Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

Labor Relations, Joseph R. Grodin

Cal Law Trends and Developments

No abstract provided.

A Modern Theory Of Direct Corporate Liability For Title Vii, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Something is missing from Title VII-a modern and fully functional theory of direct employer liability for individual discrimination claims. Courts largely focus on finding employers indirectly liable for discrimination through the acts of their agents, rather than viewing the employer as the culpable actor in appropriate circumstances. This Article posits that five major problems with Title VII can be eliminated or reduced by once again recognizing the importance of direct employer liability and by re-theorizing direct liability using modern conceptions of corporate character.

Borrowing the emerging concept of corporate character from criminal law and corporate law scholarship, this Article attempts …

The New Calculus Of Punitive Damages For Employment Discrimination Cases, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

To determine whether a punitive damages award is constitutionally excessive, courts are required, among other things, to consider the ratio of compensatory to punitive damages. No longer is the total sum of remedies the only relevant calculation in determining whether an award is excessive. The numbers the judge decides to use in the ratio comparison also become important, in many cases determining whether excessiveness review is even warranted.

Owing in part to the complexities of the employment discrimination remedies regime, courts make numerous errors when undertaking the required comparison in the employment discrimination context. When conducting the excessiveness calculus, some …

Seeing Subtle Racism, Pat K. Chew

Articles

Traditional employment discrimination law does not offer remedies for subtle bias in the workplace. For instance, in empirical studies of racial harassment cases, plaintiffs are much more likely to be successful if they claim egregious and blatant racist incidents rather than more subtle examples of racial intimidation, humiliation, or exclusion. But some groundbreaking jurists are cognizant of the reality and harm of subtle bias - and are acknowledging them in their analysis in racial harassment cases. While not yet widely recognized, the jurists are nonetheless creating important precedents for a re-interpretation of racial harassment jurisprudence, and by extension, employment discrimination …

Three Transnational Discourses Of Labor Law In Domestic Reforms, Alvaro Santos

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Current labor law debates, in the United States and elsewhere, reflect entrenched discursive positions that make potential reform seem impossible. This Article identifies and examines the three most influential positions, which it names the “social,” “the neoliberal,” and the “rights-based” approach. It shows that these discursive positions are truly transnational in character. In contrast with conventional wisdom, which accepts the incompatibility of these positions, this Article creates a conceptual framework that productively combines elements from each to enrich the debates over labor law reform and to foster institutional imagination. Applying this framework, the Article examines the collective bargaining systems of …