Colloquium: Contract Theory and Marginalized Workers

From 9AM – 5PM PST. 
Located at the Goldberg Room, UC Berkeley School of Law in Berkeley, CA.

Organized by the Berkeley Center for Private Law Theory

About the Colloquium

Labor and employment statutes exclude from coverage a significant number of workers, such as independent contractors, or fail to protect others because of judicial interpretation (in the case of incarcerated people) or immigration law. As a result, millions of immigrants, incarcerated people, and independent contractors labor under a regime of contract that implies, according to the conventional wisdom, a dramatic downgrade – (almost) a full collapse – of their rights as compared to the rights of employees. Contract, according to this conventional wisdom, both enables employers to opt out of minimum labor standards laws for those who would otherwise be protected and contains no substantive guarantees of fair treatment.

To critically investigate this conventional wisdom, the colloquium will bring together scholars who study marginalized workers and work law more generally with scholars who focus on contract, contract theory, and private law theory. Our main questions will be what made contract the enemy of marginalized workers, and whether contract law may become part of the solution for, rather than one of the causes of, the vulnerability of workers to exploitative working conditions.

This colloquium is co-organized with Berkeley’s Center for Law and Work. Please check out the program for the day here. 

Please access the papers here.