The Future of the Employment Contract

Douglas Brodie, Professor, School of Law, University of Strathclyde, UK

This analytical book examines how the common law of the employment contract is likely to evolve. Tracing the radical evolution of this area over the last 40 years, it explores how many of the changes in common law have been triggered by the judicial ‘discovery’ of the key attributes of the relationship. The author concludes that these key attributes of the contract, including the imbalance of power between employee and employer, are likely to remain the key driver for change.

‘In Douglas Brodie's The Future of the Employment Contract, one of the world's leading scholars on the employment contract provides a rich and judicious examination of the prospects for a worker-protective common law. The result is an impressive piece of scholarship that is sensitive to the virtues and the vices of the common law mind when it encounters the world of work. It deserves to be widely read, and it will influence academic and judicial debates at the frontiers of the discipline.’
– Alan Bogg, University of Bristol, UK

‘In The Future of the Employment Contract Douglas Brodie deftly analyzes current normative and jurisprudential debates about the contract of employment in UK law, interwoven with insights from other common law jurisdictions. The result is a work of perceptiveness and foresight, relevant far beyond the UK, that highlights how changing forms of work, changing terms of law, and public values will shape the future frontiers of the common law of contracts.’
– Claire Mummé, University of Windsor, Canada