Exclusion is Forever: How Keeping Rights to Strike, Picket, and Other Labour Speech, Separate from Constitutional Rights, has Proven a Bad Deal for American Labour Unions and Constitutional Law

Canadian Labour and Employment Law Journal, Forthcoming

Rutgers School of Law-Newark Research Papers No. 057

14 Pages Posted: 4 Dec 2009

See all articles by Alan Hyde

Alan Hyde

Rutgers University - School of Law

Date Written: December 3, 2009

Abstract

For everyone but labor unions, constitutional protection of symbolic speech, speech accompanied by mass physical action like picketing, boycotts, and even potentially threatening speech, has expanded significantly in recent decades. The First Amendment protects flag burning, cross burning, picket lines that block abortion clinics, St. Patrick’s Day parades, and nude dancing. The anomalous treatment of the identical conduct by labor unions (apart from the nude dancing) is increasingly difficult to explain. With hindsight, the American exclusion of labor speech and action from the basic constitutional framework, on the supposed grounds that it is and must be regulated through a comprehensive administrative scheme, has been bad for labor, bad for labor speech, and bad for the Constitution (for these unexplained disparate outcomes are used to delegitimize constitutional law).

Keywords: labor, labor law, consitution, constitutional law

Suggested Citation

Hyde, Alan Stuart, Exclusion is Forever: How Keeping Rights to Strike, Picket, and Other Labour Speech, Separate from Constitutional Rights, has Proven a Bad Deal for American Labour Unions and Constitutional Law (December 3, 2009). Canadian Labour and Employment Law Journal, Forthcoming, Rutgers School of Law-Newark Research Papers No. 057, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1517844 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1517844

Alan Stuart Hyde (Contact Author)

Rutgers University - School of Law ( email )

Newark, NJ
United States
973-353-3163 (Phone)
973-353-1445 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~hyde

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