A Captivating New Paper

Paul Secunda argues in a new paper on SSRN that the National Labor Relations Act should be interpreted to prohibit “captive audience meetings.”  Employers require employee attendance at such meetings in order to communicate anti-union messages.  Paul has written interestingly about captive audience meetings from a number of perspectives (see, e.g., here).  In the new paper, he critically examines NLRB precedent that approves of such meetings.

Entitled “The Contemporary ‘Fist Inside the Velvet Glove’ — Employer Captive Audience Meetings Under the NLRA,” the paper will be published in a symposium issue of the Florida International University Law Review devoted to the NLRB.  The abstract appears after the jump. 

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Marquette Sports Law Abroad

Last month I had the opportunity to participate in a sports law conference in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.  This event–styled Arab Lex Sportiva–was billed as the first ever sports law conference in the Arab world, and it was held in the conference center where the 1994 Israeli-Jordanian peace accords were signed.

It was fascinating to see how a culture very different than our own is trying to come to grips with the globalization of world sport.  I spoke on the intersection of copyright law and sports broadcasting, particularly as it has been affected by the TRIPS agreement.  As always, I end up learning an enormous amount.

It was  also fascinating to see how well known Marquette is in sports law circles, even in Egypt.  To my surprise, the local advertising for the event touted the fact that there would be a speaker from Marquette University, as well as representatives from FIFA, CAS, and other international sporting agencies.  Several people attending the conference asked me about the LLM program for foreign lawyers, and expressed interest in enrolling (if they could figure out how to pay the tuition).  Most of the non-Arab speakers were from Europe, and almost every one of them inquired about Professor Mitten, who seems to be known by the entire international sports community.

My personal highlight came when a speaker from Greece mistook me for Marty Greenburg.

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Rediscovering the Privileges or Immunities Clause

The Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has been largely dormant since the Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873.  Courts generally treat the Clause as adding little or nothing to the Fourteenth Amendment’s two better-known provisions, the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses.  However, Bruce Boyden argues  in a new paper on SSRN that the Clause actually does have a distinctive role to play in constitutional doctrine, specifically, by regulating conflicts between states over competing “status regimes.”

As Bruce explains, America’s prototypical “status regime conflict” related to the rights of northern blacks who traveled to pro-slavery states prior to the Civil War.  Much litigation resulted from the refusal of some southern and western states to recognize the rights of such travelers.  Based on a review of the debates arising from these antebellum cases and the history surrounding the adoption of the Privileges or Immunities Clause, Bruce argues that the Clause was intended to ensure that interstate travelers could retain the legal status they enjoyed in their home states notwithstanding entrenched national divisions over legal status questions.

For Bruce, the ongoing significance of this history is that the Privileges or Immunities Clause should continue to be seen as a device for resolving status regime conflicts. 

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