Dine, Janet 1951–

(Janet Mary Dine)

PERSONAL:

Born August 29, 1951, in London, England; daughter of John Charles and Janet Florence Dine; married Keith Robert Band, September 6, 1975; children: Robert John, Helen Margaret Kathleen, Elizabeth Janet. Education: King's College London, LL. B., 1972, Ph.D., 1979. Hobbies and other interests: Sailing.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Countess Crow Bungalow, Office 67-69, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC1A 3JB, England. E-mail—j.m.dine@qmul.ac.uk.

CAREER:

Called to the Bar of the United Kingdom, 1973; barrister in London, England, 1973-79; King's College London, London, lecturer, 1978-92; University of Essex, Essex, England, reader, 1992-94, professor and head of law department, 1994-97; University of London, Queen Mary, London, professor, 2004, director of the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, 2005-08. Commissioner for Friendly Society, United Kingdom Treasury, 1992-93.

MEMBER:

Associateship of King's College.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Senior research fellowship, Law Society of London, 1987-89; honorary professor, Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

WRITINGS:

(With Sionaidh Douglas-Scott and Ingrid Persaud) Procedure and the European Court, Centre of European Law/Chancery Law Publications (London, England), 1991.

Criminal Law in the Company Context, Dartmouth (Brookfield, VT), 1995.

(With James Gobert) Cases and Materials on Criminal Law, 2nd edition, Blackstone Press (London, England), 1998, 5th edition (with James Gobert and William Wilson), Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2006.

The Governance of Corporate Groups, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

Companies, International Trade, and Human Rights, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2005.

(Editor, with Andrew Fagan, and contributor) Human Rights and Capitalism: A Multidisciplinary Perspective on Globalisation, Edward Elgar (Northampton, MA), 2006.

(With Marios Koutsias and Michael Blecher) Company Law in the New Europe: The EU Acquis, Comparative Methodology, and Model Law, Edward Elgar (Northampton, MA), 2007.

Contributor to books, including Developments in European Company Law, Volume 3, edited by B.A.K. Rider, M. Andenas, and D. Sugarman, Kluwer Law International, 2001; New Perspectives on Property Law: Obligations and Restitution, edited by A. Hudson, Cavendish Publishing, 2003; and Criminal Law and the Privilege against Self-Incrimination, edited by S. Peers and A. Ward, Hart Publishing, 2004. Contributor to professional journals, including Legal Studies and International and Comparative Corporate Law Journal.

SIDELIGHTS:

Legal scholar Janet Dine has worked as a barrister and a professor. She is a senior fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies at the University of London and has taught at King's College London, the University of Essex, and Queen Mary—University of London. Many of her publications are concerned with international corporate law. She has written, cowritten, or edited such titles as Criminal Law in the Company Context, The Governance of Corporate Groups, and Company Law in the New Europe: The EU Acquis, Comparative Methodology, and Model Law. In the works Companies, International Trade, and Human Rights and the coedited Human Rights and Capitalism: A Multidisciplinary Perspective on Globalisation, there is a particular focus on how large companies affect human prosperity across the globe.

Companies, International Trade, and Human Rights "places companies at the center of the economic and political processes" that have striven to increase profits for stockholders at the expense of workers around the world, according to Arat Zehra in Global Law Books. Dine believes there is a world crisis of poverty that is the result of "underlying systemic forces," which she defines as the institutional courts, agencies, and corporate boards and their mission of capitalism. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are instigators of this consensus that puts profit above the importance of social prosperity, though Zehra noted that Dine "leaves out the United States Treasury Department" as a partner in establishing policies that profit only the wealthiest people. Dine goes on to discuss the system of global trade and its impact on developing nations, asserting that countries that disregard basic human rights should be held responsible for their negative impact on poverty and labor laws.

Dine provides several examples of corporate social irresponsibility in her book. For instance, the trade in sugar has established rules that benefit rich countries such as the United States at the expense of sugar producers such as Barbados. She also notes how the eternal mission of corporate profits has negatively impacted the environment and human rights. "Dine's hope for the future is that national governments will assign broader responsibilities to corporations in exchange for the rights they receive, that corporate governance reforms will encourage this regulatory broadening, and that national governments will reform the global trading system in a way that is more equitable for developing nations," reported Layna Mosley in the Political Science Quarterly. Dine goes on to discuss how legal systems favor corporations in such areas as property rights, and she "combines arguments driven from philosophy, economic theory and international human rights law with examples from the United States and United Kingdom case law" to support her point, reported Zehra.

Mosley, however, observed that Dine does not offer many practical solutions to this problem. She does not explain what would motivate the European Union or the United States to change their economic policies, or what could possibly motivate corporations to become more socially responsible when their central defining pursuit is money. Mosley commented: "If the failure to ensure minimum working conditions generates a consumer backlash, firms may change their labor practices. If the United States and the EU want to generate new markets for their exported manufactures, they may need to reciprocate by reducing agricultural subsidies. Such a mechanism would run contrary to Dine's critique of self-interested materialism, but it might be the most practical way forward." The critic went on to state that Dine does not consider the effects of "domestic political and institutional factors" that result in poverty, injustice, and environmental degradation, adding that "Dine often does not draw clear causal connections between the global economy and domestic outcomes." Zehra, however, praised Dine's "interdisciplinary and comprehensive approach," adding that "the book offers a substantial amount of information."

In the related title Human Rights and Capitalism, which she edited with Andrew Fagan, Dine includes thirteen essays about the effects of globalization on human rights. The editors begin the book by defining basic concepts such as property rights, human rights, natural rights, and rights between workers and employers. Essays cover specific themes regarding global trade, tax relief legislation, health and racism issues, and the World Trade Organization. The last sections of the book study the effects of debt repayment burdens on South American countries.

More recently, Dine wrote Company Law in the New Europe with Marios Koutsias and Michael Blecher. The authors write about the importance of European Union membership for certain countries and how the increasingly complex conditions are being placed on membership because of economic, political, and security issues. The second half of the book discusses the Yugoslav Enterprise Law of 1996 as an example of the complexities of meeting the requirements of the European Union.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Civil Justice Quarterly, July, 1992, L. Neville Brown, review of Procedure and the European Court, p. 329.

Common Market Law Review, June, 1992, David O'Keeffe, review of Procedure and the European Court, p. 657.

Insolvency Law & Practice, March 1, 1996, Steven Fullman, review of Criminal Law in the Company Context, p. 73.

International Affairs, April, 2001, Halina Ward, review of The Governance of Corporate Groups, p. 433.

Journal of Economic Literature, March, 2001, review of The Governance of Corporate Groups, p. 247.

Journal of Environmental Law, fall, 2001, Benjamin J. Richardson, review of The Governance of Corporate Groups.

Journal of the Law Society of Scotland, December, 2005, Damien Bechelli, review of Companies, International Trade, and Human Rights, p. 57.

Law and Social Inquiry, fall, 2005, review of Companies, International Trade, and Human Rights.

Law Teacher, spring, 2001, Michael Jefferson, review of Cases and Materials on Criminal Law; spring, 2007, Michael Jefferson, review of Cases and Materials on Criminal Law, 5th edition.

Legal Studies, July, 1997, G.R. Sullivan, review of Criminal Law in the Company Context, p. 356.

Political Science Quarterly, fall, 2006, Layna Mosley, review of Companies, International Trade, and Human Rights.

Reference & Research Book News, August, 2006, review of Human Rights and Capitalism: A Multidisciplinary Perspective on Globalisation; August, 2007, review of Company Law in the New Europe: The EU Acquis, Comparative Methodology, and Model Law.

ONLINE

Center for Commercial Law Studies Web site,http://www.ccls.edu/ (April 3, 2008), author profile.

Global Law Books,http://www.globallawbooks.org/ (April 3, 2008), Arat Zehra, review of Companies, International Trade, and Human Rights.