20 January 2016

In a new briefing from the Institute of Employment Rights, Professor Keith Ewing and John Hendy QC examine how there is a "severe tension at the heart of the neo-liberal project", which leads to international law being eclipsed by corporate interests.

"There is a compelling ideological desire to redesign the function of trade unions (as service rather than regulatory bodies), and a compelling desire to reduce the size of the State (and with it the points of resistance to this ambition).

"But one of the underlying principles identified by one of the architects of modern neo-liberalism is the rule of law, which at its most basic means that governments should only act within the law.

"The impatience of modern governments, however, is such that they are willing to move without legal authority and in the process to shatter one of the most sacred icons on which their project was based.

"In the end, the experience of the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the EU reveals the rule of law to be no more than a rhetorical device, the core element of which is simply ignored by a Europe in which power has eclipsed law."

Click here to read the full briefing