Law Commons^™

Can Contract Emancipate? Contract Theory And The Law Of Work, Hanoch Dagan, Michael A. Heller

Faculty Scholarship

Contract and employment law have grown apart. Long ago, each side gave up on the other. In this Article, we re-unite them to the betterment of both. In brief, we demonstrate the emancipatory potential of contract for the law of work.

Today, the dominant contract theories assume a widget transaction between substantively equal parties. If this were an accurate description of what contract is, then contract law would be right to expel workers. Worker protections would indeed be better regulated by – and relegated to – employment and labor law. But contract law is not what contract theorists claim. Neither …

The Sharing Economy And The Edges Of Contract Law: Comparing U.S. And U.K. Approaches, Miriam A. Cherry

Faculty Publications

Technology and the rise of the on-demand or sharing economy have created new and diverse structures for how businesses operate and how work is conducted. Some of these matters are intermediated by contract, but in other situations, contract law may be unhelpful. For example, contract law does little to resolve worker classification problems on new platforms, such as ridesharing applications. Other forms of online work create even more complex problems, such as when work is disguised as an innocuous task like entering a code or answering a question, or when work is gamified and hidden as a leisure activity. Other …

Chapter 5 - Matrimonial Bonds: Slavery And Divorce In Nineteenth-Century America (Previously Published Article), Elizabeth B. Clark

Manuscript of Women, Church, and State: Religion and the Culture of Individual Rights in Nineteenth-Century America

In the covenant of marriage, woman is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master -- the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement. He has so framed the law of divorce . . . as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women -- the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.