Home / Vol.12, n°1 / Crise du droit du travail, pluralisme juridique et souveraineté

According to Max Weber, only the (modern) state can legitimately exercise physical force. Only it can legitimately guarantee the subjective rights that it directly or indirectly sets out. However, now that the twenty-first century has arrived and with it a return of legal pluralism and a proliferation of legal and political authorities, the state monopoly of legitimate force is threatened. Acknowledging that there are many different spheres of extra-state regulation, Weber says that law exists everywhere there is a certain type of social entity able to exercise legal force.

Internal corporate rules, which are regulations applied by a company independent of state law, create the most powerful constraints. The author examines this in order to describe a form of labour law that is characterized by a virtual absence of the courts and state and by strong legal pluralism in which government intervention is relatively recent.

[*] Communication présentée dans le cadre du Colloque international « Lieux et emprises de la souveraineté », organisé par le Centre canadien d’études allemandes et européennes (CCEAE - http://www.cceae.umontreal.ca), le 25 septembre 2006, à l’Institut Goethe de Montréal. Cette étude s’inscrit dans le cadre d’un programme de recherche bénéficiant de l’aide financière du Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada.

[**] Professeur agrégé, École de relations industrielles, Université de Montréal. Chercheur membre du Centre de recherche en droit public (CRDP - http://www.crdp.umontreal.ca), du Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la mondialisation et le travail (CRIMT - http://www.crimt.org) et du CCEAE. Courriel: michel.coutu@umontreal.ca