Socio-legal Scholarship

How do labor judges and labor inspectors persuade workers to settle their claims? How do multi-national companies implement private, global agreements in particular plants and among their global suppliers? Because these questions deal with the way law works “in action” I cannot always find answers in law books. I must engage in “socio-legal” research to get the answers. Therefore, some of my scholarship reports on “elite interviews,” or interviews I do of people who are especially knowledgeable of certain law-related matters, such as a company’s implementation of a private agreement. Additionally, I have done two ethnographies based on participant observation. That research requires me to spend significant time in a place where I can get an intimate understanding of how law works. I have been lucky to do this type of research at the labor inspectorate and labor courts of Chile, where I followed labor inspectors to copper mines, agricultural fields, and other places of work. I also served as an organizer at Arise Chicago, a worker center, to learn how that group advocated for workers without counting with the resources of a traditional labor union. Below is a list of my socio-legal publications. Some report on original research, while others report on secondary data or set theoretical and research agendas.

Alt Labor and its Institutions

“Alt labor and Worker Centres” in Guy Davidov, Brian Langille & Gillian Lester eds., Oxford Handbook of the Law of Work (Oxford, forthcoming in 2023).

“Organizing the State: The ‘New Labor Law’ Seen from the Bottom-Up” co-authored with Michael C. Oswalt (2018) 39:2 Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law 415-480.

“Worker Centers and the Moral Economy: Disrupting through Brokerage, Prestige, and Moral Framing” (2017) 2017 University of Chicago Legal Forum 409-434.

Wage Boards and Sectoral Bargaining

Quasi Tripartism: Limits of Co-Regulation and Sectoral Bargaining in the United States” (2023) 90(2) University of Chicago Law Review 703-738

“Wage Boards and Labor Revitalization: U.S. Aspirations and Uruguayan Realities” (2022) 32 Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law 109-151.

“Can Wage Boards Revive U.S. Labor? Marshaling Evidence from Puerto Rico” (2020) 95:1 Chicago-Kent Law Review 127-156.