Articulating Labour Law's Goals: Why and How

It may seem obvious that before doing anything – let alone something as important as interpreting or reforming labour law – we must ask ourselves what exactly is the goal of what we do. This seems to be the only rational approach to such tasks. Yet quite often we do things automatically, without stopping to think about them. The goal of this article is to explain why we need to articulate explicitly the goals of labour law, and how this should be done. It proceeds in two parts. Part I addresses the question of "why" and "when" is it necessary to explain (to ourselves and to others) the goals of labour law. Part II then discusses the "how", going through a number of steps that can assist us in articulating goals, and attempting to resolve a number of issues that arise when starting to think about the best way to approach this problem.