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Osgoode Home > Osgoode Digital Commons > Journals > CLLPJ > Vol. 45 (2025) > Iss. 1

 

Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal

Abstract

Labour law is a fragmented regulatory landscape bringing together multiple legal sources drawn from various areas of law, institutions, and interactions between multiple regulatory tiers and frameworks. This article offers a conceptual and analytical framework for understanding the intricate contemporary structure of labour law and its effectiveness in ensuring the protections it has historically been intended to provide. The article considers four types of legal fragmentation — temporal, vertical, horizontal, and institutional — distinguished by character and effect. The fragmented architecture of legal regulation leads, unsurprisingly, to complexity. The article puts forward an analytical approach that assesses how labour law’s complexity and fragmentation impacts its effectiveness. The article first explains the process of mapping a fragmented regulatory landscape and outlines the analytical benchmarks for assessing legal effectiveness. The concluding section examines labour law as a fragmented landscape and the resulting normative dynamics.

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