1. Introduction
This book focuses on employment law, which has been the subject of as rapid a transformation as can have happened to any legal subject in recent times, and is certainly one of the most difficult areas of law in which to keep up to date. In some ways employment law is a curious mixture of ancient and modern, for much old law lies behind or at the basis of new statutory law and in some cases the old law continues to exist alongside the new. The subject is, however, unrecognizable from what it was only 40 years ago, with the enormous increase in statute law and the ever-increasing volume of case law on the modern statutes. Thus, the intending student must be able to exercise the lawyer’s skill in dealing with both extensive case law and major statutes, sometimes of astounding complexity. As well as setting out the history of this area of law, this chapter covers important background features of procedure and the enforcement of the law through tribunals, including recent developments such as ACAS early conciliation, tribunal fees, and possible future reforms in the direction of one overall Labour Court.