2021 Yale Law Journal Student-Essay Competition
The Essays in this Collection won the fifth annual Yale Law Journal Student Essay Competition on emerging issues in employment and labor law. In Solidarity, Legitimacy, and the Janus Double Bind, J. Colin Bradley analyzes labor organizing and civic trust. In Unemployment Insurance for the Gig Economy, Benjamin Della Rocca proposes extending unemployment benefits to gig-economy workers.
Solidarity, Legitimacy, and the Janus Double Bind
Janus’s failure to recognize a state interest in labor organizing contained a twofold mistake. Organizing develops a culture of civic trust. In turn, civic trust is necessary for citizens to accept the sorts of accommodations raised by conscience-based exemptions claims—like Janus’s—that the state must legitimize.
Unemployment Insurance for the Gig Economy
Historically, U.S. unemployment insurance has excluded workers lying outside the conventional employer/employee binary. That should change. This Essay argues for extending benefits to gig-economy workers, via structures fashioned after states’ existing unemployment programs. It grounds its argument in two philosophical traditions foundational to tax-law scholarship: liberal egalitarianism and utilitarianism.