Reconcilable Ambiguities?

Abstract

Solidarity is a term not well-known to Americans. To Europeans, in contrast, the word seems to appear everywhere, and in a multitude of contexts. Solidarity constitutes a constitutional, theological, political and an economic concept. It even represents a fundamental right guaranteed by the Lisbon Treaty to all citizens of the European Union. These facts raise some interesting questions: How is it that a term and a concept so well-known and broadly used in Europe has so little recognition in the United States? Further, and perhaps because it enjoys such widespread in Europe, its meaning seems ambiguous. What does solidarity imply? What sorts of rights or obligations flow from it? How might the concept, at once so evocative, if seemingly evanescent, be realized? What does the concept have to offer, if anything, to Americans? In this paper, I will examine the concept of solidarity from an American perspective, or more accurately, from the perspective of an American legal scholar whose area of specialty is labor and employment law. I will examine the sources of the term and how it came to have a niche meaning in the U.S. I then will turn to a comparative examination of the use of the term in European Union documents and, more productively, in German labor law, where the term finds concrete application. The paper then will consider the roots of the term in Catholic social thought and its eventual “deracination” by other thinkers and activists. I will close by considering whether one can resolve the ambiguities surrounding the concept and whether the truths behind solidarity might provide a way of uniting a Nation so deeply divided as is the United States presently.