Abstract

This article highlights the origin of the employment at-will rule by providing the contextual contrast of Reconstruction free labor republicanism. To date, no work has situated the doctrine’s emergence in the heady Reconstruction discussions of labor reform that immediately preceded it. This article briefly summarizes how the at-will rule functions to subordinate employees. The article then elaborates upon the pervasive, overarching anti-subordination themes of the Radical Republican debates in Congress as well as their specific initiatives targeted at equalizing power disparities. Further, the article examines the paradox that the Thirteenth Amendment’s minimum constitutional guarantee that workers have a right to quit became doctrinally embedded in the at-will rule’s justification. Third, the article explores the contemporary post-bellum republican alternatives, both in treatises and in the dissent’s critique in the seminal case of Payne v. Western and Atlantic Railroad. While one treatise writer, Horace Wood, advanced the at-will rule, another, James Schouler, imbued with a sense of republicanism, advanced a different rule of duration based upon custom and pay period. Finally, the article examines an early critique that at-will circumstances were so insubstantial as to fail to amount to any contract at all. Overall, this article provides a different perspective from which to view the doctrine’s emergence, that is, as a retrenchment of railroads’ authority over their day laborers at the very time that Reconstruction’s egalitarian reform efforts were fading. Utilizing contract terminology, the constitutionally guaranteed right to quit was bootstrapped into a justification for the prerogative of employers to fire employees at will. Eventually, this legal construct became the predominant employment doctrine, and it continues today.

中文翻译：

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通俗主义的反共和起源

摘要

本文通过提供重建自由劳动共和主义的背景对比，强调了随意雇佣规则的由来。迄今为止，还没有任何作品能够证明该学说的出现在紧随其后的令人头疼的《重建》中有关劳动改革的讨论中。本文简要总结了意愿规则对下属员工的作用。然后，文章详细阐述了国会共和党激进主义辩论中普遍存在的，普遍存在的反从属主题，以及旨在平衡权力差距的具体举措。此外，本文还检验了一个悖论，即第十三条修正案对工人有权辞职的最低宪法保证是原则性地嵌入在自愿规则的正当理由中。第三，这篇文章探讨了当代战后共和党的其他选择，无论是在专着还是在异议人士对Payne诉Western and Atlantic Railroad案的开创性批评中。一位专着的论文作者霍勒斯·伍德（Horace Wood）提出了随心所欲的规则，而另一位詹姆斯·舒勒（James Schouler）充满了共和主义意识，根据习俗和薪资期限提出了不同的期限规则。最后，本文考察了一个早期的批评，即随意的情况是如此微不足道，以至于根本无法构成任何合同。总体而言，本文提供了一个不同的视角来查看该学说的出现，即，在重建的平等改革努力逐渐消亡之际，铁路对他们的日工的权力被削减了。利用合同术语，宪法保障的辞职权被证明是雇主有权随意解雇雇员的理由。最终，这种法律结构成为主要的就业理论，并一直延续到今天。