Bagenstos on Employment Law and Social Equality

Sam Bagenstos has brought to my attention his new article in the Michigan Law Review entitled: Employment Law and Social Equality.

Here is the abstract:

What is the normative justification for individual employment law? For a number of legal scholars, the answer is economic efficiency. Other scholars argue, to the contrary, that employment law protects against (vaguely defined) imbalances of bargaining power and exploitation.

Against both of these positions, this Article argues that individual employment law is best understood as advancing a particular conception of equality. That conception, which many legal and political theorists have called social equality, focuses on eliminating hierarchies of social status. This Article argues that individual employment law, like employment discrimination law, is justified as preventing employers from contributing to or entrenching social status hierarchies—and that it is justifiable even if it imposes meaningful costs on employers.

This Article argues that the social equality theory can help us critique, defend, elaborate, and extend the rules of individual employment law. It illustrates this point by showing how concerns about social equality, at an inchoate level, underlie some classic arguments against employment at will. It also shows how engaging with the question of social equality can enrich analysis of a number of currently salient doctrinal issues in employment law, including questions regarding how the law should protect workers’ privacy and political speech, the proper scope of maximum-hours laws and prohibitions on retaliation, and the framework that should govern employment arbitration.

Very interesting new meta-theory on what animnates employment law. As an ERISA guy, I think Sam's social equality theory equally applies to how the law should protect employee benefit plan participants and beneficiaries from opportunitistic behavior by plan administrators, plan sponsors, and their third party advisors and consultants.

An important new contribution to employment law theory that should be on the top of any workplace prof's reading list.

PS