Comme tous les grands transporteurs aériens, l’entreprise Air Canada a été très durement frappée par la Grande récession survenue à l’échelle mondiale en 2008. Ses activités et ses revenus ont chuté dramatiquement et, outre des mises à pied et des licenciements collectifs, l’entreprise a cherché à limiter ses coûts de main-d’œuvre en réduisant les avantages des régimes de retraite en vigueur. La présente étude s’inscrit dans le cadre d’une vaste recherche sur la grande entreprise au Canada et le déclin de la citoyenneté au travail. Elle s’intéresse plus particulièrement à l’impact de la crise financière de 2008 sur la dynamique des relations de travail et l’évolution de la citoyenneté au travail chez Air Canada : nous entendons vérifier en particulier si nos hypothèses d’une médiation des interactions entre économie et droit par le politique, d’une part, par les relations industrielles (autonomie collective), d’autre part, se confirment ou non.

Contrary to what may be suggested by traditional historiography, the modern labour contract did not appear through spontaneous generation with the Industrial Revolution. To the contrary, premodern legal forms going back to the feudal era lasted throughout the nineteen century and even later, entirely subjecting groups of workers to the employers' absolutism. The path leading to a rationalization of the legal technique embodied in the modern labour contract was indeed highly complex. Philip Lotmar's colossal study on Der Arbeitsvertrag [The Labour Contract] (published in two parts, 1902 and 1908) illustrates that complexity in an exemplary fashion, especially as regards the social facts of law. From a Law and Society viewpoint, this work remains without doubts worth reading today, in particular when one also takes into consideration the comprehensive review of this treatise made by Max Weber in 1902 and later comments by Hugo Sinzheimer, the founder of the European science of labour law and himself a distinguished legal sociologist. In the following study, the author insists upon the relevance of Weber's and Sinzheimer's critiques of Lotmar as regards the relationship of law to economics, the importance of legal pluralism for a proper understanding of labour law, as well as the interaction between jurisprudence and the sociology of law.

The objective of this paper is to present analytical and theoretical reflections on the interdisciplinary dialogue between law and sociology. The presentation of contradictions and shared interests between these two disciplines can contribute to interdisciplinary anthropology that focuses on the sometimes difficult “immigration” experienced by those who mobilize more than one academic field in their research. This paper is particularly addressed to those lawyers who start interdisciplinary dialogue within the discipline of sociology.

Comparing the treatment of Islamic veils and Christian crucifixes by the European Court of Human Rights, this paper re-examines the charge of “double standards” on the part of this guardian of the European legal order, which is seen as disadvantaging Islam and favoring Christianity. While this is proved partially correct, the paper calls for a more differentiated treatment of the issue. For one, there is a modicum of consistency in the European Court’s decisions, because they are all meant to further “pluralism”. Only, Islam and Christianity fare differently in this respect, as “threat” to and “affirmation” of pluralism, respectively. This distinction hinges on Islam’s compatibility with the liberal-secular order, on which the jury is out. A possible way out of the “pluralism v. pluralism” dilemma, I argue, is signaled in the European Court’s recent decision in Lautsi v. Italy (2011), which pairs a preference for “culturalized” Christianity with robust minority pluralism.