Reconceiving Labour Law: The Labour Market Regulation Project
Macquarie Law Journal, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 21-44, 2008
24 Pages Posted: 2 Nov 2010 Last revised: 3 Nov 2010
Date Written: February 3, 2008
Abstract
This paper reviews the recent work by Australian labour lawyers that has embraced the ‘new regulation’ and in particular the idea of law as regulation. This approach has recast the academic study of labour law as being concerned with regulation of the labour market. While much of this work has concentrated on expanding the field of labour law to include many areas of law affecting the labour market (beyond the employer-employee relationship), the work has also developed the view of law as a mechanism of state regulation. The paper examines how the ‘regulatory turn’ in Australian labour law has affected the accounts it provides, and assesses the connection between seeing the labour market as the field of study and the adoption of a regulatory perspective to the study of labour law.
Keywords: labour market regulation
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