Thomas Jefferson School of Law Professor Susan-Bisom Rapp’s new article North American Border Wars: The Role of Canadian and American Scholarship in U.S. Labor Law Reform Debates is featured as the lead story on the February 28 Workplace Profs Blog.
The article, which appears in the Hofstra Labor and Employment Law Journal, was co-authored by Professor Mike Zimmer of Loyola Chicago School of Law.
“There’s a tendency in the US to think of our approach to law as exceptional – uninfluenced by legal trends elsewhere. This is especially true of labor and employment law since the US system generally provides far less protection for employees than they would have in most of the developed world,” said Professor Bisom-Rapp. “What was fun about this project was teasing out undeniably Canadian-inspired ideas that played a big role in the contentious debate over labor law reform at the start of President Obama’s first term. Realizing that the borders between our countries are more porous than we think may make American policymakers more willing to look to other nations facing similar problems. Enlarging the pool from which we draw our best ideas about legal reform can only be a good thing – at least so long as we realize that our ability to transplant ideas from elsewhere will be somewhat constrained by our American cultural and political context.”
Professor Bisom-Rapp reports that the article will also shortly appear in Italian as a book chapter, S. Bisom-Rapp & M. Zimmer, La Guerra di Confine Nordamericana: il Ruolo della Ricerca Canadese e Americana nel Dibattito sulla Riforma del Diritto del Lavoro Statunitense, in REGOLE, POLITICHE E METODO: L’EREDITÀ DI MARCO BIAGI NELLE RELAZIONI DI LAVORO DI OGGI (F. Basenghi, L.E. Golzio (a cura di), con la collaborazione di A. Russo, O. Rymkevich, I. Senatori, C. Serra, Giappichelli, Torino, 2013). She and Professor Zimmer presented their paper March 19, 2012 at the Tenth Annual Marco Biagi Conference at the University of Modena, Italy.
An internationally known scholar in the field of comparative workplace law, Professor Bisom-Rapp writes about globalization, equal employment opportunity, occupational safety and health, and the rights of migrants.
