Principled Labor Law

This book provides a Latin American perspective of the “idea” of labor law, which the authors call “principled labor law.” It a jurisprudential method based on worker protection, i.e., the protective principle, and its derivative principles: primacy of reality, nonwaiver, and continuity. We argue that principled labor law is needed given that many labor law scholars have declared a crisis in their field due to the ascendancy of “fissured,” “gig,” “precarious,” and “nonstandard” work. While some scholars reassert the basic idea of labor law—protecting workers—despite the contemporary world of work, others argue for a “capabilities” perspective that can displace traditional labor law, a “Third Way” perspective concerned with market regulation, or simply argue for laissez-faire. Latin American scholars, perhaps because of a language barrier, have had scant presence in those international debates. They would likely disagree with shifts away from labor protection. This book forcefully advocates for the continued empirical validity of labor protection as the basis for labor law. The authors describe principled labor law as observable in four cases: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. To show the utility of principled labor law, the authors then apply the method to legal cases from the least labor-protective country in the industrialized world, the United States. Through principled labor law, the authors focus on the Thirteenth Amendment as a labor-protective constitutional provision, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. The authors show how principled labor law can provide a clear and simple method for consistent, labor protective jurisprudence in the United States and, hence, likely elsewhere.