The Labour Constitution: The Enduring Idea of Labour Law

It is a well-established part of the academic study of labour law to develop a theoretical framework which assists in both understanding the law’s intended and actual impact on labour relations and also the potential for legal change to influence developments within these relations. In the period of some 50 years since the mid-1960s, labour law in Britain has undergone a sequence of changes in different and sometimes diametrically opposed directions one effect of which had been to stimulate both academic identification of new explanations for the trajectories and effects of legal change and also fresh thinking on how and by what means the law can and (maybe) should seek to influence future developments. The starting point for Ruth Dukes’ thoughtful and thought provoking book The Labour Constitution , subtitled The Enduring Idea of Labour Law , is a number of relatively recent scholarly attempts ‘to redefine or re-imagine labour law’ (p 2) which, in turn, were prompted by the complex body of legal developments since the 1960s. Her stated purpose is to call into question the underlying assumption of these writers that the old ways of thinking about labour law are now obsolete and of limited if any value to an understanding or critical assessment of British labour law today.