Ellen Dannin

Ellen Dannin is professor of law at the Dickinson School of Law at Penn State University, and an expert in the labor law of New Zealand and the United States.

Early life and education

Dannin was born in Michigan. She received a bachelor of arts degree in 1975 and a juris doctor degree in 1978, both from the University of Michigan.

She has one child (a daughter).

Career

After obtaining her undergraduate degree, Dannin was a teaching fellow in the Women's Studies Department at the University of Michigan from 1977 to 1978.

After obtaining her law degree, Dannin clerked for Cornelia G. Kennedy, a judged on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan in Detroit, Michigan. She clerked for Judge Kennedy from 1978 to 1979. When Kennedy was elevated in 1979 to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Dannin clerked for her for a second year (from 1979 to 1980).

In 1980, Dannin became an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), serving in the seventh region office in Detroit. She held that position until 1991. During her tenure at the Board, Dannin was appointed a visiting professor at the Department of Commerce at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand. She spent all of 1990 in New Zealand.

In 1991, Dannin left NLRB and was appointed a professor of law at California Western School of Law in San Diego, California. She taught there until 2002. In 1992, she took a leave of absence to spend a year as a scholar in residence at the Center for Industrial Relations at Victoria University of Wellington in Wellington, New Zealand. She returned in 1994 as a scholar in residence in the university's Law Department. In 1996 she was a scholar in residence at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, and held a similar position at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand. She returned to Victoria University in as a scholar in residence in 1997.

Concurrently with her position at California Western, she held a position as a visiting professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from 1999 to 2002, and was a visiting professor of law at the University of Michigan in 2002.

In 2002, Dannin permanently left California Western and obtained an appointment as a professor of law at the Wayne State University Law School. She left Wayne State in 2005.

In the fall of 2006, Dannin became a professor of law at the Dickinson School of Law at Penn State University.

Dannin has also been a consultant for the United States Department of Labor (1987), U.S. General Accounting Office Workplace Quality Issues Panel (2003), and the New Zealand Department of Labour (1997). She also taught labor law in the Program in Union Leadership and Administration at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (1999 to 2002).

Research interests

Dannin's research interests focus on United States labor law, New Zealand labor law, collective bargaining, privatization, and legal education.

Dannin's most recent book is "Taking Back the Workers' Law" (2006), in which she calls for the American labor movement to adopt a strategy used by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the 1930s. Dannin argues that civil rights attorneys for the NAACP laid out a long-term litigation strategy designed to overturn 70 years' of court rulings which had limited the advancement of civil rights in the United States. NAACP lawyers chose to attack discrimination in law schools because judges were most familiar with those organizations. Once the legal case had been made and won ending racial discrimination in law schools, NAACP lawyers rapidly expanded their attack to public colleges and university, public elementary and secondary education, and the workplace.

Dannin outlines court rulings and NLRB decision that have, in her opinion, undermined the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and contributed to a legal environment no longer conducive to union organizing and effective union activities (such as economic pressure). Dannin argues that the American labor movement must undertake a strategy similar to the one adopted by the NAACP. She emphasizes a program designed to educate judges and lawyers about the nature of work (including the collapse of the "bright line" between supervisor and employee), arguing that most judges have little real-world experience in this regard. The book focuses heavily on the NLRA's stated goals of social and economic justice, and Dannin pushes for a legal strategy that takes the preamble to the NLRA seriously; in other words, that labor attorneys should force courts to see how existing rulings undermine the NLRA's goals of social justice and an effective, active, even powerful labor movement.

Many American labor movement activists have argued that the legal framework of the NLRA has been so significantly undermined that union organizing should no longer occur under the auspices of the NLRA but should occur in extra-legal contexts (such as pressure campaigns).

"Taking Back the Worker's Law", however, has won praise from the legal community for rejecting this characterization of the NLRA and case law and putting forth a creative and legally strong program. "Ellen Dannin proposes something unique and, ironically, much more likely to have practical effect: an articulate, passionate, even romantic defense of the nation’s basic labor law. "Taking Back the Workers' Law" invites labor leaders, lawyers, and academics to develop innovative litigation strategies for restoring the original intent of the law," observed Christopher Cameron, a professor of law at Southwestern University School of Law. [http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4465] Fred Feinstein, former general counsel for the NLRB, noted, that Dannin "puts forth an important perspective on how to breathe new life into our labor law. ... In original and provocative ways, Dannin maintains that too many have lost sight of what our labor law could be and argues forcefully that it can be restored to realize its fundamental purpose." [http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4465]

Others have been less enthusiastic about the book's prescriptive program, but acknowledged that it contains a wealth of information about U.S. labor law and the history of court rulings going back seven decades.

Memberships

Dannin is a member of a number of professional organizations, including the American Bar Association, Michigan Bar Association, Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA), Law and Society Association, United Association for Labor Education, and the Association of American Law Schools.

She is editor of the LERA newsletter, "Labor and the Law", a highly popular publication widely read by academics, lawyers and labor movement activists.

Co-Chair, Collaborative Research Network 8 on Labor Rights, Law and Society Association 2003-

She is an advisor to or reviewer for the "Labor Law Journal", "Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law", "Labor Studies Journal", "Law and Society Review", "WorkingUSA", and the "Journal of Socio-Economics".

Published works

Books

*"Taking Back the Workers' Law." Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-8014-4438-1
*"Working Free: The Origins and Impact of New Zealand's Employment Contracts Act." Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland University Press, 1997.

Edited works

*"The Developing Labor Law: The Board, the Courts, and the National Labor Relations Act." 4th ed. Patrick Hardin, et al., eds. Ellen Dannin, et al., contr. Eds. Washington, D.C.: BNA Books, 2005. ISBN 1-57018-505-0

elected solely-authored articles

*"Collective Bargaining, Impasse and the Implementation of Final Offers: Have We Created a Right Unaccompanied by Fulfillment?" "University of Toledo Law Review." 19:41 (1987).
*"Consummating Market-Based Labor Law Reform in New Zealand: Context and Reconfiguration." "Boston University International Law Journal." 14:267 (1996).
*"Hail, Market, Full of Grace: Buying and Selling Labor Law Reform." "Law Review of Michigan State University-Detroit College of Law." 2001:1090.
*"Labor Law Reform: Is There a Baby in the Bathwater?" "Labor Law Journal." 44:626 (1993).
*"Legislative Intent and Impasse Resolution Under the National Labor Relations Act: Does Law Matter?" "Hofstra Labor and Employment Law Journal." 15:11 (1997).
*"Monday Morning Quarterbacks and Salts: How Not to Argue a Supreme Court Case." "Labor Law Journal." 47:199 (1996).
*"NLRA Values, Labor Values, American Values." "Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law." 26:223 (2005).
*"Red Tape or Accountability: Privatization, Public-ization, and Public Values." "Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy." 15:1111 (2006).
*"Statutory Subjects and the Duty to Bargain." "Labor Law Journal." 39:44 (1988).
*"Teaching Labor Law Using Socio-Economic Methodology." "San Diego Law Review." 41:93 (2004).
*"To Market, To Market: Privatizing and Subcontracting Public Work." "University of Maryland Law Review." 60:249 (2001).
*"Union Mergers and Affiliations: Discontinuing the Continuity of Representation Test." "Labor Law Journal." 32:170 (1981).
*"A Union Movement of the New Century." "WorkingUSA." 8:489 (2005).
*"Using the NLRB as a Resource." "Labor Studies Journal." 24:38 (1999).

elected co-authored articles

*Dannin, Ellen and Wagar, Terry. "How True Is What Everyone Knows? Board Avoidance, First Contract and the Organizing Versus Servicing Model." "Labor Law Journal." 51:3 (2000).
*Dannin, Ellen and Wager, Terry. "Impasse and Implementation – How to Subvert the National Labor Relations Act." "WorkingUSA." 3:73 (Fall 2000).
*Dannin, Ellen and Wager, Terry. "Lawless Law: The Subversion of the National Labor Relations Act." "Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review." 34:197 (2000).

References

* [http://www.dsl.psu.edu/faculty/dannin.cfm Penn State Dickinson School of Law - Faculty: Ellen Dannin]
*"Who's Who in American Law." 4th ed. New Providence, NJ: Marquis Who's Who, 2005. ISBN 0-8379-3522-9