Dear friends and colleagues,
I wish to thank you again for your support in my election to the Presidency of the ISLSSL. I see the position as a service that I will provide to the community of labour and social security lawyers. It has been a privilege to work for one year together with Maria Emilia Casas Baamonde, Humberto Villasmil Prieto y Alberto Pizzoferrato before taking over my office.
To fulfill my task, I will need the active participation of the other Officers, the Honorary Presidents, the Vice-Presidents, and of all of you. The ISLSSL will only been able to develop with the constant cooperation of every one.
I wish to boost the communication through social reds with a view of further promoting common activities.
I wish to help in strengthening of a new generation of bright international labour lawyers. This requires not only a full collaboration with the Youth section of the Society, but a policy that aims at choosing young academics as authors in our Review and even as main speakers in our Congresses.
I also wish to lower the price of attending our meetings, especially, but not only, for the nationals of countries with a weak currency. The financial assistance from scientific institutions and international organizations like the ILO or the development banks will be sought. The cost of the registration to congresses and seminars should be accessible to all, including with discounts for the youngest. Chartered flights should be investigated as well as accommodation in cheaper hotels and universities residences.
I wish to formalize the possibility to hold virtual meetings, taking into account its clear utility, but also its disadvantages in terms of personal and friendly relationships.
Present-day globalization has many facets. It comprises not only the transfer of capital, goods and services, but also societal, artistic, even individual exchanges. Its growing pace prompts us to re-examine a perennial question in comparative labour law, namely the role of global considerations, on the one hand, and national and local dimensions, on the other, in how social relations are arranged.
It seems obvious that the heightened internationalization of human activity have a lasting and profound impact on legal culture in every region and country. This being said, each culture’s defining characteristics continue to play a significant role in how human beings behave and work. Scholars in comparative law know to what extent positive law can vary, in content, naturally, but also in wording and means of implementation. They have to examine the parallelism of not only rules, sets of rules, institutions, but the profound mechanisms of those laws, namely the assumed functions and the determining factors in the creation and development of rules and institutions.
I would like that the ISLSSL plays a leading role in promoting such comparative studies with a very large scope and the highest possible quality.
Jean-Michel Servais