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Manipulating Forum Jurisdiction And Generating A Law Of Employee Free Speech, Ivan C. Rutledge

Mercer Law Review

The National Labor Relations Act contains protection of employee solicitation, handbilling, and choice of representatives that the first and fourteenth amendments do not vouchsafe to other members of society. This essay is written to review the development of this thesis and to argue that the United States Supreme Court has fashioned a regime of forum jurisdiction surrounding employees' rights to speak and print that is both unique and exquisitely complex. Two patterns of allocating jurisdiction, both subsumed under the fuzzy expression "federal pre-emption," engender the complexity. This article will first review the Court's precedents before the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, …