Sabine T Why did you decide to join Queen’s Law? I was drawn to Queen’s Law because of its strengths in workplace law and legal philosophy. As a legal philosopher who writes on workers’ rights, Queen’s Law presented a unique opportunity to bring these subjects together in my teaching and research, and to join others with similar interests in the Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace and the Colloquium in Legal and Political Philosophy. During my visit, I was also impressed by the innovative and high-energy faculty, staff, and students. I came away feeling this was something I really wanted to be a part of.
What got you interested in your area of law? As an undergraduate, I was initially drawn to philosophy out of an interest in two big questions: what is it to live well and how would a society have to be organized to be just. Over the course of my studies and through the experiences of friends and family, I became increasingly interested in labour and employment law because of the influence of our jobs and the labour market over our social statuses and prospects for leading meaningful lives according to our own lights. Where we work and with whom, how much we make, what kinds of things we do as our work, and what our workplace relations are like can shape not just what we can purchase but also whether and when we have children, support this or that political party, and a variety of other facets of our lives in and outside of the workplace. And legal regulation of work plays a huge role in setting the tone and content of many life-shaping workplace relations and rules. My interest in labour and employment law has thus grown out of my interests in ethics and social justice.
Tell us about your research. We often think about workplace inequalities in terms of differences in working conditions along lines of protected statuses, such as gender and race, and differences in economic power. My research aims to complement that analysis by examining how burdens and restrictions on employees’ speech and associational freedoms can also constitute wrongful workplace inequality. Of course, burdens and restrictions on speech and association often coincide 62 QUEEN’S LAW REPORTS ONLINE
