Workplace Equality: Theory and Legal Transformation (LAW592H1S)

This course will be taught by incoming Assistant Professor Sabine Tsuruda. Professor Tsuruda teaches and researches in work law, contract law, and legal theory. Her current research projects focus on workers’ expressive and associational rights, and the relationship between contract law and social equality. Prior to joining the Faculty of Law, Professor Tsuruda was an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law at Queen’s University. She graduated from the Joint JD/PhD Program in Law and Philosophy at UCLA. 

This course critically examines work law and its role in securing social equality. To what extent is the employment relation objectionably hierarchical? What are the limits of employment discrimination law in remedying discrimination, gender discrimination, and other kinds of discrimination at work? How, if at all, does (or should) labour law enable workers to “deal on an equal basis” with employers? Students will engage with such questions through discussion of selected work law jurisprudence as well as philosophical writing on work and equality, including, but not limited to, liberal egalitarian philosophy, critical race theory, Marxist theory, and feminist theory. Students should come away from the course with a working understanding of traditional and current controversies in work law and an informed view of the relationship between work law and social equality.