SSRN Papers and a personal - language-related - thought

I have posted several of my old papers on the ssrn website. See here for a paper on Commission's liability for erroneous merger decisions and here for a paper on the proliferation of regulatory agencies and the risks of jurisdictional conflicts.

Now, a personal note: most of my recent publications are in French and I cannot share them with many people. There is no such thing as a french ssrn, and I still do not understand why.  The overall consequences of the absence of such network are clearly negative: French legal science remains insulated from cross-fertilization dynamics (little input/comments from other scholars) and keeps moving slow (for someone's idea to become a real legal source, one needs to wait for journal publication).

Don't get me wrong: I am not a language maniac as others have been lately in Belgium (with Dutch) and in my country of origin (with French). But I see only benefits to a French speaking system of networked scholarship. To ensure interoperability, abstracts translations in English would be made available to readers.

Nicolas

Comments

[Michaël]

You should be proud of yourself, being a member of such a sensible community of French speaking Belgians, in the middle of the Flemish and French maniacs.

I don't have a problem with publishing a picture of De Wever and Le Pen (although it's a bit too easy, to say the least). I do have a problem with the implication that, while (some) Flemish are language maniacs, this would never happen to French speaking Belgians.

[Paul Jones]

I do not see why you cannot post a paper in French on SSRN, unless they have a policy. I just reviewed a paper in German on SSRN following a link from Professor Sokol's site.

[Nixo]

Thanks Michael, I understand your point. Yet, I just call a spade a spade when I publish a picture of De Wever and Le Pen (and I think that point is under-emphasized in Belgian politics).

As a French citizen, I have always thought that our language protectionist policies were counterproductive. I simply stick to my position when it comes to Belgium and Dutch. The best possible way to promote a language is to speak that of the other (rather than forbidding it).

By the same token, I entirely concur that French speaking belgians should speak better Dutch. But as a matter of principle, the remedy to that disease does not lie in scattering the central government. On the contrary, it lies in stronger federal education programmes with bilingual courses.

[Nixo]

Paul, thanks for the info, I did not know that. I will certainly try.