Seminar in Private Law - Rebecca Scott & Cynthia Estlund on Labor, Slavery, and the Contemporary Workplace

For its session on Tuesday, 1 March 2022, the Seminar in Private Law is delighted to welcome Professor Rebecca J. Scott (University of Michigan, History & Law) and Professor Cynthia Estlund (NYU Law) for a conversation around the themes of "Labor, Slavery, and the Contemporary Workplace".

Professor Scott will discuss the idea of peremptory enslavement. Some background can be found in her article (co-authored with Carlos Venegas Fornias) "María Coleta and the Capuchin Friar: Slavery, Salvation, and the Adjudication of Status", 76:4 William and Mary Quarterly 727-762 (2019).

Professor Estlund will base he remarks on ideas on her chapter "The Fall and Rise of the Private Law of Work", in Ben Zipursky & Hanoch Dagan, eds, Research Handbook on Private Law Theory (London, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020) 412–42) and her article (forthcoming in Theoretical Inquiries in Law) "Is Labor Law Internal or External to Private Law? The View from Cedar Point".

Following the speakers' presentations, there will be some time for exchange and discussion with members of the audience.

This Seminar session will be hosted in hybrid-format at YLS and is accessible via Zoom. To receive the zoom-link, and the text, please write an email with the subject line "Registration Scott - Estlund" to private.law@yale.edu, ideally before Tuesday 22 February at 11:00 a.m. If you wish to be added to the mailing list and receive papers and information for future sessions of the 2022 Seminar in Private Law, please write to the same address.

About the Seminar: The 2022 Seminar in Private Law will devote itself to examining questions about the relationship between private orderings and public justice. We hope to explore how private law and the private arrangements that it enables and facilitates—e.g., through contracts, property rights, or corporate law—relate to (public) concerns with justice. This includes examining how public justice goals may be promoted or hampered through private arrangements, questioning the limits of private ordering, and reflecting critically on the interaction between private and public institutions more broadly. Our ambition is to study the subject from both theoretical and empirical perspectives and to engage champions, as well as critics, of private law. The Seminar will bring together lawyers with scholars from economics, sociology, history, and philosophy.