Human Rights and Contracts as Labour Governance: A (Post-)legal Realist Inquiry

Law and development mainstream conceptions of labour market policies, while still marked by long-dominant views of contract law as economically superior to any labour regulation, have recently incorporated certain specific labour (human) rights. Core labour rights are thus accepted by global policy-makers, on the basis of their radical distinction from non-core labour standards and their rationalization according to certain foundational principles. This thesis criticizes the prevailing dichotomies between core labour rights and non-core standards, on the one hand, and contract law and regulation, on the other, bringing to bear the post-legal realist idea of legal indeterminacy. It argues that the organizing legal concepts that justify these dichotomies contain gaps and ambiguities that often lead to contradictory and indeterminate outcomes. It thus suggests that the core/non-core labour standards and contract/regulation distinctions are unproductive and should be rejected if a better conception of labour governance is to come to fruition.MAS