ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how some dichotomous theorising results in the conception of a range of forms of private justice, each of which is seen as the product of a certain kind of organisational structure and each as operating at a different level of formality. Macro approaches to the analysis of private justice at work take either a consensus or radical perspective. In either case the form of private justice adopted is seen as a function of wider structural change, in particular, the development of capitalist industrial production. The consensus perspective sees factory law in terms of discipline and argues that this is necessary in order to bring about harmonious activity at the workplace. Labour regulations and the conventions valid within economic enterprises deserve just as well to be treated as legal institutions as the manorial law of the feudal epoch.
