LAW 713 - Employment Law for the 21st Century

This course examines key aspects of modern employment law in the context of the contemporary workplace. Whereas other courses focus on what employment law is today, this course explores why it is that way, evaluates whether it is meeting society’s current needs, and considers what changes could be implemented to make it a better fit for the 21st Century workplace. Because much of contemporary employment law reflects a 19th Century workplace paradigm, it is increasingly ill-suited to cope with the modern gig economy, an increasingly contingent workforce, a 24/7 wired world, and new challenges to traditional legal concepts surrounding work–whether that takes the form of college athletes earning millions of dollars in NIL money or AI-enabled remote workers untethered to a conventional worksite or time schedule. In addition to critically examining what it means to be an “employee” today, the course will evaluate the efficacy of contemporary law pertaining to unemployment compensation, minimum wage, work-related injuries and illnesses, discrimination and harassment, and the nexus between employment and health care. In each instance, students will consider examples of alternative approaches provided by the law of other industrialized nations. While students will find it helpful to have previously taken the survey course in Employment Law (LAW 456) or the course in Employment Discrimination (LAW 452), neither is a pre-requisite to registering for this course. Fifty percent of each student’s course grade will be based on their class participation, with a short advocacy paper and a longer research paper accounting for the remaining fifty percent of their grade