Author: Joseph Grodin

California Supreme Court Upholds Mandatory First Contract Arbitration For Farmworkers

California Supreme Court Upholds Mandatory First Contract Arbitration For Farmworkers

One of Jerry Brown’s signature achievements during his first term of office was securing the passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975 (ALRA). Farmworkers are excluded from coverage under the National Labor Relations Act, and the ALRA was the first (and still only) state statute to establish a comprehensive system for protecting the right of farmworkers to form unions and engage in collective bargaining. The ALRA has fallen short of its promise, however, due in part to the seasonal and migratory characteristics of farm labor, which pose obstacles to union organization and stable bargaining relationships and which...

Introduction by Joseph Grodin, Former Associate Justice, California Supreme Court

Introduction by Joseph Grodin, Former Associate Justice, California Supreme Court

Adam Liptak, writing for the New York Times a few years ago, called the California Supreme Court the “most influential state court in the nation” and for good reason. A study published in the U.C. Davis Law Review, which focused on the number of times state court decisions were cited by other state courts, found California’s high court to be the winner by a landslide. But if one were to judge solely by the table of contents of leading law reviews, one would hardly know that to be the case. It is not that law reviews have been shunning the...