A Columbia Law School professor whose scholarship examines the failures of U.S. law to protect workers’ rights will deliver the Konvitz Lecture at 4:30 p.m. May 2 in 423 King-Shaw Hall at the ILR Conference Center.

The public is also invited to attend virtually. Register here for “Labor and Democracy: Why Rebuilding Worker Organization and Rethinking Labor Law is Essential to Our Democratic Future.”

Kate Andrias will discuss the relationship between the decline of unions and the decline of democracy; the role that labor law and constitutional law play in contributing to that decline; and the need to rethink and reform legal structures to achieve a more democratic future.

Andrias clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, A&S ’54. Ginsburg was inspired by Professor Milton Konvitz, whose ILR course, “The Development of American Ideals,” influenced her. 

Bader Ginsburg’s letters to Konvitz – “You opened my mind to the possibility of realizing human rights …” she wrote in 2001 – are preserved at the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives in ILR’s  Catherwood Library, part of Cornell University Library.

Ginsburg’s ties to ILR continued throughout her life. In 2017 and 2019, she cited the mandatory arbitration research of Alexander Colvin, Ph.D. ’99. Colvin is ILR’s Kenneth F. Kahn '69 Dean and Martin F. Scheinman '75, 'MS '76, Professor of Conflict Resolution.

ILR hosts the annual Konvitz Lecture, founded in 2006 and supported for the past 17 years by philanthropists Irwin Jacobs, '54, BEE '56, and Joan Jacobs, HE ’54, of San Diego, California.