ABSTRACT
Labor law has its own working theory of the business firm – not derivable from another area of law – which is more explicit than other areas of law in positing a basic hierarchy of intrafirm governance, which the affirmative provisions of labor law are then taken to (partially) modify. This is true across the main functional domains of labor law: union formation; collective expressive and associational rights; and the scope of collective bargaining. The second part of this Essay briefly revisits the ur-text of corporate governance, by New Deal liberals Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means. The extremely influential framework they originated revolves around an imagined prehistory of the modern corporation that involves an implicit extending-back of the hierarchical conception of the firm found in modern labor law.
Paul, Sanjukta, Labor Law, Ownership and the Firm (May 28, 2024), Chicago-Kent Law Review, 2024; University of Michigan Law and Economics Research Paper Forthcoming; University of Michigan Public Law Research Paper Forthcoming.
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