Dáire McCormack-George (School of Law at Trinity College, Dublin) has posted The Right to Work in Irish Law (Irish Jurisprudence Society Trinity Terms 2018) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The right to work has attracted great attention in legal and philosophical circles in recent years in Europe and elsewhere. This paper contributes to discussions concerning the philosophical justification for the right to work, and its legal existence and scope, by providing an Irish perspective. The paper first provides a philosophical justification for the existence of the right to work which is consistent with the Irish Constitutional order through the lens of a republican conception of freedom as non-domination. It then analyses the ‘right to earn a livelihood’, the right to work in Irish law in detail. I argue that the right to work emerged as a response to dominant trade unions, but has since developed into a residual liberalisation tool for professions and areas of heavily regulated economic activity. I suggest that, in the context of the growing institutionalisation of employment and labour law, the right to earn a livelihood will nonetheless continue to perform this residual role in emerging areas of relevance and dispute.