%0 Journal Article
%@ 0026-7961
%A Dukes, R.
%D 2009
%F enlighten:37813
%I Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
%J Modern Law Review
%N 2
%P 220-246
%R 10.1111/j.1468-2230.2009.00741.x
%T Otto Kahn-Freund and collective Laissez-Faire: an edifice without a keystone?
%U https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/37813/
%V 72
%X This paper describes Otto Kahn-Freund's advocacy of the British ‘collective laissez-faire’ system of regulation of industrial relations, in which regulation proceeded autonomously of the state. It suggests that a weakness of collective laissez-faire as a normative principle was its failure to make adequate provision for the furtherance of the public interest. It links this failure to a more general reluctance, on the part of Kahn-Freund, to conceive of the state as representative of the public interest. And it seeks to explain this reluctance with reference to Kahn-Freund's experiences of living and working as a labour court judge in the Weimar Republic, and of moving to the UK as a refugee from Nazism.