Kaufman, Bruce E. --- "Labor Law and Employment Regulation: Neoclassical and Institutional Perspectives" [2009] ELECD 403; in Dau-Schmidt, G. Kenneth; Harris, D. Seth; Lobel, Orly (eds), "Labor and Employment Law and Economics" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: Labor and Employment Law and Economics

Editor(s): Dau-Schmidt, G. Kenneth; Harris, D. Seth; Lobel, Orly

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847207296

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: Labor Law and Employment Regulation: Neoclassical and Institutional Perspectives

Author(s): Kaufman, Bruce E.

Number of pages: 56

Extract:

1 Labor law and employment regulation:
neoclassical and institutional perspectives
Bruce E. Kaufman


Legal regulation of the employment relationship expanded greatly over the
twentieth century in all the industrializing countries of the world. A century
ago in Anglo-Saxon countries the legal relationship between employer
and employee was regulated by the common law doctrine of `master and
servant' (Linder 1989; Deakin and Wilkinson 2005). Rights and protec-
tions afforded employees under this doctrine were few, while statute law
provisions regulating the terms and conditions of employment were rela-
tively elementary in Europe and Australasia and practically non-existent in
the United States (Rodgers 1998). As a practical matter, the employment
relationship was largely regarded as simply another species of commercial
transaction between buyer and seller and, thus, was governed by the same
generic body of contract law (Epstein 1983). Not surprisingly, a separate
field of labor and employment law had yet to emerge in most countries of
that era (Arthurs 2002; Birk 2002; Davies and Freedland 2002).
What a difference a century makes! From then to now dozens of new
employment laws and regulatory agencies governing all aspects of labor
and employment have been added. The United States, for example, did
not have so much as a federal child labor law until 1938; six decades later
the Dunlop Commission spoke of `an explosion in the breadth and depth
of legal regulation of the American workplace', including twenty-six
major statutes, one executive order, and thousands of detailed regulations
(Commission on ...