Alum Earns Labor and Employment Law Award

Susan Bisom-Rapp ’83 was presented the 2019 Paul Steven Miller Memorial Award at the 14th Annual Colloquium on Scholarship in Employment and Labor Law on Oct. 11 at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law.  Recipients are chosen by their peers -- professors who teach labor and employment law at U.S. law schools.

The award recognizes outstanding academic and public contributions to the field of labor and employment law scholarship.

Bisom-Rapp joined the faculty of Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego in 1996 shortly after defending her doctoral dissertation at Columbia University. She writes about trends affecting the modern workplace, including those related to globalization, equal employment opportunity, an aging workforce, occupational safety and health, and the gig economy. “Working in comparative law really enlarges one’s view of legal regulation,” she notes. “I’ve been lucky to co-author with scholars from the U.K., Canada and Australia, and to work on research projects based in Italy and France.”

Bisom-Rapp is an elected member of the American Law Institute, an American Bar Foundation Fellow and a member of Order of the Coif. She also serves on the Academic Advisory Board of the Marco Biagi Foundation at the University of Modena, Italy, and on the editorial board of the Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal.

Bisom-Rapp is co-author of three books, the most recent being Lifetime Disadvantage, Discrimination and the Gendered Workforce (with Malcolm Sargeant) (Cambridge University Press 2016), and has co-authored numerous articles and book chapters.  Her most recent article, “Sex Harassment Training Must Change: The Case for Legal Incentives for Transformative Education and Prevention,” 71 Stanford Law Review Online 62 (2018), was reprinted in a 2019 anthology of the best articles published on women’s legal rights from the prior year.  Learn more about her career accomplishments.

She credits part of her success to the education she received at the ILR School and wants her fellow alums and classmates to share in her exhilaration. She also credits the support of her husband Charles (B.S. Eng. ’83). Her niece Hannah Ritter is an ILR sophomore.

Bisom-Rapp is deeply honored to receive an award named in memory of Paul Steven Miller, who was a disability rights scholar and advocate. A professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, he was also responsible for leading improvements in his roles of commissioner of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission during the Clinton administration, and as government liaison to disability organizations during the Obama administration.

“I am humbled and deeply honored to receive this award,” said Bisom-Rapp.