For a complete list of course offerings in Labor and Employment Law, including full descriptions and faculty who will be teaching the offerings in 2008-2009, refer to the online Curriculum Guide.
Relations between employers and employees centrally shape people's daily lives and identies. Those relations also serve an important channel for participation in the economy and as citizens. Because employment relations are simultaneously contractual and hierarchical, they impolicate significant legal and philosophical questions about consent, power, and participation. Workplaces have become highly regulated institutions, which in turn govern the terms and conditions of workplace interactions among employees and employers. And because society claims a substantial stake in the fairness of employment relations (and their termination), employment cases have come to comprise a substantial portion of state and federal court dockets. The burgeoning law governing labor and employment relations has recently come under growing pressure and criticism in light of heightened international competition, greater mobility of capital and labor, the development of more fluuid and flexible economic enterprises, greater complexity in the dynamics causing workplace inequality, and the declining reach of traditional unions and collective bargaining. These developments raise urgent policy questions aboutt he desirability of alternative modes of workplace regulation. They have also prompted experimentation with new modes of governance and advocacy that have broader implications for the role of law and lawyers.
The basic courses in the field are Labor Law, Employment Discrimination and Employment Law. Labor Law covers the federal and international law of unionization and collective bargaining and reform proposals aimed at revitalizing employees' voice in the workplace and responding ot the globalization of labor, capital and product markets. Employment Discrimination examines legal, regulatory and interdisciplinary approaches to workplace disrcimination based on race, ethnicity, sex, religion, sexual orientation and disability. It considers current doctrine and practice in relation to changing dynamics of discrimination and organizational structure. Employment Law examines bodies of statutory and common law regulating the individual employment relationship, including th elaw of the employment contract, limitations on hiring and discharge, employee privacy rights, employment discrimination and one or more of the multitude of workplace regulatory statutes governing health and safety, unemployment compensation, wage and hour regulation and pensions. In addition, several seminars offer advanced study and research in specialized practical and theoretical areas, including alternative theoretical approaches to workplace regulation, the theory and practice of workplace equity, labor rights in international and comparative contexts, bargaining, arbitration and sports law.
