Employee protection and economic liberalism in the US: does the search for a balance still make sense?

Extract

[...] We can also note that this field covers a major legislation around unions, directly attached to the freedom of establishment. Thus, the law can guarantee the economic freedoms that need to be respected in a liberal regime. In fact, these unions were viewed as the work of monopolists, restricting labor supply and trying to raise wages above competitive levels, being thus, completely against the development of the liberal principles, and that should be tackled by using new law principles, based, on a new economic reasoning. [...]

[...] However, liberalists claim the fact that they want to give back its real value to labor, which necessarily transits through some market mechanisms, that can sometimes be less fair to the workers. This critic has taken a great importance as the theory grew, and the link that was constructed between labor law and economic liberalism became controversy. As liberalism can also be used in law theory, its impact can be very diverse and create some effects that are not always expected. [...]

[...] The constitution not only grants the right of leading a case in front of a judge to get a settlement, but also the right for the parties to decline its use and to refuse to go there. As labor law is a very vast field of general law, and most connected matters emerge from the federal states, most laws regarding employee protection are federal laws. In regard with the growth of economic rights and economic freedom, the law had to be adapted to follow this development, and there are now around 180 worker protection laws in the US that play a crucial role in the conciliation between liberal economics, and labor protection, that can either go hand in hand, or be totally opposed, thus creating conflicts and a necessity of interpretation from the courts. [...]

[...] Employee protection through law does not only consider the individuals and their own private good, but also their place inside the society, and in relation to the state. With the emergence of the Liberal state in politics and economy, the legislator needed to be able to create a link for this new interaction, and principles to make it more fluent and less prone to conflict. Finally, antitrust laws also took a very big part in this field, mostly with the instauration of large manufactures. [...]

[...] The legislation in the United States aims to rule the situation both on a national scale, and for each state within the nation. This leads to a division of the powers and of systems, that can sometimes diverge from one another and might lead to emerging conflicts. In general, one of the most important law principles in this field, states that federal laws prevail in front of state law if any conflict arises between them. This principle is included in article VI of the US constitution and is the source of many disputes resolution and of a more cohesive system. [...]