Matthew W. Finkin Esq.

University of Illinois College of Law
Finkin, Matthew W.

Matthew W. Finkin is the Albert J. Harno and Edward W. Cleary Chair in Law at the University of Illinois College of Law where his teaching centers on labor and employment law in both domestic and comparative context. He is the author or editor, singly or in collaboration, of 10 books including Multinational Human Resource Management and the Law (2013), For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom (2009), and the last several editions of Cox, Bok, & Gorman’s Labor Law, long the leading casebook in American legal education. He is also the author of a substantial body of periodical writing on labor and employment law, comparative labor law, and legal issues in higher education.

His awards include the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation's Research Prize for "internationally acknowledged achievements in labor law" (1995), designation by the University of Illinois as a Center of Advanced Study Professor (2009), and honorary doctorates from the University of Trier, Germany, and the University of Athens, Greece. In 1997, Mr. Finkin assumed joint editorship of the Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal with Professor Sanford Jacoby of the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA. He also serves on the editorial boards of labor law periodicals in Canada, Belgium, Germany, and the U.S.

Mr. Finkin has been a Fulbright Professor at Münster University and a German Marshall Fund Lecturer at Konstanz University. He has lectured widely in Europe and Asia. Since 1999, he has been a member of the governing board of the Institute for Labor Law and Employment Relations in the European Union, in Trier, Germany and serves the international advisory board of the Giuseppe Pera Foundation, in Lucca, Italy. 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. He is a fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers.

Mr. Finkin received his A.B. from Ohio University, his LL.B. from New York University, and his LL.M. from Yale University.

He is the author of the Bloomberg BNA treatise Privacy in Employment Law.