The Assault on American Labor Law: Unions Before the Supreme Court, 1965-2025

Reviewing the dismantling of American labor law in more than Supreme Court cases The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), signed into law by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1935, guarantees the right of private sector employees to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining, and take collective action such as strikes.Since its passage, the NLRA has functioned as the foundational statute of United States labor law.Opposed by conservatives and members of the Republican Party from the beginning, its provisions were largely upheld by the Supreme Court until the 1960's.In the latter part of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, however, the Court began to erode the protections of the NLRA.While some cases have received widespread attention from commentators and scholars, such as Starbucks Corp. v. McKinney (2 24), there have been numerous detrimental rulings that are little discussed.Taken as a whole, the Supreme Court's efforts to undermine the NLRA appear sustained