Why has labour played a more limited role in national politics in the United States than it has in other advanced industrial societies? Victoria Hattam demonstrates that voluntarism, as American labour policy was known, was the American Federation of Labor's strategic response to the structure of the American state, particularly with regards to the influence of American courts. The AFL's strategic calculation was not universal, however. This book reveals the competing ideologies and acts of interpretation that produced variations in state-labour relations.