The Capability Approach to Labour Law

Edited by Brian Langille

Explores whether and how the capability approach can help us understand, justify, and reform labour law
Offers new ways of seeing and debating familiar and concrete labour law issues
Provokes new thinking about the purpose, content and scope of labour law

The Capability Approach to Labour Law

Edited by Brian Langille

Description

Forty years ago Amartya Sen introduced to the world a novel approach to the idea of equality: the notion of 'basic capability' as 'a morally relevant dimension' and the claim that we should focus upon equality of basic capabilities ('a person being able to do certain basic things'). These ideas, as developed by Sen and Martha C. Nussbaum, have launched an academic armada now proceeding under the flag of the 'capability approach' (CA). While that flag has ventured far and wide and engaged many areas of inquiry, this volume of essays is the first to explore how CA might shed light upon labour law.

The capabilities approach can illuminate our understanding of labour law across three dimensions. Part I looks at the nature of the basic relationship between CA and labour law-do they share common ground or disagree about what is important? Can the CA provide a normative 'foundation' for labour law? Part II goes further by examining the relationship of the CA and other well-established perspectives on labour law, including economics, history, critical theory, restorative justice, and human rights. Part III examines the possible relevance of the CA to a range of specific labour law issues, such as freedom of association, age discrimination in the workplace, trade, employment policy, and sweatshop goods.

The Capability Approach to Labour Law

Edited by Brian Langille

Introduction: The Capability Approach to Labour Law-Why Are We Here?, Brian Langille
Part I: The Capability Approach and Labour Law: Fundamental Questions
1:What Can Sen's Capability Approach Offer to Labour Law, Hugh Collins
2:The Capability Approach and Labour Law: Identifying the Areas of Fit, Guy Davidov
3:Labor Law and the Capabilities Approach, Martha C. Nussbaum
4:Is the Capability Theory an Adequate Normative Theory for Labour Law?, Riccardo Del Punta
5:The Need to Become Fashionable, Supriya Routh
6:1. What is Labour Law? Implications of the Capabilities Approach, Brian Langille
Part II: The Capability Approach to Labour Law from Other Disciplinary Perspectives
7:The Capability Approach and the Economics of Labour Law, Simon Deakin
8:Labor History and the Clash of Capabilities, Laura Weinrib
9:Capabilities, Utility, or Primary Goods? On Finding a Conceptual Framework for (International) Labour Law, Pascal McDougall
10:Work, Human Rights, and Human Capabilities, Virginia Mantouvalou
11:Capabilities Approaches and Labour Law through a Restorative Regulatory Lens, Bruce P. Archibald
Part III: The Capability Approach to Labour Law and Important Labour Law Controversies
12:The Constitution of Capabilities: The Case of Freedom of Association, Alan Bogg
13:Capabilities and Age Discrimination, Pnina Alon-Shenker
14:(Re)Imagining the Trade-Labour Linkage: The Capabilities Approach, Clair Gamage
15:Freedom in Work and the Capability Approach: Towards a Politics of Freedoms for Labour?, Robert Salais
16:Capabilities, Contract, and Causality: The Case of Sweatshop Goods, Lyn K. L. Tjon Soei Len

The Capability Approach to Labour Law

Edited by Brian Langille

Author Information

Edited by Brian Langille, Professor, University of Toronto

Brian Langille is a professor in the Faculty of Law of the University of Toronto. His work examines how we think about labour law and he is currently working on an ongoing project addressing 'The Capability Approach to Labour Law', of which this volume of essays is an essential part.

Contributors:

Alan Bogg is Professor of Labour Law at the University of Bristol Law School.

Pnina Alon-Shenker is an Associate Professor in the Department of Law & Business at Ryerson University, Canada. She is the founding Academic Director of Ryerson Law & Business Clinic.

Bruce P. Archibald is Professor Emeritus of Law at Dalhousie University.

Hugh Collins is the Vinerian Professor of English Law at All Souls College, University of Oxford.

Guy Davidov is the Elias Lieberman Professor of Labour Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he previously served as Vice-Dean as well as Chair of Graduate Studies at the Faculty of Law, and is now the Director of the Sacher Institute for Legislative Studies and Comparative Law. He was the founder and first Chair of the Labour Law Research Network (LLRN).

Simon Deakin is Professor of Law at the University of Cambridge.

Clair Gammage is Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Bristol Law School.

Lyn K. L. Tjon Soei Len is a visiting assistant professor at Ohio State University.

Virginia Mantouvalou is Professor of Human Rights and Labour Law at University College London (UCL), Faculty of Laws.

Pascal McDougall is an SJD candidate at Harvard Law School. During his doctoral studies he has been a visiting researcher at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva and at Sciences Po Law School in Paris.

Martha C. Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, appointed in the Law School and the Philosophy Department. With Amartya Sen, she is one of the Founding Presidents of the Human Development and Capability Association.

Riccardo Del Punta is Professor of Labour Law at the University of Florence.

Supriya Routh is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Victoria.

Robert Salais is an economist and former Director of the CNRS Research Centre-Institutions and Historical Dynamics of the Economy and the Society (IHDES)-at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris-Saclay. He served as coordinator of European Programs of Research on the capability approach and its application to European employment and social policies.

Laura Weinrib is Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School and an associate member of the University of Chicago Department of History.