From Corporate Express To Fedex Home Delivery: A New Hurdle For Employees Seeking The Protections Of The National Labor Relations Act In The D.C. Circuit,
2010
American University Washington College of Law
From Corporate Express To Fedex Home Delivery: A New Hurdle For Employees Seeking The Protections Of The National Labor Relations Act In The D.C. Circuit, Jamison F. Grella
American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law
No abstract provided.
A Misguided Reversal: Why The Oklahoma Supreme Court Should Not Have Interpreted Saint V. Data Exchange, Inc. To Provide A Burk Tort Cause Of Action To Plaintiffs Alleging Age Discrimination In Employment,
2010
University of Oklahoma College of Law
A Misguided Reversal: Why The Oklahoma Supreme Court Should Not Have Interpreted Saint V. Data Exchange, Inc. To Provide A Burk Tort Cause Of Action To Plaintiffs Alleging Age Discrimination In Employment, Katherine R. Morelli
Oklahoma Law Review
No abstract provided.
Protecting Our Aging Retirees: Converting 401(K) Accounts Into Federally Guaranteed Lifetime Annuities,
2010
University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Protecting Our Aging Retirees: Converting 401(K) Accounts Into Federally Guaranteed Lifetime Annuities, Lawrence A. Frolik
Articles
America’s retirees are faced with a potential financial disaster. Economic security in retirement has long depended on Social Security, private savings and employer provided retirement plans. While much attention has been paid to the financial problems of Social Security and the lack of private saving for retirement, little attention has been paid to an alarming development in employer provided retirement plans: the likely inability of retirees during the long years of their retirement to successfully manage their retirement funds accumulated in 401(k) and similar accounts. We as a society have set up a funding system for retirement that assumes retirees …
Review Of Labor And Employment Decisions From The United States Supreme Court’S 2008–2009 Term,
2010
Indiana University Maurer School of Law
Review Of Labor And Employment Decisions From The United States Supreme Court’S 2008–2009 Term, Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt, Todd C. Dvorak
Articles by Maurer Faculty
In its most recently completed Term, the United States Supreme Court decided eight labor and employment law cases of some consequence. The decided cases covered a broad array of labor and employment subjects, including: the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), public sector labor law, and private sector labor law. Practitioners who specialize in a particular area might be tempted to focus on only the cases in their area. Academics might be tempted to try to devise some economic or logical theory …
The Relative Bargaining Power Of Employers And Unions In The Global Information Age: A Comparative Analysis Of The United States And Japan,
2010
Indiana University Maurer School of Law
The Relative Bargaining Power Of Employers And Unions In The Global Information Age: A Comparative Analysis Of The United States And Japan, Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt, Benjamin C. Ellis
Articles by Maurer Faculty
In this paper, we examine and compare the impact of American and Japanese labor law on the relative bargaining power of the labor and management within the context of the new global economy based on information technology. We begin by providing a simple economic definition of bargaining power and examining how it can be influenced by economic and legal factors. Next, we discuss the impact of new information technology and the global economy on the employment relationship and how this has decreased union bargaining power relative to management bargaining power. Finally, we compare various facets of American and Japanese labor …
Business-Like: The Supreme Court's 2009-2010 Labor And Employment Decisions,
2010
University of Colorado Law School
Business-Like: The Supreme Court's 2009-2010 Labor And Employment Decisions, Melissa Hart
Publications
The 2009-10 Term at the Supreme Court was a relatively quiet one for labor and employment law. While the Justices were in the news for decisions on corporate political donations and the Second Amendment, the Court’s work-related docket grabbed no headlines. In fact, though, the Court considered 7 work law cases this Term, in areas ranging from standards for arbitration agreements to employee privacy rights in new technology to time limitations for filing Title VII disparate impact claims. This article discusses the Court’s labor and employment cases for the Term. While they may not have made much news, several of …
Shifting Burdens: Discrimination Law Through The Lens Of Jury Instructions,
2010
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Shifting Burdens: Discrimination Law Through The Lens Of Jury Instructions, Catherine T. Struve
All Faculty Scholarship
This Term, in Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court held the Price Waterhouse burden-shifting framework inapplicable to Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”) claims. This Article finds the Gross Court’s rationales for repudiating Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins unpersuasive. Although the crux of the Court’s argument is that it is too confusing to instruct a jury on the burden-shifting framework, in actuality, there is no evidence that burden-shifting instructions are unduly confusing. In fact, Gross will exacerbate a different sort of confusion: that which arises when a jury must resolve two claims under different burden frameworks. At …
The Depression Era Sit-Down Strikes And The Limits Of Liberal Labor Law,
2010
University of Colorado Law School
The Depression Era Sit-Down Strikes And The Limits Of Liberal Labor Law, Ahmed A. White
Publications
This paper explores the history of sit-down strikes from the New Deal Era and beyond and traces their influence on the substance of modern labor law. It argues that, even as the sit-down strikes proved essential to the development of a meaningful system of labor rights, the strikes also had a very different effect. As this paper undertakes to demonstrate, legal and political attacks on labor rights that were originally aimed at the sit-down strikes metastasized into a more general campaign to prohibit a range of militant strike practices, even those bearing little outward resemblance to the original sit-down strikes. …
Reviving Employee Rights - Recent And Upcoming Employment Discrimination Legislation: Proceedings Of The 2010 Annual Meeting Of The Association Of American Law Schools Section On Employment Discrimination Law,
2010
University of Colorado Law School
Reviving Employee Rights - Recent And Upcoming Employment Discrimination Legislation: Proceedings Of The 2010 Annual Meeting Of The Association Of American Law Schools Section On Employment Discrimination Law, Scott A. Moss, Sandra Sperino, Robin R. Runge, Charles A. Sullivan
Publications
No abstract provided.
The Missing Minority Judges,
2010
University of Pittsburgh School of Law
The Missing Minority Judges, Pat K. Chew, Luke T. Kelley-Chew
Articles
This essay documents the lack of Asian-American judges and considers the consequences.
Freedom Not To Listen: A Constitutional Analysis Of Compulsory Indoctrination Through Workplace Captive Audience Meetings,
2010
The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law
Freedom Not To Listen: A Constitutional Analysis Of Compulsory Indoctrination Through Workplace Captive Audience Meetings, Roger C. Hartley
Scholarly Articles
Workplace captive audience meetings are assemblies of employees during paid work time in which employers compel employees to listen to antiunion and other types of proselytizing. Employers enforce attendance at workplace captive audience meetings by threats of discharge. Typically, employers deny employees the right to ask questions or express disagreement with the anti-union views presented during these mandatory meetings. Soon after the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) concluded that workplace captive audience meetings discussing unionization are per se unlawful. However, the NLRB reversed course following the enactment of the 1947 Taft-Hartley …
Square Peg In A Round Hole: Government Contractor Battlefield Tort Liability And The Political Question Doctrine,
2010
Southern Methodist University, Dedman School of Law
Square Peg In A Round Hole: Government Contractor Battlefield Tort Liability And The Political Question Doctrine, Chris Jenks
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
Recent assertions of the political question doctrine by battlefield contractor defendants in tort litigation have brought new life to the doctrine while raising new questions. The lawsuits stem from incidents in both Iraq and Afghanistan and include plaintiffs ranging from local nationals suing contract interrogators and interpreters, to contract employees suing another contractor following insurgent attacks, to U.S. service members suing contractors after vehicle and airplane crashes. The lawsuits involve tort claims, which on their face do not conjure up images of a constitutional power struggle, but in at least fifteen cases thus far contractor defendants have asserted the political …
Employment Discrimination In The Ethnically Diverse Workplace,
2010
Fordham University School of Law
Employment Discrimination In The Ethnically Diverse Workplace, Tanya K. Hernandez
Faculty Scholarship
Racial integration has long been the touchstone of racial progress in the workplace. But integration is only the beginning of the struggle to end racial discrimination. As workplaces become more diverse, they do not necessarily become less racially discriminatory. Diverse workplaces may be characterized by antagonism between people of different races. Interethnic discrimination may exist alongside the discrimination that has traditionally occurred between blacks and whites, i.e., non-white racial and ethnic groups may engage in disparate-treatment employment discrimination actionable under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Examples of interethnic discrimination occur among members of different ethnic subgroups, as …
Gathering Moss: The Nrla's Resistance To Legislative Change ,
2010
Fordham University School of Law
Gathering Moss: The Nrla's Resistance To Legislative Change , James J. Brudney
Faculty Scholarship
Why has the NLRA been so resistant to legislative change for more than 60 years? How was Congress able to enact two major labor relations laws within a 12-year period (1935 and 1947) but then unable to approve proposed reforms in the years since 1947? In an effort to answer these questions, the article closely examines contemporaneous newspaper accounts from the 1935 and 1947 legislative “successes” as well as from two more recent congressional “failures” in 1978 and 1992. The article’s examination proceeds based on an analytic framework borrowed from political scientist John Kingdon that posits a recurring interplay among …
Reluctance And Remorse: The Covenant Of Good Faith And Fair Dealing With American Employment Law Good Faith And Fair Dealing In The Individual Employment Relationship,
2010
Fordham University School of Law
Reluctance And Remorse: The Covenant Of Good Faith And Fair Dealing With American Employment Law Good Faith And Fair Dealing In The Individual Employment Relationship, James J. Brudney
Faculty Scholarship
The covenant of good faith and fair dealing ("the covenant" or "Good Faith") is now an accepted feature of contractual relations in the United States. Essentially undeveloped until the 1960s, the obligation to act in good faith during contract performance and enforcement gained traction once it was written into the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) and adopted by state legislatures. The covenant achieved broader recognition when included in 1981 as a new section in the Restatement (Second) of Contracts ("Restatement"). In the employment setting, however, the covenant has not fared nearly so well. The majority of states have declined to apply …
The New Calculus Of Punitive Damages For Employment Discrimination Cases,
2010
University of Cincinnati College of Law
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 …
A Modern Theory Of Direct Corporate Liability For Title Vii,
2010
University of Cincinnati College of Law
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 …
Discrimination Redefined,
2010
University of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School of Law
Discrimination Redefined, Ann C. Mcginley
Scholarly Works
In this Response to Professor Natasha Martin's article Pretext in Peril, Professor Ann McGinley argues that courts' retrenchment in cases interpreting Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act results from a narrow definition of discrimination that focuses on conscious, intentional discrimination. Increasingly social science research demonstrates that much disparate treatment occurs as a result of unconscious biases, but the courts' reluctance to consider this social science has led, in many cases, to a literal, narrow definition of “pretext." Moreover, she posits that the recent Supreme Court case of Ricci v. DeStefano redefines discrimination in an ahistorical and acontextual …
In Search Of The Reasonable Woman: Anti-Discrimination Rhetoric In The United States,
2010
University of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School of Law
In Search Of The Reasonable Woman: Anti-Discrimination Rhetoric In The United States, Francis J. Mootz Iii
Scholarly Works
This article emerged from my participation in a Symposium addressing global perspectives on the topic, "Anti-Discrimination Discourse and Practices," sponsored by The Jean Monnet Chair of European Law at Cagliari University, Sardinia. The article examines the rhetorical development of the "reasonable woman" standard of hostile work environment sexual harassment under Title VII. I argue that the rhetorical framing of the standard has unnecessarily limited its impact, perhaps to the point of undermining its potential to radically revise our understanding of gender discrimination. I suggest how the rhetorical power of the standard might be recovered.
Ricci V. Destefano: A Masculinities Theory Analysis,
2010
University of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School of Law
Ricci V. Destefano: A Masculinities Theory Analysis, Ann C. Mcginley
Scholarly Works
This Article applies masculinity theory to explore the aspects Ricci v. Destefano and its political reverberations. Empirical evidence showed that virtually all written tests have a disparate impact on minorities, that a neighboring city had reached less discriminatory results using a different weighting system, and that other fire departments used assessment centers to judge firefighters' qualifications for promotions. While the black male and all female firefighters were made invisible by the case and the testimony, the fact that Ricci's and Vargas' testimony lionized a particularly traditional form of heterosexual masculinity was also invisible. While the command presence required of a …