Voices in the Wind: American Opposition to the Korean War

Very little has been written on the peace movement during the Korean war. Historian Joseph Conlin assessed the period and concluded that when hostilities with North Korean troops commenced in 1950, the American antiwar movement stood at its nadir. Lawrence Wittner\u27s fine book Rebels Against War is devoted to the American peace movement from 1941 to 1960. Yet out of this book\u27s 300- odd pages, less than three concern the movement during the Korean war- and most of this discussion is focused on those elements in the movement which supported the war. This is typical of the major secondary sources on the American peace movement. It is certainly true that the Korean war met with surprisingly little public resistance, especially initially. Republicans joined Democrats in applauding Truman\u27s decision to intervene. More surprisingly, a number of traditionally pacifist individuals, organizations and periodicals endorsed the war, including some that had not supported World War Two. Prominent in this category were Norman Thomas, the Socialist Party, Dwight MacDonald and the Progressive

The American Rule That Swallows the Exception

The “American” rule of employment at-will cripples the effectiveness of the two most important exceptions to that doctrine, the National Labor Relations Act and Title VII. Scholars often cite at-will as an area in which exceptions swallow the rule but ignore the opposite effect the rule has in undermining rights widely viewed as fundamental. This article goes beyond the standard critiques of the NLRA and Title VII and uses two other areas of law to make this case. The impact of at-will on private sector labor rights under the NLRA is shown by comparing public sector employment. Public sector labor law has all the flaws scholars have identified in the NLRA, yet public employees are organizing much more successfully. The crucial difference is that most public workers are not employees at-will. For employment discrimination, the article compares rules governing claims of discrimination in juror selection under the Supreme Court’s decision in Batson v. Kentucky. Batson rules are identical to Title VII rules, and have been so ineffective that scholars and a Supreme Court Justice have suggested that all juror strikes should be done for cause, the equivalent of requiring cause for discharge from employment. The article then balances the at-will rule against the exceptions it undermines. From the inception of the rule, there have been many attempts to create exceptions to it. Today, numerous, small, and often unclear inroads have been made. This makes the rule less useful to both sides, offering uncertainty to employers yet scant protection to employees. At the same time, the cost of at-will is the lack of effective labor and anti-discrimination regimes. Scholars and policy-makers should understand this cost when debating labor law, antidiscrimination law, and the future of the at-will doctrine

Public-Sector Labor in the Age of Obama

Labor and Employment Law Under the Obama Administration: A Time for Hope and Change? Symposium held November 12-13, 2010, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Bloomington, Indiana

Comments on Restatement of Employment Law (Third), Chapter 1

This article addresses the Restatement of Employment Law, Chapter 1, on the “Existence of Employment Relationship.” The Labor Law Group previously responded to a draft version of this chapter. This article will not revisit all the considerations discussed in that article. Instead, it will focus on three issues within this topic that have become increasingly important in recent years that the Restatement does not adequately address. These three issues are: the joint employer relationship; the use of unpaid interns; and the rise of the “gig” economy, with its attendant questions about employee status in enterprises such as Uber or Lyft. The article addresses these issues in turn, and then closes by touching on a few of the most important issues left unresolved from the draft to the final version of the Restatement

State Legislation as a Fulcrum for Change: Wisconsin\u27s Public Sector Labor Law, and the Revolution in Politics and Worker Rights

The rise of public sector unions is one of the most significant but least examined movements for legal rights and social change. Through the 1950s, government employees typically had no right to bargain collectively or even to organize unions–rights often regarded as fundamental human rights–and public sector unions were small and relatively powerless. Yet today, unions represent more than 40 percent of all public workers, government employees make up about 40 percent of the entire U.S. labor movement, and public sector unions are among the strongest political advocacy groups in the country. This became possible only through a revolution of reform in state legislation in the past forty years: state laws that grant public workers the right to organize and bargain collectively. This sea-change in law and politics and the accompanying vast expansion of a social movement is notable in that it was done neither through federal laws nor a Supreme Court decision, but rather through state statutes and political action. In this era of federalism, such mechanisms of legal reform deserve increased scrutiny. Using archival documents of the groups involved, this article analyzes the first political victory on this issue: Wisconsin’s public sector laws of 1959 and 1962. These laws created the first state statute to grant organizing and collective bargaining rights to public employees. The passage of this law required a decade-long battle over ideas, political power, and legal doctrines. The article traces this struggle in all of these arenas, describing how the interaction of theory, evolving societal norms, and political muscle started a wave of reform in a crucial area: the legal regulation of a social and economic movement. The result was a fundamental turning point in the legal rights of workers in this country and in American politics. It is also a case study of how significant social and political change can be accomplished at the level of state statutes

Working Group on Chapter 1 of the Proposed Restatement of Employment Law: Existence of Employment Relationship

This article presents a critique of chapter 1 of the Proposed Restatement of Employment Law. The critique is organized to follow the organization of the proposed Restatement, which begins with a provision of black letter law, a series of comments and illustrations explaining the meaning and application of the black letter law, and the reporters\u27 notes providing support for the black letter law and the commentary. This critique will follow that structure, with each part focusing on a section of the chapter: the introductory note; section 1.01; section 1.02; section 1.03; and section 1.04. The subdivisions of the parts will, likewise, generally follow the subdivisions of the sections in the chapter, although sometimes a critique of the reporters\u27 notes will be its own subpart, and sometimes it will be discussed in the subsections analyzing the comments

Working Group on Chapter 1 of the Proposed Restatement of Employment Law: Existence of Employment Relationship

This article presents a critique of chapter 1 of the Proposed Restatement of Employment Law. The critique is organized to follow the organization of the proposed Restatement, which begins with a provision of black letter law, a series of comments and illustrations explaining the meaning and application of the black letter law, and the reporters\u27 notes providing support for the black letter law and the commentary. This critique will follow that structure, with each part focusing on a section of the chapter: the introductory note; section 1.01; section 1.02; section 1.03; and section 1.04. The subdivisions of the parts will, likewise, generally follow the subdivisions of the sections in the chapter, although sometimes a critique of the reporters\u27 notes will be its own subpart, and sometimes it will be discussed in the subsections analyzing the comments