eAccess to Justice – Arbitration in Hungary – Labour Migration

Dear readers, my apologies for the puzzling title of this post, but I take the opportunity to bring the following three unrelated publications to your attention before this year ends. HAPPY 2017!

A few months ago the book eAccess to Justice was published (eds. Karim Benyekhlef, Jane Bailey, Jacquelyn Burkell, Fabien Gélinas; University of Ottawa Press 2016), including a few papers on cross-border litigation. More information is available here. The blurb reads:

Part I of this work focuses on the ways in which digitization projects can affect fundamental justice principles. It examines claims that technology will improve justice system efficiency and offers a model for evaluating e-justice systems that incorporates a broader range of justice system values. The emphasis is on the complicated relationship between privacy and transparency in making court records and decisions available online. Part II examines the implementation of technologies in the justice system and the challenges it comes with, focusing on four different technologies: online court information systems, e-filing, videoconferencing, and tablets for presentation and review of evidence by jurors. The authors share a measuring enthusiasm for technological advances in the courts, emphasizing that these technologies should be implemented with care to ensure the best possible outcome for access to a fair and effective justice system. Finally, Part III adopts the standpoints of sociology, political theory and legal theory to explore the complex web of values, norms, and practices that support our systems of justice, the reasons for their well-established resistance to change, and the avenues and prospects of eAccess. The chapters in this section provide a unique and valuable framework for thinking with the required sophistication about legal change.

Csongor István Nagy (University of Szeged) has published The Lesson of a Short-Lived Mutiny: The Rise and Fall of Hungary’s Controversial Arbitration Regime in Cases Involving National Assets (27 The American Review of International Arbitration 2 2016, 239-246), available on SSRN. The blurb reads:

This paper presents and analyzes Hungary’s recent legislative efforts and failure to exclude arbitration in matters involving (Hungarian) national assets, demonstrating the difficulties a country faces if it attempts to defy the prevailing pattern of dispute settlement in international trade. The lesson of the Hungarian saga is that, unsurprisingly, arbitration is not only a ‘take it or leave it’ but even a ‘take it or leave’ rule of the club of international economic relations.

Last October, INT-AR Paper 6, authored by Veerle Van Den Eeckhout (University of Antwerp), was published and is entitled “Toepasselijk arbeidsrecht bij langdurige detachering volgens het wijzigingsvoorstel voor de Detacheringsrichtlijn. Enkele beschouwingen vanuit ipr-perspectief” (in English: “The draft proposal to amend the Posting of Workers Directive assessed from the private international law perspective”). The paper is written in Dutch and is downloadable here and on SSRN.