Category Archives: Employment and Labour Law
Andersson and Lerouge, ‘From the Recognition of “Psychiatric Disorder Caused by Asbestos Exposure” to the Mobilisation of Dignity in Labour Law: A Comparison of France and Sweden’
ABSTRACT In two rulings on 8 February 2023, the French Court of Cassation invoked the notion of ‘dignity’ in labour law to support claims for ‘damage due to anxiety’ (‘préjudice d’anxiété’). The concept of ‘damage due to anxiety’, which might in English be translated more functionally as ‘psychiatric disorder caused by asbestos exposure’, is based […]
Bhagyamma Gopala, ‘Exploring the interplay between menstrual leave and the right to privacy’
ABSTRACT As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to change the healthcare industry, models are being utilised to make labour and delivery safer for moms and newborns. Predicting pregnancy diseases including preeclampsia and gestational diabetes, controlling and treating ectopic pregnancies, and more have all benefited from the usage of AI approaches. We also discovered that AI technologies […]
Michael Helfand, ‘Contractual Commitments and the Right to Change Religions’
ABSTRACT Religious contracts have long been a feature of religious life and commerce in the United States. Across a range of contracting contexts – property, employment, arbitration and family law, to name a few – parties regularly enter into agreements where performance is measured against religious standards and objectives. But in more recent years, courts […]
Mark Addey, ‘Conflict of Laws: Choice of Law Theories in Tort’
ABSTRACT Conflict of laws arises when various legal systems intersect, typically involving laws from different jurisdictions. The interactions between people in areas such as employment, trade, and marriage, spanning different countries, often require the application of legal principles and regulations that originate from jurisdictions other than the one where a particular case is being adjudicated. […]
Levmore and Verstein, ‘Sharing where Bargains are Impossible’
ABSTRACT Cooperation sometimes breaks down, and former teammates will disagree about what happens next. For example, when can an employee quit to join a competitor? Courts often resolve disputes by looking at the parties actual or hypothetical bargain. Thus, a court may ask whether there was a non-competition agreement (and whether it was reasonable), or […]
‘Not So Free to Contract: The Law, Philosophy, and Economics of Unequal Workplace Power’ – special issue of Journal of Law and Political Economy (2022)
Preface to Special Issue: Not So Free to Contract: How Unequal Workplace Power Undercuts the ‘Freedom of Contract’ Framework (Elizabeth Anderson) Introduction – The Goliath in the Room: How the False Assumption of Equal Worker–Employer Power Undercuts Workplace Protections (Lawrence Mishel) Talking About Private Government: A Review of the Economic Claims Made to Rebut Anderson’s […]
Mark Geistfeld, ‘Reformulating Vicarious Liability in Terms of Basic Tort Doctrine: The Example of Employer Liability for Sexual Assaults in the Workplace’
ABSTRACT The most common form of vicarious liability subjects an employer (or principal) to liability for the torts an employee (agent) commits within the scope of employment. Under the motive test, an employee’s tortious misconduct is outside the scope of employment when wholly motivated by personal reasons – a rule that almost invariably prevents the […]
‘Why Does Status Matter In Contract?’
Kaiponanea T Matsumura, ‘Unifying Status and Contract’, 56 UC Davis Law Review 1571 (2023). One might be tempted to think that status-based relationships were displaced by contract in modern societies, in the way that Henry Maine suggested over fifty years ago. However, it is now also understood that many specific kinds of relationships are governed […]
Lawrence Mishel, ‘The Goliath in the Room: How the False Assumption of Equal Worker-Employer Power Undercuts Workplace Protections’
ABSTRACT The belief that employers and workers have equal power and are therefore ‘free to contract’ continues to hold sway among employers and jurists, but not among those who live in the real world of work. The papers in this issue rebut this assumption of equal power by examining the claims made in philosophy and […]
Goldberg and Zipursky, ‘Sherman v Department of Public Safety: Institutional Responsibility for Sexual Assault’
ABSTRACT This article addresses the intersection of three important topics: sexual assault, police misconduct, and employer liability for employee torts. As to the last of these, while there have long been debates among jurists in the US concerning the proper scope of respondeat superior liability, courts have mostly adhered to an approach that focuses on […]