of the ‘family of personal work contracts’ and the analysis of the ‘personal work nexus’.

Ironically, a German labour court initiated the European Court of Justice’s first substantive decision1 on the ‘Article 13 Directives’2 on combating discrimination and establishing equal treatment—although implementation of these directives in Germany is still pending.3 Suspiciously, the issue taken up first has been age discrimination, that is, a form of discrimination that affects all of us sooner or later and is not susceptible to inciting ethnic envy (or any other form of ‘affirmative...