Law and Labor in the New Global Economy: Through the Lens of United States Federalism

The heightened economic globalization of the last quarter century presents a welter of new questions for legal scholars, policymakers, and practitioners. In many specialized fields, lawyers and academics are reskilling in comparative and international law in response to the growing importance of the transnational linkages and competition facing economic and regulatory actors in the United States. Concurrently, dramatic economic and political transitions in Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe have created legal uncertainties and innovations that compound the challenges of transnationalization. Issues of labor and employment law are at the center of both of these epochal transformations – globalization and regime-transition. The articles in this symposium reflect well the range and urgency of these issues. Economic Globalization. Two broad aspects of economic globalization are particularly relevant to labor lawyers. The first is the growing international integration of product, capital, and labor markets. Transnational flows of labor have again become a flashpoint of electoral politics in the United States and elsewhere. The controversy has spilled into the legislative arena in proposals to limit immigrant workers\u27 access to jobs and government benefits? It has also renewed perennial debates over the stringency and enforcement of domestic immigration law and minimal labor conditions, such as child labor, sweatshop, and wage and hour rules