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Articles 1 - 22 of 22
Full-Text Articles in Labor and Employment Law
Time’S Up: Against Shortening Statutes Of Limitation By Employment Contract, Meredith R. Miller
Time’S Up: Against Shortening Statutes Of Limitation By Employment Contract, Meredith R. Miller
Scholarly Works
Employers are increasingly adding clauses to contracts with employees that purport to shorten the statutes of limitation for employees to pursue claims against their employers (“SOL Clauses”). SOL Clauses are being imposed on employees in various stages of the contracting process. They have turned up in job applications, offer letters, arbitration clauses, employment agreements and employee handbooks. Where they have been enforced by the courts, the justification has been a prioritization of “freedom of contract” over any other policy concerns. This Article argues that, in the employment context, “freedom of contract” should not be prioritized over other competing concerns, which …
Lowering The Stakes Of The Employment Contract, Aditi Bagchi
Lowering The Stakes Of The Employment Contract, Aditi Bagchi
Faculty Scholarship
Every country has to make hard choices about the distribution of entitlements. But employers control the entitlements that individual Americans enjoy to a far greater extent than those in other rich democracies. In this Essay, I argue that, in the absence of the political consensus necessary to deliver state solutions to political questions, employers here are assigned an exaggerated role in employees’ lives. Government incentives for and directives to employers have become a strategy of political deflection. The effect has been to raise the stakes of employment well beyond the scope of those terms and conditions that relate to attracting …
Mitigating Risk, Eradicating Slavery, Ramona Lampley
Mitigating Risk, Eradicating Slavery, Ramona Lampley
Faculty Articles
For U.S. companies with forced labor or child labor in the supply chain, litigation is on the rise. This Article surveys the current litigation landscape involving forced labor in the supply chain. It ultimately concludes that domestic corporations that source from international suppliers should adopt the Model Contract Clauses drafted by the ABA Business Law Section Working Group to Draft Human Rights Protections in International Supply Contracts ("Working Group"). This Article traces the origins of cases involving supply chain forced labor, beginning with the early employee negligence cases that form the backdrop of existing case law and the cornerstone of …
Hushing Contracts, David A. Hoffman, Erik Lampmann
Hushing Contracts, David A. Hoffman, Erik Lampmann
All Faculty Scholarship
The last few years have brought a renewed appreciation of the costs of nondisclosure agreements that suppress information about sexual wrongdoing. Recently passed bills in a number of states, including New York and California, has attempted to deal with such hush contracts. But such legislation is often incomplete, and many courts and commentators continue to ask if victims of harassment can sign enforceable settlements that conceal serious, potentially metastasizing, social harms. In this Article, we argue that employing the public policy doctrine, courts ought to generally refuse to enforce hush agreements, especially those created by organizations. We restate public policy …
Inclusion Riders And Diversity Mandates, Emily Gold Waldman
Inclusion Riders And Diversity Mandates, Emily Gold Waldman
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
In this piece, I situate these sorts of diversity requests within the broader context of other customer/client preferences that implicate Title VII. To be sure, the “inclusion riders” are not literal customer/client requests, but rather requests from celebrities who are themselves being hired by the employer for a specific project. Broadly speaking, however, they raise the same legal issue regarding third-party preferences that implicate protected characteristics under Title VII.
As a starting point, the general rule within employment discrimination law is that customer preferences cannot justify discriminatory treatment by employers. That baseline has led courts to rule that employers cannot, …
A Common-Sense Defense Of Janus: Forthcoming Changes In The Public Sector, Maria O'Brien
A Common-Sense Defense Of Janus: Forthcoming Changes In The Public Sector, Maria O'Brien
Faculty Scholarship
Many scholars and others have, for some time now, been calling attention to the alarming growth in post-employment and other benefits for unionized employees in the public sector. 17 A fairly well-understood phenomenon is thought to explain the inability of state and local governments to resist outsized demands from their public unions. As 18 Is and others 19 have argued, the central problem with public sector unions is that they find it easy to capture their employers (taxpayers) in ways that private sector unions cannot. The role played by often eager and feckless elected officials in this process has also …
The Continuing Battle Over Economically Targeted Investments: An Analysis Of The Department Of Labor's Interpretative Bulletin 2015-01, Edward A. Zelinsky
The Continuing Battle Over Economically Targeted Investments: An Analysis Of The Department Of Labor's Interpretative Bulletin 2015-01, Edward A. Zelinsky
Faculty Articles
In Interpretive Bulletin 2015-01 (IB 2015-01), the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) renewed the now two-decades old battle over “economically targeted investments” (ETIs). As a matter of statutory interpretation, IB 2015-01, like its predecessors, is unpersuasive. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) requires plan trustees to invest “solely” to provide participants’ retirement benefits. A trustee who invests in ETIs violates this statutory obligation by pursuing collateral economic benefits for persons other than plan participants. As a matter of policy, the social investing which ETIs exemplify is unsound. At best, such social investing in practice merely shuffles investment …
Mika V. Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., 131 Nev. Adv. Op. 71 (Sep. 24, 2015), Kory Koerperich
Mika V. Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., 131 Nev. Adv. Op. 71 (Sep. 24, 2015), Kory Koerperich
Nevada Supreme Court Summaries
The court denied extraordinary writ relief from the district court’s decision to compel arbitration between Petitioners and their employer based on a long-form arbitration agreement signed only by the Petitioners, and federal law favoring arbitration agreements.
After Tackett: Incomplete Contracts For Post-Employment Healthcare, Maria O'Brien
After Tackett: Incomplete Contracts For Post-Employment Healthcare, Maria O'Brien
Faculty Scholarship
This paper examines the recent U.S. Supreme Court retiree health care decision in Tackett v. M & G Polymers and focuses, in particular, on the ostensibly odd silence with respect to a critical contract term — whether the parties in fact agreed that these benefits were vested. Although the union in Tackett insisted these welfare benefits were clearly intended to vest and the employer now asserts they can be modified at any time, the collective bargaining agreement and supporting documents are ambiguous on this question. This paper examines how and why this “silence” persisted for so many decades and concludes …
Promises Policies And Principles The Supreme Court And Contractual Obligation In Labor Relations, Daniel P. O'Gorman
Promises Policies And Principles The Supreme Court And Contractual Obligation In Labor Relations, Daniel P. O'Gorman
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Parallel Contract, Aditi Bagchi
Parallel Contract, Aditi Bagchi
All Faculty Scholarship
This Article describes a new model of contract. In parallel contract, one party enters into a series of contracts with many similarly situated individuals on background terms that are presumptively identical. Parallel contracts depart from the classical model of contract in two fundamental ways. First, obligations are not robustly dyadic in that they are neither tailored to the two parties to a given agreement nor understood by those parties by way of communications with each other. Second, obligations are not fixed at a discrete moment of contract. Parallel contracts should be interpreted differently than agreements more consistent with the classic …
Contract Theory And Some Realism About Employee Covenant Not To Compete Cases, Daniel P. O'Gorman
Contract Theory And Some Realism About Employee Covenant Not To Compete Cases, Daniel P. O'Gorman
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
A Moral Contractual Approach To Labor Law Reform: A Template For Using Ethical Principles To Regulate Behavior Where Law Failed To Do So Effectively, Zev J. Eigen, David S. Sherwyn
A Moral Contractual Approach To Labor Law Reform: A Template For Using Ethical Principles To Regulate Behavior Where Law Failed To Do So Effectively, Zev J. Eigen, David S. Sherwyn
Faculty Working Papers
If laws cease to work as they should or as intended, legislators and scholars propose new laws to replace or amend them. This paper posits an alternative—offering regulated parties the opportunity to contractually bind themselves to behave ethically. The perfect test-case for this proposal is labor law, because (1) labor law has not been amended for decades, (2) proposals to amend it have failed for political reasons, and are focused on union election win rates, and less on the election process itself, (3) it is an area of law already statutorily regulating parties' reciprocal contractual obligations, and (4) moral means …
Managing Moral Risk: The Case Of Contract, Aditi Bagchi
Managing Moral Risk: The Case Of Contract, Aditi Bagchi
All Faculty Scholarship
The concept of moral luck describes how the moral character of our actions seems to depend on factors outside our control. Implications of moral luck have been extensively explored in criminal law and tort law, but there is no literature on moral luck in contract law. I show that contract is an especially illuminating domain for the study of moral luck because it highlights that moral luck is not just a dark cloud over morality and the law to bemoan or ignore. We anticipate moral luck, i.e., we manage our moral risk, when we take into account the possibility that …
Solomon And Strikes: Labor Activity, The Contract Doctrine Of Impossibility Or Impracticability Of Performance, And Federal Labor Policy, Daniel P. O'Gorman
Solomon And Strikes: Labor Activity, The Contract Doctrine Of Impossibility Or Impracticability Of Performance, And Federal Labor Policy, Daniel P. O'Gorman
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Show Me The Money The Applicability Of Contract Laws Ratification And Tenderback Doctrines To Title Vii Releases, Daniel P. O'Gorman
Show Me The Money The Applicability Of Contract Laws Ratification And Tenderback Doctrines To Title Vii Releases, Daniel P. O'Gorman
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Fulfilling Lucy's Legacy: Recognizing Implicit Good-Faith Obligations Within Explicit Job Duties, Emily Gold Waldman
Fulfilling Lucy's Legacy: Recognizing Implicit Good-Faith Obligations Within Explicit Job Duties, Emily Gold Waldman
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Wood v. Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon is often cited for the principle that every contract contains an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. Yet the very source of that decision--the New York Court of Appeals--has been emphatically unwilling to recognize an implied good-faith covenant in the context of employment relationships, given the judicial presumption of employment at will. This essay criticizes the New York Court of Appeals' conclusion that the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing must yield to the presumption of employment at will, and advocates a more balanced approach.
Critical Interventions: Toward An Expansive Equality Approach To The Doctrine Of Good Faith In Contract Law, Emily Houh
Critical Interventions: Toward An Expansive Equality Approach To The Doctrine Of Good Faith In Contract Law, Emily Houh
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
This article argues that courts should use the doctrine of good faith in contract law to prohibit improper considerations of race in contract formation and performance, and should recognize good faith as a device for eliminating racial subordination that can function beyond the scope of conventional civil rights discourse. Although civil rights laws provide important remedies to victims of discrimination, the elimination of racial subordination cannot remain the exclusive domain of civil rights law. Rather, other substantive areas of law can and should incorporate expansive equality principles to achieve that end. For example, this article demonstrates how the implied obligation …
Arbitration, Consent And Contractual Theory: The Implications Of Eeoc V.Waffle House, Jaime L. Dodge, Elizabeth Pollman
Arbitration, Consent And Contractual Theory: The Implications Of Eeoc V.Waffle House, Jaime L. Dodge, Elizabeth Pollman
All Faculty Scholarship
Consent has long been the foundation of arbitration, giving the process legitimacy and informing decisions about its nature and structure. The Supreme Court has consistently required consent as a precondition for compelling arbitration. However, it remains unclear what actions constitute consent. In First Options v. Kaplan,1 the Supreme Court held that courts should apply state contract law to determine whether an arbitral clause exists, but “added an important qualification” that “[c]ourts should not assume that the parties have agreed to arbitrate unless there is clear and unmistakable evidence that they did so.”2 In the wake of First Options, the courts …
Mandatory Arbitration: Alternative Dispute Resolution Or Coercive Dispute Suppression?, Sharona Hoffman
Mandatory Arbitration: Alternative Dispute Resolution Or Coercive Dispute Suppression?, Sharona Hoffman
Faculty Publications
The enforceability of mandatory arbitration policies contained in employment contracts between employees and their direct employers remains an open question, even after the Supreme Court's 1991 decision in Gilmer v. Interstate Johnson Lane Corp. While Gilmer gave effect to a mandatory arbitration clause in a contract between a securities broker and his licensing exchange, the Court noted that the contract at issue was not an ordinary employment contract between employer and employee. The Court declined to decide whether arbitration agreements in ordinary employment contracts are per se enforceable under the Federal Arbitration Act or whether these provisions are exempt from …
Job Security: Protecting At-Will Employees With Good Cause Legislation, Mayumi Yokoyama
Job Security: Protecting At-Will Employees With Good Cause Legislation, Mayumi Yokoyama
LLM Theses and Essays
Recent decades have witnessed significant developments in employment termination law in the United States. In particular, the long-standing “at-will” doctrine, under which employers can fire employees for good, bad, or no reason at all, has experienced great erosion and wide variations in law from state to state. There has been a movement of statutory and common law restrictions limiting an employer’s freedom to terminate at will, which reflects the increasing consciousness of job security by society and workers. This paper analyzes the problem of job security by tracing the origin of the at-will doctrine to 19th century principles favoring economic …
Drafting The Dispute Resolution Clause, Whitmore Gray
Drafting The Dispute Resolution Clause, Whitmore Gray
Book Chapters
Providing in a contract for ways to resolve disputes that may arise presents a substantial challenge to the lawyer. In one sense, this is what a lawyer regularly does in contract drafting-anticipating misunderstandings or problems that experience has indicated are likely to arise, and trying to provide clear solutions in advance. When it comes to drafting a specific clause for the resolution of further disputes that may arise, however, many lawyers are at a substantial disadvantage. The task comes at the end of the substantive negotiations. The client does not want to focus on, or draw the other party's attention …