Professor Ruben J. Garcia

Ruben J. Garcia is Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Workplace Law Program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law. From 2017 to 2019 he served as Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Research at the UNLV Boyd School of Law. Prior to joining the UNLV faculty in 2011, he was Professor of Law and Director of the Labor and Employment Law Program at California Western School of Law in San Diego, where he taught for eight years. He also has served as a Visiting Professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law, the University of Wisconsin Law School, Brooklyn Law School, and at the University of California, San Diego.  

Before beginning his teaching career in 2000, Garcia worked at Rothner, Segall and Greenstone as an attorney for public and private sector labor unions and employees in the Los Angeles area. He is a graduate of Stanford University, received his Juris Doctor from UCLA School of Law, and has a Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School, where he was a William H. Hastie Fellow. His scholarship has appeared in a number of leading law reviews, including the Hastings Law Journal, the Loyola Law Review, the University of Chicago Legal Forum and the Florida State University Law Review, and peer-reviewed publications such as the Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal and theAnnual Reviews of Law and Social Science. His book Marginal Workers: How Legal Fault Lines Divide Workers and Leave Them Without Protection was published byNew York University Press in 2012. He has lectured at Stanford, Harvard, the University of Chicago, Georgetown University, the Brookings Institution, the International Labour Organization Training Center and many other law schools and colleges.  

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 theACLU of Nevada. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Constitution Society (ACS), a national nonprofit organization, and an advisor to the Boyd Law Student and Las Vegas Lawyer Chapters of the ACS.  In 2019, he was elected as a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers based on more than twenty years as a labor lawyer and academic in the field of Labor and Employment Law.  

A frequent contributor to media stories on issues of constitutional law, labor law and employment law, he has been interviewed by National Public Radio, the New York Times, and Marketplace, among other news outlets.Professor Garcia is currently writing a book on race and the minimum wage for the University of California Press.