collective bargaining agreement
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 363 U.S. 574 - United Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co. · 1960Most cited · 13,340 citing opinions
It is more than a contract; it is a generalized code to govern a myriad of cases which the draftsmen cannot wholly anticipate
How the Supreme Court has restated “collective bargaining agreement”
Each Supreme Court definition of “collective bargaining agreement,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “collective bargaining agreement”
Court decisions citing the 3 opinions that defined “collective bargaining agreement” — 18,453 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 3 definitions, chronological · 1960–1966
a collective bargaining agreement is not an ordinary contract... it is a generalized code to govern a myriad of cases which the draftsmen cannot wholly anticipate... The collective agreement covers the whole employment relationship. It calls into being a new common law—the common law of a particular industry or of a particular plant
A collective bargaining agreement is not an ordinary contract for the purchase of goods and services, nor is it governed by the same old common-law concepts, which control such private contracts. It is a generalized code to govern a myriad of cases which the draftsmen cannot wholly anticipate. The collective agreement covers the whole employment relationship. It calls into being a new common law—the common law of a particular industry or of a particular plant.