< Browse All Faculty and Staff

Marion Crain

Wiley B. Rutledge Professor of Law

Professor Marion Crain, an expert in labor and employment law, and the Wiley B. Rutledge Professor of Law. She also holds joint appointments (by courtesy) with the Brown School of Social Work and the Department of Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. Her scholarship examines the relationships among gender, work, and class status with a particular emphasis on collective action, labor relations and social movements. She is the author, co-author or editor of a labor law casebook, an employment law casebook, two university press books and a commercial press book, as well as numerous law review articles and book chapters on labor and employment law, labor unionism, and the working poor. Professor Crain is a member and past Chair of the Labor Law Group, an international collective of labor and employment law professors who work collaboratively to improve labor and employment law pedagogy through the production of course materials, and serves on the editorial board of the Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal. In addition to her legal research and scholarship, she received the David M. Becker Professor of the Year Award in 2009 for excellence in teaching. Professor Crain’s administrative duties with the provost’s office include oversight of initiatives designed to stimulate and facilitate interdisciplinary teaching and research, including the Bring Your Own Idea program and the Beyond Boundaries Cross-School Teaching Grant program. She also serves as the liaison for the provost to several university-wide centers and institutes, including the Danforth Center on Religion & Politics, the Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement, and the Institute for Public Health. For the 2016-17 year, Marion is serving as Leader of the University Libraries. Before joining Washington University’s faculty, Professor Crain served as the Paul Eaton Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where she directed the Center on Poverty, Work & Opportunity and served as Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development. She has previously taught or visited at the University of Michigan, George Washington University, Duke University, the University of Alabama, West Virginia University, and the University of Toledo. Prior to entering law teaching, she practiced labor and employment law with Latham & Watkins in Los Angeles and clerked for the Hon. Arthur L. Alarcon, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Read More