What Is Human Resources Law?

Abstract

Human Resources (‘HR’) Law is not a term much used by legal scholars. In law schools throughout the English-speaking world, one encounters courses on employment law, labour law and, less frequently, work law, but no courses on ‘HR law’. Outside of law schools, however, the term is common parlance, at least in North America. But what is HR law? Is it nothing other than employment law, rebranded to appeal to firms and other employing organisations? In this paper, we argue that HR law reflects and reinforces a particular paradigm or vision of work relations that is quite distinct from traditional understandings of labour law’s defining purpose. When it comes to interpreting and applying employment law, moreover, human resource management professionals and HR lawyers assume positions of authority—positions of authority that might be recognised within firms by senior management and, beyond the firm, by courts, policy makers and legislatures. To what extent and with which consequences this is so, is likely to be jurisdiction-specific and demands further investigation.