We are delighted to announce the first issue of the LSE Law Department’s Legal Studies Working Paper Series for 2021.
In this issue, Kai Möller (WPS 01/2021) challenges as incomplete the widely held view that human and constitutional rights are centrally concerned with reasonable justifications, and argues that this must be complemented with a commitment to human dignity and its three sub-principles of intrinsic value, moral autonomy, and fundamental equality; Julia Black (WPS 02/2021) shows how looking (up) at constitutional governance systems from a regulatory perspective, rather than looking (down) at regulatory governance systems from a constitutional perspective, fosters a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which regulators, regulatees, and the broader public interact in the context of democratic states; Hjalte Lokdam and Michael A. Wilkinson (WPS 03/2021) explain how, in response to the euro-crisis and the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the constitution of the Economic and Monetary Union, traditionally conceived as a neoliberal or ordoliberal market framework à la Hayek, has been transformed, à la Schmitt, through the delinking of governmental powers from their political authorisation, but so far only in order to conserve the status quo; Elizabeth Howell (WPS 04/2021) examines the future of UK/EU financial governance policy cooperation, in light of the current ‘polycrisis’ for the EU including Brexit and Covid-19, and advocates harnessing the dexterous aspects evident within precedents, including in existing EU/third country association agreements, in order to develop a functional arrangement for future financial governance cooperation; Devika Hovell (WPS 05/2021) examines the extent to which the fiduciary construct can play a useful role in reinforcing trust in the UN Security Council, by reference to recent controversies including the privatization of public assets in Kosovo, sexual exploitation and abuse by UN peacekeepers, Security Council vetoes in the face of atrocity and due process failures in sanctions decision-making.