6.3 EMPLOYMENT AT WILL
Much employment law within the United States has developed against a back¬ground of nineteenth century, laissez-faire legal perspective on economic trans¬actions. In general, courts were reluctant to recognize any obligations other than those explicitly agreed to by the parties concerned. Thus, unless there was an explicit employment contract that specified the length and conditions of employment (a very unusual event even today), all employees were employed "at will." An "at will" contract is one that exists only so long as both parties consent or, conversely, can be broken at the discretion of either party. Employ¬ment at will means that employees are free to quit their job at any time for any reason and employers are free to terminate an employee at any time and for any reason. In the words of an early court decision establishing this precedent, "all may dismiss their employee(s) at will, be they many or few; for good cause, for no cause, or even for cause morally wrong."
If employment at will governs the workplace, if employees can be dis¬missed for morally wrong reasons without violating the law, then the concept of employee rights is, at least in the legal sense, meaningless. An employee right would be a legitimate claim to certain goods (or to protection against cer¬tain harms) in the workplace. To say that employees have a legitimate claim implies that they ethically cannot be placed in the position of having to choose