Matthew W. Finkin

Swanlund Endowed Chair
Center for Advanced Study Professor of Law
Director, Program in Comparative Labor and Employment Law & Policy

About

Matthew Finkin treats issues in domestic and comparative labor law and in higher education law. He is the author or editor, singly or in collaboration, of eleven books including For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom (2009) (with Robert Post), the treatise Privacy in Employment Law (editions from 1995 to the present), the casebook Cox, Bok, & Gorman’s Labor Law (editions from 1991 to the present)Comparative Labor Law (2015) (with Guy Mundlak), and a substantial body of periodical writing.

His awards include the Bob Hepple Award from the international Labor Law Research Network (2021), honorary doctorates from the University of Padua, Italy (2022), the University of Trier, Germany (2012), and the University of Athens, Greece (2011), the rank of Chevalier in the Ordre des Palmes Académiques conferred by the government of France (2015), and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s Research Prize (1995). Since 1997, he has edited the Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal with Professor Sanford Jacoby of the School of Management at UCLA. He serves on the editorial boards of labor law periodicals in Canada, Belgium and Germany.

Professor Finkin has been a Fulbright Professor at Münster University, a German Marshall Fund Lecturer at Konstanz University, a Resident Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Nantes, France, and a visiting professor at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel. Since 1999, he has been a member of the governing board of the Institute for Labor Law and Labor Relations in the European Union, in Trier, Germany.  His work has been translated into seven languages.

In addition to his academic work, Professor Finkin is active as a labor arbitrator. He was elected to the National Academy of Arbitrators and serves on several standing arbitral panels in the public and private sectors. In 2020, he was given the Susan C. Eaton Outstanding Scholar-Practitioner Award by the Labor and Employment Relations Association.

Education

LLM Yale University
LLB New York University
AB Ohio Wesleyan University

Areas of Expertise

Comparative Labor Law
Employee Rights
Labor Law

Courses

Comparative Labor Law
HR, Employment Law & Multinational Corporations
Individual Employee Rights
Labor Law and Public Policy
Labor Law and Public Policy
Labor Law I

Selected Publications

Books

COMPARATIVE LABOR LAW (Edward Elgar Pub. 2015) (co-editor with Guy Mundlak)

PRIVACY IN EMPLOYMENT LAW (Bloomburg BNA) (4th ed. 2013); (3d ed. 2009); (2d ed. 2003); (1st ed. 1995); (all with cumulative annual supplementation)

MULTINATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND THE LAW (Edward Elgar Pub.) (2013) (with Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld et. al.)

LABOR LAW ANALYSIS AND ADVOCACY (Juris Pub. Co.) (2013) (with Robert A. Gorman and practitioner commentary) revised from BASIC TEXT ON LABOR LAW: UNIONIZATION AND COLLECTIVE BARGAINING (West Pub. Co.) (2d ed. 2004) (with Robert Gorman)

LABOR LAW (Foundation Press) (15th ed. 2011); (14th ed.2006); (13th ed. 2001); (12th ed. 1996); (11th ed. 1991) (all with Archibald Cox, Derek Bok, and Robert Gorman) (with cumulative annual supplementation, also with Tim Glynn starting 2014)

Articles and Essays

The Acquisition and Dissemination of Employee Data: the Law of the European Union and the United States Compared, in STUDIA Z ZAKRESU PRAWA PRACY I POLITYKI SPOŁECZNEI [STUDIES IN LABOUR LAW AND SOCIAL POLICY] 57 (Andrzej Swiatkowski, ed. 2015)

“Privacy: Its Constitution and Vicissitudes” – A Half-Century On, 18 Canadian Labor & Employment L.J. 349 (2015)

Employee autonomy, privacy, and dignity under technological oversight in COMPARATIVE LABOR LAW Ch. 6 (Matthew Finkin & Guy Mundlak eds. 2015) (with Rüdiger Krause & Hisashi Takeuchi-Okuno)

From Weight Checking to Wage Checking: Arming Workers to Combat Wage Theft, 90 Ind. L.J. 251 (2015)

See All Publications

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