By Philip A. Miscimarra. Full text here. Jared Diamond has received wide acclaim for his Pulitzer Prize-winning book—Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies—which charts the path of human history. Professor Diamond asks why Europeans explored and dominated populations in North America and Africa, rather than the other way around, and he concludes that…

By David Weissbrodt & Matthew Mason. Full text here. The United States is one of 185 member states of the International Labour Organization (ILO). Despite holding a permanent seat on the ILO Governing Body, the United States is a party to only 14 of the 189 labor conventions and two of eight core conventions. The United…

By Craig Becker. Full text here. The Keynote Address at the Volume 98 Minnesota Law Review Symposium explores the question of the future of organized labor in the United States.  

By Zev J. Eigen & Sandro Garofalo. Full text here. Historically, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) has interpreted the unfair labor practice provisions of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA or Act) primarily through the adjudication of individual cases involving charges against employers or unions. Because control of the Board shifts back and…

By Sara Slinn. Full text here. Although Canada and the United States have both adopted labor relations legal frameworks based on the Wagner model, labor relations have played out very differently in the two countries. This is particularly evident in the countries’ divergent trajectories of changing union density. In recent decades the United States has experienced…

By César F. Rosado Marzán. Full text here. Globalization has led to union decline almost universally across the world’s capitalist democracies. But despite globalization, global labor unions have been able to sign International Framework Agreements (IFAs) with more than 110 multinational corporations that cover about 9 million workers, excluding contractors and suppliers. IFAs are agreements signed…

By Ann C. Hodges. Full text here. The Supreme Court is in the midst of a revolution in arbitration jurisprudence comparable to that reflected in the Steel-workers Trilogy in 1960. While the Trilogy was hailed as a major accomplishment in labor relations, the current revolution is devastating the rights of nonunion workers and consumers. The Court’s…

By Samuel Estreicher. Full text here. This paper proposes an amendment to our basic labor laws that I call “easy in, easy out.” Essentially, representation elections—secret-ballot votes to decide whether employees want union representation and whether they want to be represented by the particular petitioning labor organization(s)—in relatively broad units, would, over time, become automatic. Every…

By Deborah Tuerkheimer. Full text here. This Article examines the convergence of two seemingly contradictory developments. One is the widespread rape of women by acquaintances, dates, and intimates, mostly without legal recourse. The other is the emergence of a generation of women who embrace a pro-sex orientation and define their sexualities accordingly. To date, legal theorists…

By Orly Rachmilovitz. Full text here. In recent years, legal scholars have paid considerable attention to the social and legal pressures to assimilate into mainstream culture that minority groups experience (“assimilation demands”) in the public sphere. Commentators have written about assimilation demands on sexual minority identities in politics, the workplace, schools, and in communities of color.…