Parental Responsibility and the Duty to Consult - the public's view

This article considers the imposition, by the courts, of a parental duty to consult on matters of importance in a child’s life. The results of a survey of 2,300 respondents, who were asked to respond to a number of scenarios, are analysed and discussed. The survey provides some interesting reflections on the views of the general public as to who should be ‘in control’ over decision making for children.

Genocide and the International Court of Justice: Finally, a Duty to Prevent the Crime of Crimes

The International Court of Justice has issued its long-awaited decision in the suit filed by Bosnia and Herzegovina against Serbia and Montenegro with respect to the 1992–1995 war. The decision confirms the factual and legal determinations of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ruling that genocide was committed during the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995 but that the conflict as a whole was not genocidal in nature. The Court held that Serbia had failed in its duty to prevent genocide in Srebrenica, although—because, the Court said, there was no certainty that it could have succeeded in preventing the genocide—no damages were awarded. The judgment provides a strong and authoritative statement of the general duty upon states to prevent genocide that dovetails well with the doctrine of the responsibility to protect.

A Firm Perspective of Anti-dumping and Countervailing Duty Cases in the United States

The role played by firms in the prosecution of anti-dumping and countervailing duty cases in the United States is understudied. This article provides greater understanding of the challenges faced by firms during the process of prosecuting anti-dumping and countervailing duty cases in the United States. This is achieved by applying a theoretical model of corporate political activity to data collected through interviews with 24 trade attorneys in Washington, D.C., practising in the area of antidumping and countervailing duty law. Anti-dumping and countervailing duty cases are found to require significant resource commitments from firms in the participating industries, as well as requiring individual firms to make a number of strategic decisions. The value of an affirmative decision and imposition of duties to the domestic and foreign industry is found to be more nuanced than previous studies have suggested. Non-duty effects of AD and CVD cases are also confirmed. Finally a clearer understanding of the role of individual firms in anti-dumping and countervailing duty cases is shown to have the potential to improve how industry influence is taken account of in future research.

Risks to home care workers: Professional perspectives

Care at home is fundamental to community care policy, but the simultaneous growth of health and safety regulation has implications for home care services because of the duty of employers towards home care workers. This grounded theory study set in Northern Ireland used data from 19 focus groups and nine semi-structured interviews with a range of health and social services professionals and managers to explore perspectives on planning long term care for older people. Home care workers faced a wide range of hazards in the homes of clients, who themselves were faced with adapting their living habits due to their changing health and care needs and 'risks.' Creative approaches were used to ensure the health and safety of home care workers and simultaneously to meet the choices of clients. Staff experienced feelings of conflict when they judged it necessary to impose their way of providing home care and thus impose their values on clients to create a safe working environment. There was variation between and within organizations in terms of the staff focus on client needs or on their employer responsibility towards home care workers. The planning of home care services must take account of both the choices of clients and the hazards facing home care staff.

The demand for labor: An analysis using matched employer-employee data from the German LIAB. Will the high unskilled worker own-wage elasticity please stand up?

This paper uses matched employee-employer LIAB data to provide panel estimates of the structure of labor demand in western Germany, 1993-2002, distinguishing between highly skilled, skilled, and unskilled labor and between the manufacturing and service sectors. Reflecting current preoccupations, our demand analysis seeks also to accommodate the impact of technology and trade in addition to wages. The bottom-line interests are to provide elasticities of the demand for unskilled (and other) labor that should assist in short-run policy design and to identify the extent of skill biases or otherwise in trade and technology.

Unitarism and Employer Resistance to Trade Unionism

Active employer resistance to trade union recognition is often explained through the rubric of the unitary ideology. Yet, little attention has been devoted to an examination of unitarism as an explanatory construct for active employer hostility. This paper contributes to current knowledge and understanding on contemporary ideological opposition to unions, by placing unitarism under analytical scrutiny. Using empirical data from the Republic of Ireland, the paper applies a conceptual framework to a sample of non-union employers who actively resisted unionisation. The paper concludes by examining the ideological commitments uncovered and relevant implications.

Procurement and the Public Sector Equality Duty: Lessons for the Implementation of the Equality Act 2010 from Northern Ireland?

The use of public sector equality duties that require public authorities to do more than simply not discriminate and that in addition require such authorities in exercising their functions to actively promote equality has increasingly been considered as relevant for procurement. This article examines the Northern Ireland experience regarding the application of a public sector equality duty to procurement and addresses whether, and if so to what extent, this experience provides any useful lessons for the operation of the ‘equality duty’ in the recently enacted British Equality Act 2010.

Employer occupation of regulatory space of the Employee Information and Consultation (I&C) Directive in liberal market economies

This article shows how both employers and the state have influenced macro-level processes and structures concerning the content and transposition of the European Union (EU) Employee Information and Consultation (I&C) Directive. It argues that the processes of regulation occupied by employers reinforce a voluntarism which marginalizes rather than shares decision-making power with workers. The contribution advances the conceptual lens of ‘regulatory space’ by building on Lukes’ multiple faces of power to better understand how employment regulation is determined across transnational, national and enterprise levels. The research proposes an integrated analytical framework on which ‘occupancy’ of regulatory space can be evaluated in comparative national contexts.

Recent Developments in the Law of Torts in Northern Ireland Annual Conference of the Irish Association of Law Teachers

This paper reviews decisions from the Northern Ireland and England and Wales High Courts and Courts of Appeal as well as the UK Supreme Court relating to tort and principally to the tort of negligence in the past 12 months or so.

In structure, the paper will be presented in four parts. First, three preliminary points relating to contemporary features of the NI civil courts: personal litigants – Devine v McAteer [2012] NICA 30 (7 September 2012); pre-action protocols – Monaghan v Graham [2013] NIQB 53 (3 May 2013); and the rise of alternative dispute resolution. On the last named issue, the recent decision of PGF II SA v OMFS Company 1 Ltd [2013] EWCA Civ 1288 (23 October 2013) on unreasonable refusal to mediate, will be discussed.

Second, the paper moves to consider the law of negligence generally and case law from the NI High Court reiterating Lord Hoffmann’s view in Tomlinson v Congleton Borough Council [2004] 1 AC 46 that no duty of care arises from obvious risks of injury. In this, reference will be made to the application of the above “Hoffmann principle” in West Sussex County Council v Pierce [2013] EWCA Civ 1230 (16 October 2013), which concerned an accident sustained by a child at school. A similar set of facts was presented recently to the UK Supreme Court in Woodland v Essex County Council [2013] UKSC 66 (23 October 2013). The decision there, on non-delegable duties of care, will have a significant impact for schools in the provision of extracurricular activities.

Third, I will review a NI case of note on the duty of care of solicitors in the context of professional negligence in the context of conflicting advice by counsel.

Fourth, I will examine a series of cases on employer liability and including issues such as the duty of care towards the volunteer worker; tort and safety at work principles generally; and, more specifically, the duty of care of the employer towards an employee who suffers psychiatric illness as a result of stress and/or harassment at work. On the issue of workplace stress, the NI courts have made extensive reference to the Hale LJ principles found in the Court of Appeal decision of Hatton v Sutherland [2002] 1 All ER 1 and applied to those who have suffered trauma in reporting on or policing “the troubles” in Northern Ireland. On the issue of statutory harassment at work, the paper will also mention the UK Supreme Court’s decision in Hayes v Willoughby [2013] UKSC 17 (20 March 2013).

Building professionalism and employability skills: embedding employer engagement within first-year computing modules

This paper outlines a means of improving the employability skills of first-year university students through a closely integrated model of employer engagement within computer science modules. The outlined approach illustrates how employability skills, including communication, teamwork and time management skills, can be contextualised in a manner that directly relates to student learning but can still be linked forward into employment. The paper tests the premise that developing employability skills early within the curriculum will result in improved student engagement and learning within later modules. The paper concludes that embedding employer participation within first-year models can help relate a distant notion of employability into something of more immediate relevance in terms of how students can best approach learning. Further, by enhancing employability skills early within the curriculum, it becomes possible to improve academic attainment within later modules.