University of Southern California, B.A.
Indiana University at Bloomington, J.D.
Professor Laura J. Cooper is a distinguished scholar in the fields of labor law and workplace dispute resolution. She teaches courses in labor law, labor arbitration, alternative dispute resolution, civil procedure and conflict of laws and is known for innovations in technology and simulation-based pedagogy. For three terms, she has also taught at Uppsala University in Sweden.
Professor Cooper received her B.A. degree, summa cum laude, from the University of Southern California and her J.D. degree, summa cum laude, from Indiana University School of Law, Bloomington, which inducted her into its Academy of Law Alumni Fellows in 2002 for "distinction through personal achievements and dedication to the highest standards of the profession." In law school, she was elected to Order of the Coif and served as Executive Editor of the Indiana Law Journal. She clerked for Judge John S. Hastings of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and the Temporary Emergency Court of Appeals before joining the University of Minnesota Law School faculty where she became the first woman ever to receive tenure at the Law School.
In 1987-88 she was the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law and in 2003 she was appointed to her present endowed chair. She has worked as an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board and currently serves as a labor mediator and arbitrator. In 2006, she was elected as a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers, in recognition of distinguished leadership in the field. In 2008, she was the honoree at the Law Day Dinner of the Fund for the Legal Aid Society in recognition of her career contributions promoting access to civil legal representation for low income persons, including 68 years of service on four boards of directors for legal services programs.
She is the co-author or co-editor of six books on labor law and workplace dispute resolution and has written historical, analytical and empirical articles in welfare law, conflicts of law, labor law and workplace dispute resolution. She has received grants for research in labor law and labor arbitration from the American Bar Foundation, the Fund for Labor Relations Studies and the Research and Education Fund of the National Academy of Arbitrators.
From 2001-2005 she was the Chair of the Labor Law Group, an international association of labor and employment law scholars, and remains on its editorial board and executive committee. On behalf of the Labor Law Group, she currently chairs a collaborative project with the American Bar Association, Section on Labor and Employment Law, which is creating a national capstone simulation course for third-year students integrating legal doctrine, ethics and lawyering skills. She is the former Chair of the Legal Affairs Committee of the National Academy of Arbitrators and is currently on its ethics committee. She previously served as Chair of the Labor and Employment Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools and as Chair of the Minnesota Chapter of the Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution. She was recently selected to serve as Co-Editor of the American Bar Association journal, The Labor Lawyer.
She worked with the Minnesota Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on studies of gender fairness in the courts. She spent five years as chair of a University committee responsible for evaluating and recommending amendments to the University's employee grievance policy and spent a decade in implementation of a consent decree prohibiting discrimination against University women faculty.
ADR in the Workplace (West Group, 1st ed., 2000; Thomson West, 2d ed., 2005) (with Dennis R. Nolan & Richard A. Bales)
Labor Law Stories (Foundation Press, 2005) (co-editor with Catherine L. Fisk)
Workplace ADR Simulations and Teacher's Guide (West Group, 1st ed., 2000; Thomson West, 2d ed., 2005) (with Carolyn Chalmers)
Labor Arbitration: A Coursebook (West Publishing Company, 1994) (with Dennis R. Nolan)
Book Chapters
The Enduring Power of Collective Rights, in Labor Law Stories 1 (Laura J. Cooper & Catherine L. Fisk, eds., Foundation Press, 2005) (with Catherine L. Fisk)
The Story of NLRB v. Gissel Packing: The Practical Limits of Paternalism, in Labor Law Stories 191 (Laura J. Cooper & Catherine L. Fisk, eds., Foundation Press, 2005) (with Dennis R. Nolan)
Civil Procedure: Exercises: Collaborative Creation of Flow Charts, in Teaching the Law School Curriculum 37 (Steven Friedland & Gerald F. Hess, eds., Carolina Academic Press, 2004)
Journal Articles
Controlling the Arbitration Hearing: Introduction, Proceedings of the Sixty-First Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Arbitrators 285 (Patrick Halter & Paul D. Staudohar, eds., BNA, 2009)
How and Why Labor Arbitrators Decide Discipline and Discharge Cases: An Empirical Examination, Proceedings of the Sixtieth Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Arbitrators 420 (Stephen E. Befort & Patrick Halter, eds., BNA, 2008) (with Mario Bognanno & Stephen Befort)
Privatizing Labor Law: Neutrality/Card Check Agreements and the Role of the Arbitrator, 83 Indiana Law Journal 1589 (2008) (The William R. Stewart Lecture)
Symposium Foreword: The Low-Wage Worker: Legal Rights - Legal Realities, 92 Minnesota Law Review 1289 (2008) (with Bryan M. Seiler & Catherine L. Fisk)
The Process of Process: The Historical Development of Procedure in Labor Arbitration, Proceedings of the Fifty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Arbitrators 99 (Paul F. Gerhart & Stephen F. Befort, eds., BNA, 2006)
Tribute to Clyde Summers, 9 Employee Rights & Employment Policy Journal 521 (2005)
Researching Labor Arbitration & Alternative Dispute Resolution in Employment, Employee Advocacy 67 (2004); also available at LLRX.com, http://www.llrx.com/features/adr.htm (Oct. 24, 2004) (significantly revised version of the bibliography published in the Law Library Journal in 1999) (with Suzanne Thorpe)
Alternative Resolution of Employment Discrimination Claims: American and Australian Experiences: Proceedings of the 2001 Annual Meeting, Association of American Law Schools Section on Employment Discrimination Law, 5 Employee Rights & Employment Policy Journal 603 (2001) (with Rosemary Hunter, Sara Adler & Carole Petersen)
Harry Shulman: Deciding Women's Grievances in Wartime, Proceedings of the Forty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Arbitrators (Gladys W. Gruenberg, ed., BNA, 1994)
The Illegality of Bad Grammar, 6 Constitutional Commentary 5 (1989), revised version in 2 Scribes Journal of Legal Writing 159 (1991)
Authorization Cards and Union Representation Election Outcome: An Empirical Assessment of the Assumption Underlying the Supreme Court's Gissel Decision, 79 Northwestern University Law Review 87 (1984)
Goldberg's Forgotten Footnote: Is There a Due Process Right to a Hearing Prior to the Termination of Welfare Benefits When the Only Issue Raised Is a Question of Law?, 64 Minnesota Law Review 1107 (1980)
Interview with Minnesota Supreme Court Associate Justice Rosalie E. Wahl: Interviewed by Laura Cooper, Professor, University of Minnesota Law School (Minnesota Historical Society, 2000) (Interviewed August 17, 1994) (Transcript edited and annotated with Stacy Doepner-Hove, executive director, Minnesota Women Lawyers)
Multimedia
Recognitional Picketing I (Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction, 1999- ) (CALI lessons; Labor law) (with Elaine Kumpala)
Recognitional Picketing II (Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction, 1999- ) (CALI lessons; Labor law) (with Elaine Kumpala)
Recognitional Picketing: National Labor Relations Act, 8(b)(7) (Foundation Press, 1984) (PowerPoint Slides for Conflicts distributed by Thomson/West and PowerPoint Slides for Labor Law) (with Elaine Kumpala)
