Biography

Professor Ruben J. Garcia is the inaugural Leonard Hoshijo Endowed Chair at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Prior to joining the Richardson Law faculty in 2026, he was Ralph Denton Professor of Law and Director of the Workplace Law Program at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Before that, he was Professor of Law at California Western School of Law in San Diego for eight years. He started his career in 2002 as a full-time law professor at the University of California, Davis, King Hall School of Law. He has also held academic appointments at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, the University of Wisconsin Law School, and the University of California, San Diego. Before beginning his teaching career in 2000, Garcia worked as an attorney for public and private sector labor unions and employees at Rothner, Segall & Greenstone in Southern California.  He is a graduate of Stanford University, UCLA School of Law, and the University of Wisconsin Law School, where he earned an LL.M. and was a William H. Hastie Fellow.

A nationally recognized scholar, his scholarship has appeared in several leading law reviews, including the Hastings Law Journal, the University of Chicago Legal Forum and the Florida State University Law Review, among others. His first book, published by New York University Press in 2012, is entitled Marginal Workers: How Legal Fault Lines Divide Workers and Leave Them Without Protection. His most recent book is Critical Wage Theory: Why Wage Justice is Racial Justice, published by the University of California Press in 2024. From January 2014 to January 2016, he served as the Co-President of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT), and has served on the Board of Directors of the ACLU of Nevada.  He is the immediate past chair of the Labor Law Group, and the current Treasurer of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers, which both consist of workplace lawyers and academics dedicated to excellence and service in the practice and teaching of labor and employment law. He is an elected member of the prestigious American Law Institute, an influential nongovernmental organization of lawyers, judges, and academics dedicated to restatement and reform of the law in a wide variety of areas.

Publications

Books

Critical Wage Theory: Why a Higher Minimum Wage is Necessary for Racial Justice (University of California Press 2024).

Legal Protection for the Individual Employee (6th ed. 2021, 7th ed.  2025) (with Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt, Matthew W. Finkin, & Jason R. Bent).

Marginal Workers: How Legal Fault Lines Divide Workers and Leave Them Without Protection (N.Y.U. Press 2012), reviewed in Sameer M. Ashar, Book Review, 47 L. & Soc’y Rev. 982 (2013); Recent Publications, 34 Berkeley J. Emp. & Lab. L. 155 (2013); George Lafferty, From the Middle to the Margins: Addressing Job Insecurity, Income Inequality and Social Fragmentation, 29 Work, Emp. & Soc’y 354 (2015).

Book Contributions

The FAA and the LMRA at the Margins: Workers of Color Caught Between Collectivism and Individualism, in The Federal Arbitration Act: Successes, Failures, and a Roadmap for Reform (Richard Bales & Jill Gross eds., Cambridge Univ. Press  2025) (edited collection with 20 other prominent labor and arbitration scholars).

Politically Engaged Unionism: The Culinary Workers Union in Las Vegas, in The Cambridge Handbook of U.S. Labor Law for the Twenty-First Century (Richard Bales & Charlotte Garden eds., Cambridge Univ. Press 2019).

Articles

Pandémie et travail de plateforme: réglementation du « lieu de travail » après le Covid-19 aux USA [The Gig and The Platform: Regulating the “Workplace” After the Pandemic], Revue de Droit Comparé du Travail et de la Sécurité Sociale [J. Compar. Lab. & Soc. Sec. L.], Apr. 2023 at 214 (Fr.).

The Human Right to Workplace Safety in a Pandemic, 64 Wash. U. J.L. & Pol’y 113 (2021).

Building Worker Collective Action Through Technology, 63 St. Louis U. L.J. 25 (2020).

Foreword: The Labor Constitution in 2020, 24 Emp. Rts. & Emp. Pol’y J.  1 (2020).

Right to Work Laws: Ideology and Impact, 15 Ann. Rev. L. & Soc. Sci. 509 (2019) (peer reviewed).

The Thirteenth Amendment and Minimum Wage Laws, 19 Nev. L.J. 479 (2018).

The Legal Landscape of the Global Gig Economy, 22 Perspectives on Work 26 (2018).

Five Myths About Public Sector Labor Law in Nevada, 2 Nev. Prac. J. Lab. & Emp. L. 38 (2017).

Where’s the Power? Defamation and Wrongful Interference in the Restatement of Employment Law, 21 Emp. Rts. & Emp. Pol’y J. 563 (2017).

Politics at Work After Citizens United, 49 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 1 (2016).

“An Equally Divided Court”: Workplace Law in the U.S. Supreme Court 2015-2016 , 20 Emp. Rts. & Emp. Pol’y J.  197 (2016).

Workplace Law in the Tenth Term of the Roberts Court:  Reading Between the Usual Ideological Lines, 19 Emp. Rts. & Emp. Pol’y J. 125 (2015).

With Every Curse, There Comes a Wish: Legal Education in a Time of Change, 16 Nev. L.J. 143 (2015) (with Olympia Duhart).

Introduction, Democracy at Work, 14 Nev. L.J. 305 (2014).

Citizenship at Work: How the Supreme Court Politically Marginalized Public Employees, 14 Nev. L. J. 377 (2014).

Ten Years after Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. V. NLRB: The Power of a Labor Law Symbol, 21 Cornell J. L. & Pub. Pol’y 659 (2012).

Foreword: The Workplace Law Agenda of the Obama Administration, 16 Emp. Rts. & Emp. Pol’y J. 1 (2012).

Toward Fundamental Change for the Protection of Low-Wage Workers: The “Workers’ Rights are Human Rights” Debate in the Obama Era, 2009 U. Chi. Legal F. 421.

Against Legislation: Garcetti v. Ceballos and the Paradox of Statutory Protection for Public Employees, 7 First Amendment L. Rev. 22 (2008).

A Democratic Theory of Amicus Advocacy, 35 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 315 (2008).

Foreword, Confronting the Rights Deficit at Home and Abroad, 43 Cal. W. L. Rev. 1 (2006).

From North to South Country: Race, Gender and Immigration and the Role of Unions in the Sanitized Workplace, 29 T. Jefferson L. Rev. 55 (2006).

Labor as Property: Guestworkers, International Trade, and the Democracy Deficit, 10 J. Gender Race & Just.27 (2006).

Labor’s Fragile Freedom of Association Post-9/11, 8 U. Pa. J. Lab. & Emp. L. 283 (2006) reprinted inWorkplace Discrimination, Privacy, and Security in an Age of Terrorism, Proceedings of New York University 55th Annual Conference on Labor (Matthew Bodie & Samuel Estreicher eds., Wolters Kluwer 2008).

Symposium, Legal Reform: The Role of Public Institutions and Legal Culture, 35 Cal. W. Int’l L.J. 237 (2005).

Transnationalism as a Social Movement Strategy: Institutions, Actors and International Labor Standards, 10 U.C. Davis J. Int’l L. & Pol’y 1 (2003).

Ghost Workers in an Interconnected World: Going Beyond the Dichotomies of Domestic Immigration and Labor Laws, 36 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 737 (2003) reprinted in 24 Immigr. & Nat’lity L. Rev. 415 (2003).

Across the Borders: Immigrant Status and Identity in Law and LatCrit Theory, 55 Fla. L. Rev. 511 (2003).

New Voices at Work: Race and Gender Identity Caucuses in the U.S. Labor Movement, 54 Hastings L.J. 79(2002).

Commentaries, Essays, and Reviews

The Supreme Court Lashes Out at Unions—Again. Why Union Elections Are Not Like Other Elections, Wash. Monthly, June 30, 2021.

Teaching Problem-Solving and Preventive Law Skills through International Labour and Employment Law, 25 Int’l J. Comp. Lab. L. & Indus. Rel. 15 (2009).

Commentary, Economic Analysis of Labor and Employment Law in the New Economy: Proceedings of the 2008 Annual Meeting, Association of American Law Schools, Section on Law and Economics, 12 Emp. Rts. & Emp. Pol’y J. 327, 366 (2008).

Comment, Critical Race Theory and Proposition 187: The Racial Politics of Immigration Law, 17 Chicano-Latino L. Rev. 118 (1995), reprinted in The Latino/a Condition: A Critical Reader 118 (Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic eds., N.Y.U. Press 1998).