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St. Thomas Law Review

Erik Nelson

First Page

175

Document Type

Comment

Abstract

This comment presents a poststructural approach to the current formulation of the Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974. Part I details the context in which Congress created federal protection for ERISA beneficiaries. Part II illustrates how the judiciary wavered in its broad preemptive construction of ERISA before ultimately privileging a construction of ERISA which denied ERISA beneficiaries extracontractual and punitive damages. Part III will examine deconstruction and its impact on the jurisprudence of the federal courts. Part IV embarks on a deconstructionist analysis of the "relates to" preemptive provision of ERISA to reveal that the only rationality to the Supreme Court's irrational interpretation is the protection of those with financial power. Examination of this expression of power reveals that ERISA and its preemptive construction, at all relevant times, hides and reflects the economic political interests of the dominant or the "power elite" forces of society. Part V examines the case of Varity Corp. v. Howe, in which the broad preemptive interpretation of ERISA, coupled with the narrow interpretation of remedies available under ERISA, was challenged by egregious circumstances that would have been left unredressed if the Supreme Court had not departed from prior, rigid interpretation of ERISA. Part VI concludes with a call for the elements of power, the public, to join in a mass outcry in order to destabilize the current construction of ERISA and to demand that the upper-class driven government and court system implement a more reasonable, need based ERISA construction. In light of the willingness of social structures like the Supreme Court to allow the continued victimization of working-class ERISA beneficiaries at the hands of privilege class fiduciaries, anything less is failure.

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