Oct 3, 2023 Charles A. SullivanWork Law
Camilla A. Hrdy & Christopher B. Seaman,
Beyond Trade Secrecy: Confidentiality Agreements That Act Like Noncompetes, 133
Yale L. J. __ (forthcoming 2023), available at
SSRN (Mar. 15, 2023).
Over the last decade or so, there have been remarkable developments in the law’s approach to employee noncompetition agreements (NCAs). After years of little movement, many states have recently restricted noncompetes (for example, by barring them entirely for lower-compensated workers), while a few jurisdictions (including Massachusetts, D.C., and Minnesota) have taken more dramatic steps to rein in their use. And further change may be in the offing, including the Uniform Law Commission’s (ULC) proposed Uniform Restrictive Employment Agreement Act, the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed rulemaking that would largely bar NCAs, and the National Labor Relations Board’s challenge to using noncompetes for covered workers.
But not everyone realizes that these changes may reach contract terms beyond those formally phrased in terms of restricting a worker’s post-employment competition. Indeed, both the ULC and the FTC actions would reach contracts framed as barring disclosure of confidential information when such an agreement has effects similar to those of a noncompete. Continue reading "Turning NDAs into NCAs"
Oct 2, 2023 Anders WalkerLegal History
Pekka Hämäläinen has written a startling book. Building on his earlier histories of the Lakota and Comanche, Hämäläinen’s Indigenous Continent tells the entire saga of Native America, recasting it not as a story of dispossession and defeat, but resistance and – amazingly – resurgence. The story is counterintuitive, a story not simply of white genocide and plunder but also of Indian power and influence, a story of a complicated group of peoples who fought against Europeans for over 400 years, and fight on today.
Beginning his story in 11,000 BC, Hämäläinen traces Native Americans back to Asia, showing how large groups of people left for North America by traveling across land bridges and along kelp highways. Such people formed large, centralized civilizations in places like the Colorado Plateau and the Mississippi River Valley, fostering large-scale agriculture, developing political/religious elites, and constructing massive monuments.
Then came climate change. Continue reading "Complicated Continent: Pekka Hämäläinen and the History of Native America"
