Austin Sarat - Legal Intermediation: A Processual Approach to Law and Economic Activity

STUDIES IN LAW, POLITICS, AND SOCIETY

Series Editor: Austin Sarat

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STUDIES IN LAW, POLITICS, AND SOCIETYVOLUME 81

EDITED BY

AUSTIN SARAT

SPECIAL ISSUE EDITORS

SEBASTIAN BILLOWS

LISA BUCHTER

JRME PLISSE

Emerald Publishing Limited

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First edition 2019

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-83867-860-9 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-83867-859-3 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-83867-861-6 (EPub)

ISSN: 1059-4337 (Series)

Sebastian Billows, Lisa Buchter and Jrme Plisse

Lisa Buchter

Camille Herlin-Giret and Alexis Spire

Fanny Vincent

Jrme Plisse

Alina Surubaru

Sebastian Billows

Gad Barzilai
Department of Political Science, Tel Aviv University, Israel

Paul Berman
Department of Law, George Washington University, USA

Roger Cotterrell
Department of Legal Theory, Queen Mary College, University of London, UK

Jennifer Culbert
Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University, USA

Eve Darian-Smith
Department of Global Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

David Delaney
Department of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought, Amherst College, USA

Florence Dore
Department of English, University of North Carolina, USA

David Engel
Department of Law, State University of New York at Buffalo, USA

Anthony Farley
Department of Law, Albany Law School, USA

David Garland
Department of Law, New York University, USA

Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller
Department of Political Science, University of Hawaii, USA

Laura Gomez
University of Law, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Piyel Haldar
Department of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK

Thomas Hilbink
Open Society Institute, USA

Desmond Manderson
Department of Law, Australian National University, Australia

Jennifer Mnookin
Department of Law, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Laura Beth Nielsen
Research Fellow, American Bar Foundation, USA

Paul Passavant
Department of Political Science, Hobart and William Smith College, USA

Susan Schmeiser
Department of Law, University of Connecticut, USA

Jonathan Simon
Department of Jurisprudence and Social Policy, University of California, Berkeley, USA

Marianna Valverde
Department of Criminology, University of Toronto, Canada

Alison Young
Department of Criminology, University of Melbourne, Australia

Sebastian Billows, Lisa Buchter and Jrme Plisse

Keywords: Legal intermediation; regulation; economy; labor; legal tools; neo-institutionalism; France

Law, public policy, and economic activity are intimately tied to each other. State policies and the legal system have often worked in favor of private economic interests. For instance, core features of the US legal system of the nineteenth century were designed to protect the interests of the capitalist class (; Sutton, 2001). Conversely, law has also been used (successfully or not) to coerce economic interests. Due to rules governing industrial relations and giving workers more power vis--vis their employers, corporations have become legalized settings (Selznick, 1969), where labor unions have gained leverage to shape workers rights and accommodations (Chappe, 2015; Dixon & Martin, 2012; Guillaume, Pochic, & Silvera, 2015; Plisse, 2007). Some laws mandated corporations to participate in broader societal change, such as the inclusion of discriminated minorities (Bereni & Revillard, 2007; Burstein, Paul, 1985; Dobbin, 2009; Edelman, 2016; Heyer, Baudot, Borelle, & Revillard, 2013; Lempert & Sanders, 1986; Stryker & Pedriana, 2004) or, in France, the fight against unemployment through the reduction of working time (Plisse, 2004, 2011). Finally, the rise of the regulatory state (Thatcher, 2014) or regulatory capitalism (Levi-Faur, 2005) has led to even more interactions between law and economic activity. Despite popular belief that regulation was abandoned due to the diffusion of neoliberalism throughout the Western world in the 1980s, empirical evidence suggests that privatization, deregulation, and the promotion of market-based solutions under neoliberal governments expanded and extended business regulation in many national contexts (Braithwaite, 2009; Vogel, 1996) and even on a transnational basis (Bartley, 2007, 2010). In other words, the alleged deregulation and move toward free markets led to a slow re-regulation of free markets in the form of soft regulation allegedly perfecting market performance (Levi-Faur, 2005; Majone, 1997).