Employment Law, Fifth Edition

Michael C. Duff

Michael C. Duff is Professor of Law at Saint Louis University School of Law, where he co-directs the Wefel Center for Employment Law and is co-editor of the ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law. Professor Duff is a member of the American Law Institute, a scholar-member of the Center for Progressive Reform, and a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. He is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation and an academic fellow at the National Civil Justice Institute. Professor Duff also serves as member of the Missouri Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Professor Duff attended college in his late 20s, while simultaneously employed full-time as a union-represented airline ramp worker. He was one of the first Black Teamster shop-stewards in the U.S. Airways (now American Airlines) system. The first member of his family to attend college, Professor Duff went directly from the airport tarmac to the Harvard Law School after graduating summa cum laude from West Chester University of Pennsylvania. He ultimately graduated from law school in 1995 and went on to work for a small law firm in Maine where he represented injured workers and labor unions. Thereafter he worked for the National Labor Relations Board for a decade in the Philadelphia and Minneapolis regional offices. He has written textbooks and journal articles in several different areas of workplace law.

Rick Bales

Rick Bales is a professor of law at Ohio Northern University Law School, where he teaches Torts, Civil Procedure, and a wide variety of labor/employment and dispute resolution courses.

Professor Bales is a Member of the American Law Institute, the American Bar Foundation, the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers, the Labor Law Group, and the National Academy of Arbitrators. He is a Peer Reviewer for Cambridge University Press and Relations Industrielles / Industrial Relations Review. He is a frequent Site Inspector for the American Bar Association’s accreditation of U.S. law schools, and is an active member of the ABA Competitions Committee where he helps run several student skills competitions. He has provided advocacy or dispute resolution training throughout the world, including Fulbrights in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta, dispute resolution training for labor advocates in Myanmar, and frequent presentations at universities in Vietnam, Cambodia, and throughout Europe.

Professor Bales has published more than 100 scholarly articles and authored or co-authored 10 books. His books, many of which have gone to multiple editions, include Cambridge Handbook of US Labor Law: Reinventing Labor Law for the 21st Century (Cambridge University Press 2020, co-authored with Charlotte Garden) and Arbitration Law (West Publishing, co-authored with Katherine Stone and Alexander Colvin). His most recent journal articles focus on artificial intelligence in the workplace and on COVID-related labor arbitration awards in the U.S. and Canada.

In addition to teaching and writing, Professor Bales serves part-time as a labor arbitrator, deciding disputes between employers and labor unions. He serves on arbitration panels for the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, American Arbitration Association, and State Employment Relation Board (Ohio). He also has served occasionally as a mediator or arbitrator for commercial disputes.

Richard R. Carlson

Richard Carlson is a Professor of Law at South Texas College of Law Houston, in Houston Texas, where he teaches Employment Law, Employment Discrimination Law, Collective Bargaining, Contracts and Family Law. Professor Carlson's other books include Carlson's Federal Employment Laws (Thomson Reuters) and Carlson's Texas Employment Laws (Thomson Reuters), which he updates annually.

Professor Carlson also serves as a member of the Council for Texas Bar Association's Labor & Employment Law Section, and he edits that organization's bimonthly newsletter on developments in Texas and federal employment law. He is a member of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers.

Before beginning his teaching career in 1985, Professor Carlson was an associate at Kilpatrick & Cody in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced employment law. He served as a law Clerk for Judge Lewis Morgan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from 1979 to 1980. He earned his JD summa cum laude from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1979.

Dallan Flake

Dallan Flake is an Associate Professor of Law and the Faculty Director of the Coaching, Educating and Advising Lifelong Learners (C.E.A.L.) Division. Before joining Gonzaga Law in 2022, he taught at the Ohio Northern University College of Law and Brigham Young University.

Professor Flake’s scholarship focuses on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, with emphasis on religious accommodations in the workplace and the employment of formerly incarcerated persons. His current research addresses the circuit split over whether an accommodation can be reasonable if it does not fully eliminate the conflict between an employee’s job and religion. His writing has been published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, Iowa Law Review, and Boston College Law Review, among others.

Prior to teaching, Professor Flake practiced labor and employment law in Dallas, Texas, with Winstead PC and Ogletree Deakins, where he represented management on a variety of employment-related issues, including discrimination, harassment, retaliation, noncompete agreements, wage-and-hour claims, workplace safety, employment torts, worker’s compensation, and labor disputes.