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Labor law has been thrown into turmoil in many large, industrialized countries with market economies. What we can describe as a “crisis” of labor law appeared well before the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and its aftermath. But this financial crisis exacerbated the retreat of labor law back to its initial individualist and contractual forms. To analyze such contemporary crises of labor law, the historical-comparative method can be highly fruitful, especially if one considers the precedent of the economic crisis of 1929. On this basis, we will first consider an influential text by Hugo Sinzheimer on the “Crisis of labor law” in Weimar Germany, then a study of Otto Kahn-Freund on the changing function of labor law. Moreover, the works of Sinzheimer and of Kahn-Freund may be connected to the concept of the “labor constitution,” which Max Weber notably developed in an empirical sense, and which finds its extension in the later works of Thilo Ramm, a labor scholar of international reputation.