Federalism, Place, and the Regulation of Worker Safety

Abstract

This paper, in exploring the geography of worker safety regulation, addresses a central question of state action, that of the appropriate locus of state intervention and legal interpretation. Should the power to make and define law be vested with a local community or with a centralized federal agency? Using two recent U.S. case law rulings concerning occupational safety and health law as examples, this analysis questions a central formalist assumption that this dilemma can be decided in an objective and “removed” fashion. Far from constructing acontextual interpretations, the courts in the two cases appear to approach the issue from fundamentally opposed positions, embodying contending visions of the geographic constitution of political action. These interpretations are, it is suggested, symptomatic of deeply rooted ambivalences and tensions within the state apparatus—and, indeed, within civil society—concerning place and law. Formalism and federalism, far from seamless discourses, appear beset by powerfu...