In this chapter, I first argue that the key function that parties perform, when functioning as they ought to function, is to facilitate a mutually responsive relationship between public policy and popular opinion by acting as an intermediary between a state and its people. They perform this intermediary function in a unique manner, because of their bi-directionality and their plenary character. When they perform this function effectively, political parties significantly reduce four key information and transaction costs that would otherwise make democratic governance impossible: political participation costs, voters’ information costs, policy packaging costs, and ally prediction costs. I further identify four normative principles in relation to political parties: viz, the purposive autonomy principle, the party system optimality principle, the party-state separation principle, and the ‘anti-faction principle. These political principles are drawn from the value of democracy itself. As such, they should – alongside other relevant political and constitutional norms – inform fundamental constitutional design choices.

This chapter discusses the right to freedom of association and of assembly, as well as the right to demonstrate, as they are protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, other Council of Europe instruments, in EU law and in international instruments. Attention is also paid to trade union freedom and political parties. In the final section, a short comparison between the different instruments is made

This case study aims to investigate whether and in what ways the relations between the EU and its Member States and South Korea can be used to strengthen opportunities to appropriately regulate and remedy human rights violations in the Korean electronics industry. This study first determines the relevant social forces and historical factors in Korea. This is an essential key to a contextualised understanding of how so-called electronics chaebols are structured. Afterwards, the relevant legal commitments in the Framework and free trade agreements between the EU and Korea are discussed. These agreements lay a foundation for deeper transnational social network relations. A landmark dispute about the freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining in Korea under the Free Trade Agreement is analysed. Finally, this case study determines to which extent people in Korea can use justice institutions when they allege that their rights have been infringed by electronics corporations. All relevant mechanisms are evaluated. An arbitration case between the Korean NGO Sharps and Samsung is discussed. Ten Korean experts have been interviewed to write this case study.

Labour lawyers are familiar with the binary divide between employees and the self-employed. Historically, this also demarcated the exclusion of competition law restraints on workers’ collective action. In recent times, growing numbers in the labour market are self-employed yet work in circumstances of economic disempowerment. They would benefit from collective bargaining, but competition law operates as a barrier to its realization. This chapter considers a ‘fundamental rights’ strategy for challenging competition law restraints. This strategy is based on the simple claim that the fundamental human right to bargain collectively is a right for ‘everyone’. The chapter identifies some weaknesses and problems with this approach within the European context. Abstractions like the ‘everyone’ argument can be counterproductive because human rights must be situated within existing power relations and economic structures in labour markets. Nevertheless, a suitably contextual fundamental rights strategy has an important role to play. On this contextual approach, reflected in the European Social Charter, entitlements to collective bargaining must be sensitive to substantive social and economic disadvantages. The exclusion of competition law would no longer be tied to specific contractual forms like ‘employee’.

The chapter examines the anticompetitive effect of collective agreements and other concerted practices on labour markets and the application of competition law in Germany. First, the chapter analyses the historical development of the fundamental right of freedom of association as the basis for further considerations, because competition law priviledges are granted to regulations falling into the scope of protection of the freedom of association. The chapter considers disputes over the coverage of the scope of protection of the freedom of associations in various contexts. The controversies attendant on the balance of entrepreneurial freedom and freedom of association are described as they impact the discussion on the application of competition law. The chapter takes particular account of the relevant case-law of the German Courts. The main set of regulations of collective labour agreements which could come into conflict with competition law, namely those concerning the kind of benefit agreed on, the group of people favoured by the collective agreement, or the parties concluding the agreement are examined. Finally, the approach to protect self-employed workers by including them in collective agreements is discussed.

This contribution argues that the intersection’s debate between labour law and competition law is not present in Latin America. Labour market in the region has different issues, such as freedom of association and compliance with international standards. Examples show the challenges that are facing self–employed workers regarding their freedom of association rights.

Many thinkers have alleged that free markets are inimical to a sense of community. According to critics such as Robert Putnam, commercial societies tend to dissociate people from one another and to undermine the basis of civil society. Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America seems to present a challenge to this view insofar as he regards the Americans as both exceptionally commercial and uniquely associational. If markets and associations are in tension with one another, how can they coexist in the United States? As Rachael K. Behr and Virgil Henry Storr argue in this chapter, a closer attention to Democracy in America suggests several ways in which commercial society and the spirit of association are mutually supportive. Markets foster a complex division of labor that requires mutual cooperation. Markets encourage a sense of enlightened self-interest that teaches citizens how they might engage with one another in mutually beneficial ways. Further, markets facilitate innovations in communication that make it easier for citizens to coordinate and freely associate for political change. Rather than giving rise to Tocqueville’s dreaded pathology of “individualism,” as critics have alleged, markets are instead conducive to active civic engagement and the free association of democratic citizens.

The importance of the struggle for labor rights and challenges to democracy in Africa can be linked to the decolonization process in the 1960s. Trade union formations had relative collective capacity to support agitation for political emancipation. The post-colonial relationship between labor movements and the state have been a mixed experience. We explore the role of labor rights as enhancers of democratic governance in Africa, using several countries as proxies for the continent. Exploration is informed largely by the ILO’s recent Centenary reflections, the link between labor rights and social justice, issues canvassed by the Global Commission on the Future of Work. The Commission provided a basis for continuing reflection among scholars and policy makers. It culminated in a rejuvenation and renewal of ILO mandate at the Centenary International Labor Conference, 2019.

Democracy is under attack through immigration workplace raids. Labor unions have finally come to realize that noncitizen workers – documented and undocumented – are their future. ICE raids have been timed – particularly by the Bush and Trump administrations to thwart organizing efforts. Through a process of demonization and commodification of immigrant workers, the public has been conditioned to ignore the racial implications of ICE raids. But even a cursory examination reveals the racist effects of these enforcement efforts. However, on closer analysis, it reveals how these attacks are an attack on democracy as well. ICE raids are an attack on labor organizing, which in turn represents an assault on the freedom of association, freedom from discrimination, a strong middle class, and democratic acculturation.

This Chapter was initially drafted during the Obama Administration. The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) had been negotiated and, although it had not yet been ratified in the United States, the Administration and majority of policy makers were in favor of its implementation. Since that time, as previous Chapters have made clear, the United States Administration changed and the United States withdrew from participation in the TPP. While unfortunate, the Administration’s political decision to withdraw from the TPP does not come as a surprise; an examination of the negotiating history of those provisions illuminates a stark political divide within the United States, even prior to the change in Administrations. Fortunately, the other eleven parties to the TPP persevered, resulting in the Comprehensive and Progressive TPP.

The past few decades have seen a sharp and persistent rise in market-based solutions to address contemporary social concerns. Recent corporate social responsibility initiatives have displayed a growing interest in efforts to combat “modern day slavery,” a social and legal category that has emerged since the introduction of global human trafficking protocols. Corporations have responded to an increased demand for ethical business practices by adopting commitments and programs that signal their dedication to improving labor rights conditions for the people who are sewing their clothes, picking their cocoa, or cleaning their hotel rooms. Building on existing research and case studies, this chapter seeks to elaborate on ways in which initiatives that purport to protect workers’ rights – which have increasingly embraced "anti-slavery" as a focal point – actively disempower the very people they seek to protect. It additionally asks how the public lauding of corporate social responsibility’s anti-slavery efforts whitewashes brand images and actually displaces efforts to enforce labor standards across supply chains. Finally, it offers an alternative approach to corporate driven supply chain management, advocating instead, an approach to reducing labor abuse in global supply chains centered in collective worker action and international labor standards.

The Constitution says nothing about the presidential nominating process and has had little direct role in the evolution of that process from congressional caucuses to party national conventions to our current primary-dominated system of selecting convention delegates. Yet, constitutional law is a factor in empowering and constraining the principal actors in the nomination process and in shaping the framework for potential future changes.

The constitutional law of the presidential nomination process operates along two axes: government-party, and state-national. The government-party dimension focuses on the tension between the states and the federal government in writing the rules for and administering the electoral process—which may include the primary elections that determine the nominees of the political parties—and the right of the parties to determine how to pick their nominees. This government-party axis affects all nominations of candidates for state and federal office.

When the deprivation of liberty results from the exercise of the rights or freedoms guaranteed by articles 7, 13-14, and 18-21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, insofar as States parties are concerned, by articles 12, 18-19, 21-22, and 25-27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (category II).1