Centre for Rights and Justice and Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies Chinese Law Programme Public Lecture by Professor Christopher Hodges, Head of the CMS/Swiss Re Research Programme on Civil Justice Systems, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford
Abstract: Do regulatory systems, or their enforcement, produce compliance with law? Does deterrence work? Are behavioural psychology, corporate culture and ethics more important? What are the implications for regulatory systems and enforcement by public or private law?
The European Commission’s June 2013 Recommendation on Collective Redress is a model for class actions but is not mandatory. 18 Member States currently have class action procedures, but they vary enormously in design and scope. Most are very little used. The EU debate has focused on avoiding the “toxic cocktail” of U.S.-style class actions, and the Commission has proposed a list of safeguards against abuse. The result is that class actions will not be a principal tool in delivering mass redress, since financial incentives are limited and various controls make them slow, expensive and unattractive.
Innovative regulatory and ADR mechanisms are emerging as the first line in Europe in delivering both compensation and behaviour control. The implications of these new policy directions are not widely known, and should be of great interest for policy debates on the future of class actions and regulation in Hong Kong and China.
Biography: Christopher Hodges, MA PhD FSALS, is Head of the CMS/Swiss Re Research Programme on Civil Justice Systems at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford; Erasmus Professor of the Fundamentals of Private Law at Erasmus University, Rotterdam. His research is directed at reviewing all dispute resolution systems to devise an integrated civil justice and regulatory model for European states. His books include Consumer ADR in Europe (Hart, 2012), The Costs and Funding of Civil Litigation (Hart, 2010), and European Regulation of Consumer Product Safety (Oxford, 2005). He is co-coordinator of the pan-EU Civil Justice Systems Project, and the Stanford-Oxford Global Class Actions Project.
