ABSTRACT

This review summarizes two critical issues in the jurisprudence of labor law which have long been subject of recurring conflicts. It begins with recent cases on contract suspensions triggered by the so-called economic hardship. Then it discusses subordination issue. Drawing on jurisprudential implications from suspension and subordination cases, and if comparative law can be of any guide, I conclude that Cambodia labor law will keep on expanding through interpretations.

Key words: suspension, subordination, jurisprudence.

 It is universally urged that “all men are properly to be treated alike in like circumstances.”2 This idea certainly advances a social value commonly known as equality, as justice. It is just to render similar decisions for cases involving very similar facts. A case law or a precedent refers to “a particular decision, or a collection of particular decisions [which] generate law—that is, rules of general application.”3 Thus when adjudicators base their decisions on a reasoning or an interpretation given or upheld in previous decisions, the adjudicators effectively ensure a certain level of consistency or predictability in the outcome. By so doing, they may, as we shall see, even expand further on those decisions.