Where There’s At-Will, There Are Many Ways: Redressing the Increasing Incoherence of Employment at Will

Authors

  • Scott A. Moss

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/lawreview.2005.64

Abstract

Employment at will, the doctrine holding that employees have no legal remedy for unfair terminations because they hold their jobs at the will of the employer, has become mired in incoherence. State courts praise the common law rule as “essential to free enterprise” and “central to the free market,” but in recent years they increasingly have riddled the rule with exceptions, allowing employee claims for whistleblowing, fraud, etc. Yet states have neither rejected employment at will nor shown any consistency in recognizing exceptions. Strikingly, states cite the same rationales to adopt and reject opposite exceptions, as a case study of two states illustrates: One state accepts exception X to protect employees while rejecting exception Y to maintain employment at will; yet on the same rationales, the other accepts exception Y while rejecting X.

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Published

2005-04-26

How to Cite

Moss, Scott A. 2005. “Where There’s At-Will, There Are Many Ways: Redressing the Increasing Incoherence of Employment at Will”. University of Pittsburgh Law Review 67 (2). https://doi.org/10.5195/lawreview.2005.64.

Issue

Vol. 67 No. 2 (2005)

Section

Articles

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