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“The proposition that legal rules can be understood only with reference to the purposes they serve would today scarcely be regarded as an exciting truth”—said Fuller and Perdue.1 Indeed, they even added at the time that “[t]he notion that law exists as a mean to an end has been commonplace for at least half a century.”2 They went on to show that in practice, however, this truth does not enjoy a “pervasive application” in the area of their research (the assessment of contract damages in US law). Almost 80 years later, at a different continent and a different legal context, these statements seem to offer a perfect description of UK labor law. We know that laws—and with them, legal concepts—do not have a “life” of their own. They do not have an “internal” or inherent meaning. They have a purpose behind them, when used in a particular context—to advance some societal goals. Yet too often we tend to forget what those goals are. This is especially the case with regard to UK courts, and to some extent the UK legislature. Labor laws are often interpreted in a way that fails to advance their goals, and without an attempt to understand what these goals are. In other cases, labor laws are not being updated in response to changes in the labor market, which similarly leads to failure to address the real problems faced by workers.
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