Neoliberalism has been studied as a political ideology, an historical moment, an economic programme, an institutional model, and a totalising political project. Yet the role of law in the neoliberal story has been relatively neglected, and the idea of neoliberalism as a juridical project has yet to be considered. That is: neoliberal law and its interrelations with neoliberal politics and economics has remained almost entirely neglected as a subject of research and debate. This book provides a systematic attempt to develop a holistic and coherent understanding of the relationship between law and neoliberalism. It does not, however, examine law and neoliberalism as fixed entities or as philosophical categories. And neither is its objective to uncover or devise a ‘law of neoliberalism’. Instead, it uses empirical evidence to explore and theorise the relationship between law and neoliberalism as dynamic and complex social phenomena. Developing a nuanced concept of ‘neoliberal legality’, neoliberalism, it is argued here, is as much a juridical project as a political and economic one. And it is only in understanding the juridical thrust of neoliberalism that we can hope to fully comprehend the specificities, and continuities, of the neoliberal period as a whole.

European agencies have been created at a rapid pace in recent years in a multitude of highly pertinent and sensitive fields ranging from pharmaceuticals and aviation safety to chemicals or financial supervision. This agency phenomenon shows no signs of relenting, and the trend in recent years is towards the delegation of ever-broader powers. These bodies, meant to operate at arm's length from political control, have real power and their opinions and decisions can have a direct impact on individuals, regulators, and member states. Given the powers wielded by the agencies, who is responsible for holding these non-majoritarian actors to account? Is the growing concern surrounding agency accountability 'much ado about nothing' or are we faced with the threat of a powerful and unaccountable bureaucracy? These are precisely the questions that this book seeks to answer. It thus addresses one of the most relevant topics in current European governance: the accountability of European agencies. Scholars have increasingly called attention to the risk of placing too much power in the hands of such agencies, which operate at arm's length from traditional controls and cannot easily be held accountable for their actions. Although this is a major issue of concern, systematic empirical research into the topic is lacking. This book addresses empirically whether, and if so on what counts, agency accountability is problematic. It examines how the accountability system of European agencies operates at both the de jure as well as the de facto level, through an examination of legal provisions, relevant case law as well as policy documents and extensive interview material. Reflecting on these findings, the book also offers important theoretical insights for our understanding and study of accountability in a complex regulatory regime such as the EU context. The book follows a multi-disciplinary approach and is at the cutting edge of law and public administration.

Emmanuel Levinas's philosophy of ethics has frequently attracted attention amongst legal scholars, but he remains a divisive and often enigmatic contributor to this field. He has been read within contexts as varied as human rights, private law, refugee law, and on the nature of judicial reasoning. This book explores what unites such apparently diverse applications of his ideas, and in doing so considers the challenge of law's ethical relationship with the other. In addition to asking how Levinas's ethics can inform legal problems, the book also examines how the modern legal edifice has a deceptive tendency to close itself off from the ethical experience. In particular, literatures on biopolitics suggest that law is increasingly complicit in reductive determinations of how we understand ourselves and others. Levinas's most penetrating insight might not, therefore, lie in the law's instrumentalisation of his ethics, but instead in the way his ethics trace a human encounter that escapes law.

WITH A BRAND NEW LOOK! ON FEBRUARY 22, 1980, KHORSHED AND RUMI BHAVNAGRI’S WORLD WAS SHATTERED. ONE MONTH LATER, A NEW ONE OPENED. Khorshed and Rumi Bhavnagri lost their sons, Vispi and Ratoo, in a tragic car crash. With both their sons gone, the couple felt they would not survive for long. They had lost all faith in God until a miraculous message from the Spirit World gave them hope and sent them on an incredible journey.

As modernity gives way to postmodernity, we are witnessing the emergence of a post-political age. Concepts and realities that anchored modern politics—like nation-states, community, freedom, and law—find themselves under duress from a pluriform terror. Simultaneously, we are witnessing a turn to religion by continental philosophers who seek resources for re-visioning a politics of resistance to this terror. This work engages postmodern philosophers such as Agamben, Badiou, Derrida, Deleuze, Hardt, Negri, and Zizek, seeking to divine both the promise and peril of this pagan plundering of Christianity on the way to articulating a Christian theopolitical vision that holds out the hope of resisting the terror that looms over us.

These 12 essays give you new perspectives on how Agamben's work is increasingly relevant to economy and political action: the two ideas that frame the most pressing problems of global politics. New analyses of Agamben's recent work on government and his relationship to the revolutionary tradition opening up new ways of thinking about politics and critical theory in the post-financial crisis world. Contributors: Daniel McLoughlin Giorgio Agamben Jason E. Smith Jessica Whyte Justin Clemens Mathew Abbott Miguel Vatter Nicholas Heron Sergei Prozorov Simone Bignall Steven DeCaroli

Explores the mythology of memory, involuntary memory, and the relation between time and memory in the context of questions prominent in contemporary thought.