ERISA Principles

Explains how ERISA encourages retirement and health care plan sponsorship and protects plan participants. Covers every major aspect of the statute, pervasively anchoring analysis in underlying principles and competing public policies. Technical descriptions of the statute and caselaw are minimized in favor of a systemic functional analysis.

ERISA, the detailed and technical amalgam of labor law, trust law, and tax law, directly governs trillions of dollars spent on retirement savings, health care, and other important benefits for more than 100 million Americans. Despite playing this central role in the US economy and social insurance systems, the complexities of ERISA are often understood by only a few specialists. ERISA Principles elucidates employee benefit law from a policy perspective, concisely explaining how common themes apply across a wide range of benefit plans and factual contexts. The book's non-technical language and cross-cutting conceptual organization reveal latent similarities and rationalize differences between the regulatory treatment of apparently disparate programs, including traditional pensions, 401(k), and health care plans. Important legal developments - whether statutory, judicial, or administrative - are framed and analyzed in an accessible, principles-centric manner, explaining how ERISA functions as a coherent whole.