Noncompetes: Bad, Yes. Medieval, No.

The historical period that bequeathed us the university can't be judged primitive. And anyway, during medieval times noncompetes were illegal!

Decretals of Gregory, c. 1300-1340

The epidemic of bubonic plague that laid waste to Europe from 1346 to 1353 plays an outsized role in labor history. Killing off half the population, it turns out, tightens labor markets, and the effects lingered over the next century.

Previously I’ve discussed England’s 1351 Statute of Laborers, which threatened with imprisonment any workman or servant who quit “before the end of the term agreed,” and which Geoffrey Chaucer may have flouted by hiring away a servant woman named Cecily Chaumpagne. (The question of whether Chaucer hired Chaumpagne away or assaulted her sexually—the Latin term raptus, on which this turns, can mean either—was, I’m told, a matter of lively debate at last month’s biennial congress of the New Chaucer Society.)

Today I take up Dyer’s Case, an English common law case dating to 1414 in which an English apprentice named John Dyer (trade unknown; wool dyer is a good guess) violated a promise to his master not to exercise his trade within the same town for a period of six months. The judge ruled “L’obligation est voide” (in 15th century England French was commonly used in official proceedings). Noting that the master in question, who brought the lawsuit, didn’t bother to show up at the hearing, the judge added irritably, “Per Dieu, si le plaintiff fuit ici il irra al prison, tanque il ust fait fyne au Roi. (“By God, if the plaintiff were here he’d go to prison until he paid a fine to the King.”

The Statute of Laborers and Dyer’s Case would appear to point in opposite directions, but the gist of both was: Gotta keep everybody working, don’t you know there’s a labor shortage out there?

In my latest New Republic article, I bring this discussion up to date by reviewing a far less wise district court judge’s ruling against an FTC regulation banning non-compete clauses in employment contracts. You can read it here.