ILR Event Focused on Developing Junior Work Law Scholars 

As a hub for leading research and scholarship on labor and employment law, the ILR School hosted the Cornell Work Law Junior Scholar Workshop Nov. 7-9 in King-Shaw Hall. 

The event was part of ILR’s work to help develop the next generation of work law scholars and scholarship, said Kate Griffith. She is ILR’s senior associate dean of academic affairs, diversity and faculty development, the Jean McKelvey-Alice Grant Professor and an associate member of the Cornell Law School faculty. 

Junior scholars received constructive feedback on their draft papers from senior scholars in the field and engaged in lively exchanges with the audience.  The papers address cutting-edge issues in work law and have implications for academics, policymakers, and worker advocates. 

Paper titles included “Governing the Company Town,” “Supply-Chain Wage Theft as Unfair Method of Competition,” “The (Un)common Law of Police Collective Bargaining” and “Punishment or Privilege? –The Political Economy of Prison Work in Germany and the US and its Influence on Incarcerated Workers’ Efforts to Organize and to Strike.” 

The junior scholars came from various universities, including Indiana University, the University of Alabama, Seattle University, Stanford University, New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University and Harvard University. 

Senior scholar discussants, members of law faculties, were Griffith, Cornell; Veena Dubal, the University of California Irvine; Matthew Bodie, the University of Minnesota; Kerry Rittich, the University of Toronto, and Noah Zatz, UCLA. 

Gali Racabi and Yiran Zhang, ILR assistant professors, organized the first-of-its-kind workshop, which was supported by the Frank W. Pierce Memorial Fund.