The Contract of Employment: A Study in Legal Evolution

S. Deakin

Working Papers from Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge

Abstract: This paper reconstructs the evolutionary path of the contract of employmentin English law. It demonstrates that the contract of employment is a more recent innovation than widely thought, and that its essential features owe as much to legislation as they do to the common law of contract. The master-servant model of the nineteenth century was only displaced by the modern contract of employment as a result of twentieth century social legislation and collective bargaining. The paper discusses present-day mutations in the legal form of employment in the light of this analysis.

Keywords: contract of employment; poor law; mater and servant; collective bargaining; welfare state; legal evolution; path dependence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J38 J41 J53 K31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent and nep-law
Note: PRO-1
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cbr:cbrwps:wp203

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