Some Economic Aspects of the Labor Injunction

In the field of labor relations one of the more controversial legal devices is the injunction, a write of equity law. Little research has been attempted to correlate the legal conditioning of the environment with the actual conditions within the sphere of labor. In the few studies attempted, legal considerations have been stressed with few studies attempting to gather the scattered materials pertaining to the labor injunction, in an attempt to synthesize the material and to reach certain conclusions as to the actual economic effects of the labor injunction. An examination of the institutional device of the injunction in relation to the economic life of the country is needed. There is further need for a gathering of important precedent-forming labor injunctions as they have developed in the extension of the injunctive power into the sphere of labor relations. Certainly the Norris-LaGuardia Act has a place in a coordination of some of these background materials necessary to understand the development of the institution of equity law as a part of the economic environment. But the study of background materials only, is inadequate. An objective appraisal of the relation of all these factors to such specific items in the well-being of the worker as union growth, industrial disputes, the outcome of strikes, and other economic elements is also highly necessary and desirable to reach conclusions as to the efficacy of the labor injunction as a legal device conditioning the labor relations of America. It shall be the goal of this study to attempt to provide this synthesis and analysis in a hope that some of the questions linked to the juristic economics inherent in the labor injunction may receive a tentative answer. Advisor: Curtis M. Elliot