March 26, 2020
Shao Chan’s excellent new article on The [F]law examines how Uber and Lyft are racing to the bottom to redefine work. Read the article here. Related article on The [F]law: Julio Colby, Brave New Work: The Resurgence of Organized Labor
See Julio Colby’s important article on the possible resurgence of American labor. Although private-sector union membership sits at a historic low of 6 percent, the number of strikes and union elections have significantly increased since the pandemic, with successful unionization
Jon Hanson & Jacob Lipton, the co-founders of the Systemic Justice Project, have recently published their article, Occupy Justice: Introducing the Injustice Framework in Volume 15 of The Harvard Law & Policy Review. You can download the article on SSRN and
Buying Pride: An Analysis of Corporate “Double Dipping” in LGBTQ+ Equality
Annamarie Forestiere
The private probation industry is broken. Low-income people are placed under the supervision of private probation companies solely due to their inability to pay a court fine. From there, they are routinely charged hundreds or thousands of dollars in fees
Child labor is a widespread problem in global cocoa supply chains. Nestlé, one of the largest cocoa companies, offers an example of how major cocoa companies describe the problem. Nestlé tells the public that child labor is a local problem
Unhealthy diets are extremely common in America, and they directly affect people’s health and wellbeing. Most people assume that poor diets are driven entirely by poor choices, but this narrative does not adequately account for the role of “Big Food”—the
Tucked into the fine print of millions of consumer and employment contracts, forced arbitration clauses are nearly ubiquitous in modern America. Most people who agree to them, however, have no idea that in doing so they’ve given away their right
Corporate Racial Justice Washing: Explaining Corporate America's coalition with racism's meta script
“Blackout Tuesday” featured abnormal corporate responses to the murder of George Floyd. Specifically, Fortune 500 companies made statements that expressed their alleged support of the black community and a belief that black lives matter. This critique aims to explain this
Lenient treatment of corporate executives who knowingly and intentionally harm the public is widespread. Corporate non-prosecution or deferred prosecution agreements (N/DPAs) — where the state agrees to drop or defer charges in exchange for the corporation paying a fine and
Fast fashion is the rapid turn-over of low-cost clothing, which is the focus of business models of companies such as H&M, Zara, and Gap. Although the fast fashion industry generates billions of dollars every year, this industry has continued to
From Individual Failing to Corporate Crisis: How America Identified the Cause of the Opioid Epidemic
In 2018, 30% of Americans said drug abuse was an issue in their families. But because the opioid epidemic had whiter, wealthier victims than previous drug crises, the dominant narrative changed from viewing drug users as criminals to seeing them
This paper seeks to contextualize the history of corporations by revealing its ties to slavery and the cotton industry in the early nineteenth century. By revealing the ways corporations legitimized racial hierarchies, we better equip ourselves to addressing modern-day instances
Since the 1980s, there has been an expansion of federal, state, and local law authorizing eviction for criminal activity. This growing body of carceral housing law fostered a system of tenant screening, monitoring, and marking that replicates the harms of
Corporations have captured the United States’ redistricting process and are bankrolling partisan efforts to gerrymander electoral districts across the country. This paper offers an in-depth look at gerrymandering, its devastating consequences for democracy, and how corporate power power has increased systematic disenfranchisement and led
This paper explores the influence of corporate power on employees’ reproductive decision-making. It begins by illuminating the stark contrast in reproductive health offerings between low- and high-wage workers: While low-wage workers often face unsafe work environments and no paid time
This paper examines the problem of corporate tax avoidance through the use of international tax havens. It launches from a simple question asked repeatedly over the last decade: why do I pay more in taxes than a corporation like Apple?
Antitrust law was once framed as a “comprehensive charter of economic liberty aimed at preserving free and unfettered competition” but it is unclear whether that is still the case. As part of a revolution in economic thinking, antitrust enforcement
This paper addresses the gaps that allow corporations to deny responsibility for harms caused by their weapons. In the final section, I propose some solutions to hold corporations accountable, or at least blunt some of their influence.