Dan Walters complains that they haven’t done anything except the budget this session. The LA Times reports that prisons and water are the main issues left on the agenda. Not much in the way of labor and employment issues this year.
I thought I’d point out this quote from Justice Louis Brandeis:
Stare decisis is usually the wise policy, because in most matters it is more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than it be settled right.
Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., 285 U.S. 393, 406 (1932) (Brandeis, J., dissenting). Some people might find this disturbing. Brandeis was talking about the federal Constitution and he was actually arguing against relying on stare decisis in that instance. There are a lot of objections you can make to this statement. In many circumstances, it’s better to get it right than have it settled. But in the domain of the California law as it relates to employers and employees in their relationship as such, the helter-skelter pace at which significant changes in the law occur both from the courts and the legislature puts us squarely in a position where we need things to be settled more than we need them to be settled “right”—whichever your view is.
The costs of compliance are one thing. The cost of re-complying, or attempting to comply with unclear rules, are another.
