Book launch: Enterprise Law, the Economic Constitution and Human Rights

How should we understand the constitution of our economy? How are universal human rights realised through legislation on our public services and corporate governance? What should be privatised and open to competition, and what should be publicly owned? Whatever we choose, who should have governance voice in enterprise, and how can we achieve common goals, such as de-escalating inequality, reversing climate damage, or preventing war?

Principles of Enterprise Law (2022) seeks to understand our economic constitution as a unified whole. It develops a new grammar to conceptualise seemingly disparate fields of social regulation - in education, health, banking, energy, transport, the internet, media and the military. Much of the time the general laws of enterprise work, in corporate, labour, competition and insolvency law. But where they fail the public interest, we add specific regulation. We cannot, for example, understand corporations and their behaviour through corporate law alone, or competition and how it works through competition law alone. Understanding enterprise law helps us understand our whole economic constitution, and the routes to realise human rights.

Chair: Professor Andrea Biondi

Speakers: Professor Keith Ewing, Professor Eva Lomnicka, and Dr Ewan McGaughey