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Why Whistleblowers Lose: An Empirical And Qualitative Analysis Of State Court Cases, Nancy M. Modesitt Oct 2013

Why Whistleblowers Lose: An Empirical And Qualitative Analysis Of State Court Cases, Nancy M. Modesitt

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This Article was originally intended to be an analysis of the propriety, or impropriety, of the doctrines most commonly used by courts to decide employees’ whistleblowing retaliation claims against employers. However, upon conducting initial research, it quickly became apparent that there was very little data available on whistleblowing cases. Unlike employment discrimination cases, where several empirical studies have been conducted, there is only one empirical analysis of whistleblower claims, which focused solely on outcomes in the federal administrative process for claims brought under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). That study revealed that whistleblowers fare poorly for a number of reasons, but …


Collective Representation And Employee Voice In The U.S. Public Sector Workplace: Looking North For Solutions?, Martin H. Malin Oct 2013

Collective Representation And Employee Voice In The U.S. Public Sector Workplace: Looking North For Solutions?, Martin H. Malin

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Legislation enacted in many states following the 2010 elections in the United States strengthened unilateral public employer control and weakened employee voice. This rebalancing of power occurred in the context of state public employee labour relations acts modeled on the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), but with a narrower scope of bargaining than in the private sector. This narrow scope channels unions’ voice away from the quality of public services and towards protecting members from the effects of decisions unilaterally imposed by management. The Supreme Court of Canada has held that the freedom of association guaranteed by the Charter of …


Does Public Employee Collective Bargaining Distort Democracy? A Perspective From The United States, Martin H. Malin Apr 2013

Does Public Employee Collective Bargaining Distort Democracy? A Perspective From The United States, Martin H. Malin

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The beginning of the second decade of the 21st century saw renewed attacks on public employee collective bargaining, which included claims that allowing public employees to organize and bargain collectively distorts democratic processes. These renewed attacks included the traditional claim that public employee collective bargaining inappropriately gives one interest group, workers and their unions, an avenue of access to public decision-makers that is not available to other interest groups. The attack also raised a new claim of distortion of democratic processes: that unions are inappropriately advantaged in the broader political process through agency shop or fair share and dues check-off …


The Classical American State And The Regulation Of Morals, Herbert J. Hovenkamp Feb 2013

The Classical American State And The Regulation Of Morals, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

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The United States has a strong tradition of state regulation that stretches back to the Commonwealth ideal of Revolutionary times and grew steadily throughout the nineteenth century. But regulation also had more than its share of critics. A core principle of Jacksonian democracy was that too much regulation was for the benefit of special interests, mainly wealthier and propertied classes. The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment after the Civil War provided the lever that laissez faire legal writers used to make a more coherent Constitutional case against increasing regulation. How much they actually succeeded has always been subject to dispute. …


Two Models Of Interest Arbitration, Martin H. Malin Jan 2013

Two Models Of Interest Arbitration, Martin H. Malin

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Most states prohibit public employees from striking and the federal government makes a strike by a federal employee a felony. Many public employee labor relations acts give organized employees a right to arbitrate when their union and employer are unable to reach agreement on the terms of a contract. Much discussion of such interest arbitration schemes has focused on whether the process inhibits bargaining (the chilling effect) or is habit forming (the narcotic effect). These discussions contrast the use of traditional interest arbitration, where the arbitrator may award any outcome that falls between the parties’ final offers, with final offer …


Identifying (With) Disability: Using Film To Teach Employment Discrimination, Elizabeth Pendo Jan 2013

Identifying (With) Disability: Using Film To Teach Employment Discrimination, Elizabeth Pendo

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Building on a prior article about using film to teach health law, this Essay is intended to share my experience using the film Philadelphia as a method of enhancing coverage and discussion of the employment provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and to provide an opportunity for recognition of, and identification with, the experiences of people with disabilities.


Participation As A Theory Of Employment, Matthew T. Bodie Jan 2013

Participation As A Theory Of Employment, Matthew T. Bodie

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The concept of employment is an important legal category, not only for labor and employment law, but also for intellectual property law, torts, criminal law, and tax. The right-to-control test has dominated the debate over the definition of “employee” since its origins in the master-servant doctrine. However, the test no longer represents our modern notion of what it means to be an employee. This change has played itself out in research on the theory of the firm, which has shifted from a model of control to a model of participation in a team production process. This Article uses the theory …


Managerial Judging And Substantive Law, Tobias Barrington Wolff Jan 2013

Managerial Judging And Substantive Law, Tobias Barrington Wolff

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The figure of the proactive jurist, involved in case management from the outset of the litigation and attentive throughout the proceedings to the impact of her decisions on settlement dynamics -- a managerial judge -- has displaced the passive umpire as the dominant paradigm in the federal district courts. Thus far, discussions of managerial judging have focused primarily upon values endogenous to the practice of judging. Procedural scholarship has paid little attention to the impact of the underlying substantive law on the parameters and conduct of complex proceedings.

In this Article, I examine the interface between substantive law and managerial …


Health Insurance, Employment, And The Human Genome: Genetic Discrimination And Biobanks In The United States, Eric A. Feldman, Chelsea Darnell Jan 2013

Health Insurance, Employment, And The Human Genome: Genetic Discrimination And Biobanks In The United States, Eric A. Feldman, Chelsea Darnell

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Does genetic information warrant special legal protection, and if so how should it be protected? This essay examines the most recent (and indeed only) significant effort by the US government to prohibit genetic discrimination, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA). We argue that the legislation is unlikely to have the positive impact sought by advocates of genetic privacy and proponents of biobanks. In part, GINA disappoints because it does too little. Hailed by its promoters as “the first civil rights act of the 21st century,” GINA’s reach is in fact quite modest and its grasp even more so. But …


An Optimist's Take On The Decline Of Small-Employer Health Insurance, Allison K. Hoffman Jan 2013

An Optimist's Take On The Decline Of Small-Employer Health Insurance, Allison K. Hoffman

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In their Article, Saving Small-Employer Health Insurance, Amy Monahan and Dan Schwarcz contend that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) could be the death of small-group health insurance by incentivizing many small employers not to offer coverage. While their prediction that the ACA, after implemented, will destabilize the small-group insurance market may prove true, I argue why their prescription that it should be saved is flawed and why we may be better off without small group insurance.


What Brady V. N.F.L. Teaches About The Devolution Of Labor Law, Michael C. Duff Jan 2013

What Brady V. N.F.L. Teaches About The Devolution Of Labor Law, Michael C. Duff

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In this essay I argue that the Eight Circuit got things very wrong when it found, in Brady v. National Football League, that a district court’s injunctions issued against the NFL in connection with player-filed antitrust suits were barred by the Norris LaGuardia Act of 1932 (NLGA). I argue that the Court’s misreading of the NLGA strikes at the “statutory music” of labor law so dramatically as to represent a judicial unmooring from it. I chronicle other recent important, but relatively minor, judicial departures from the music. I also discuss a major but less recent departure – the employer lockout. …


The Gamification Of Work, Miriam A. Cherry Jan 2013

The Gamification Of Work, Miriam A. Cherry

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In the language of cyberspace, introducing elements of fun or game-playing into everyday tasks or through simulations is known as the process of “gamification.” The idea that people could be working while they play a video game – in some instances without even knowing that they are working – is becoming part of our reality. Gamification is an important element of what in previous writing I have termed “virtual work,” that is, work that is taking place wholly online, in crowdsourcing arrangements, or in virtual worlds. The gamification of work is an important trend with important implications for employment law. …


The Roberts Court And The Law Of Human Resources, Matthew T. Bodie Jan 2013

The Roberts Court And The Law Of Human Resources, Matthew T. Bodie

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The rise of human resources departments parallels the increase in the myriad statutory and regulatory requirements that govern the workplace. The Supreme Court's decisions in labor and employment law cases are largely monitored and implemented by HR professionals who must carry out these directives on a daily basis. This article looks at the Roberts Court's labor and employment law cases through the lens of human resources. In adopting an approach that is solicitous towards HR departments and concerns, the Roberts Court reflects a willingness to empower these private institutional players. Even if labor and employment law scholars do not agree …


Larry From The Left: An Appreciation, Matthew T. Bodie, Grant M. Hayden Jan 2013

Larry From The Left: An Appreciation, Matthew T. Bodie, Grant M. Hayden

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This essay approaches the scholarship of the late Professor Larry Ribstein from a progressive vantage point. It argues that Ribstein's revolutionary work upended the "nexus of contracts" theory in corporate law and provided a potential alternative to the regulatory state for those who believe in worker empowerment and anti-cronyism. Progressive corporate law scholars should look to Ribstein's scholarship not as a hurdle to overcome, but as a resource to be tapped for insights about constructing a more egalitarian and dynamic economy.


Implausible Injuries: Wal-Mart V. Dukes And The Future Of Class Actions And Employment Discrimination Cases, Marcia L. Mccormick Jan 2013

Implausible Injuries: Wal-Mart V. Dukes And The Future Of Class Actions And Employment Discrimination Cases, Marcia L. Mccormick

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In 2001, a class action suit was brought against Wal-Mart, where plaintiffs sought to certify a class of every woman who did work for the giant retailer or had worked for it since 1998, seeking relief related to promotion and pay policies. Plaintiffs alleged that they were all discriminated against on the basis of sex. The Supreme Court agreed with Wal-Mart, finding that the class did not meet requirements for class actions set by Rule 23. This article explores the reasoning behind the Supreme Court’s split decision that the class did not meet the commonality standard, which relied significantly on …