Blumrosen, Alfred W. 1928- (Alfred William Blumrosen)

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Blumrosen, Alfred W. 1928- (Alfred William Blumrosen)

PERSONAL:

Born December 14, 1928, in Detroit, MI; son of Sol and Frances Blumrosen; married Ruth Gerber (a lawyer and educator), 1952; children: Steven, Alexander. Education: University of Michigan, B.A., 1950, J.D., 1953.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Wantage Township, NJ. Office—Rutgers University School of Law, 180 University Ave., Newark, NJ 07102. E-mail—ablumrosen@kinoy.rutgers.edu.

CAREER:

Writer, lawyer, educator. Admitted to Bars of Michigan State, 1953, New Jersey State, 1962, and U.S. Supreme Court, 1967. Private practice of law in Detroit, MI, 1953-55; Rutgers University, School of Law, Newark, NJ, assistant professor, 1955-58, associate professor, 1958-61, professor of law, 1961—, Thomas A. Cowan Professor of Law, 2002—. Visiting professor, Louisiana State University, 1961, and Howard Law School, 1965. First chief of conciliation and first chief of Federal-State Relations for U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 1965-67. Arbitrator, New Jersey Mediation Board, 1957—, Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, 1961—, and American Arbitration Association, 1965—. Consultant to U.S. Department of Labor, Department of Housing and Urban Development, state human rights and civil rights commissions, and other agencies and organizations. Lecturer on equal opportunity at universities and lawyers' seminars.

MEMBER:

International Society for Labor Law and Social Legislation U.S. National Committee, American Bar Association, Michigan Bar Association, Order of the Coif.

WRITINGS:

(Coeditor) Labor Relations and the Law, 2nd edition (Blumrosen was not associated with earlier edition), Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1960, supplement (coauthor), 1962, 3rd edition, 1965.

(Contributor) Ralph Slovenko, editor, Symposium on the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, Claitor's Book Store (Baton Rouge, LA), 1961.

Materials and Cases on the Law of the Employment Relation, two volumes, Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ), 1962.

(Contributor) W.M. Evan, editor, Law and Sociology, Free Press (New York, NY), 1962.

The Settlement of Disputes concerning the Exercise of Disciplinary Power by the Employer, including Dismissal, in the United States (monograph), International Society for Labor Law and Social Legislation, 1963.

(With Leonard Zeitz) Securing Equality: The Operation of the Laws of New Jersey concerning Racial Discrimination, School of Law, Rutgers University (Newark, NJ), 1964.

Worker Safety and Technological Change in the United States (monograph), International Society for Labor Law and Social Legislation, 1970.

(With Frank Askin, Richard Chused, and others) Enforcing Fair Housing Laws: Apartments in White Suburbia, School of Law, Rutgers University (Newark, NJ), 1970.

Black Employment and the Law, Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ), 1971.

(Editor) Foundations of Equal Employment Opportunity, two volumes, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (Washington, DC), 1972.

(With James Blair and others) Enforcing Equality in Housing and Employment through State Civil Rights Laws, privately printed, 1972.

(With others) Some Civil Liberties of the Seventies, York University Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1975.

Modern Law: The Law Transmission System and Equal Employment Opportunity, University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI), 1993.

(With wife, Ruth G. Blumrosen) Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies & Sparked the American Revolution, introduction by Eleanor Holmes Norton, Sourcebooks (Naperville, IL), 2005.

Contributor to professional journals and reviews.

SIDELIGHTS:

A distinguished lawyer with a long and impressive history in civil rights and equal employment cases, Alfred W. Blumrosen is the Thomas A. Cowan Professor of Law at Rutgers University, where he specializes in labor and employment law. A member of the Rutgers faculty since 1955, he assisted in the creation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1965, and also served as a Special Attorney in the Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice, and as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Labor in cases concerning employment discrimination.

Blumrosen is also the author of a number of books, including the 2005 title, Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies & Sparked the American Revolution, coauthored with his wife, Ruth G. Blumrosen, who is also a lawyer and a professor of law at Rutgers. Termed "startling and necessary" and "one of the most important [recent] publications on the topic of black history" by Booklist contributor Brad Hooper, Slave Nation examines the effect that slavery had on the American revolutionary movement. As Hooper commented, "[the authors'] basic premise is that slavery cast its shadow over the founding of the republic." The Blumrosens contend that the revolution was in part sparked by the fears of the slave-holding colonies in the South that Britain would soon make slavery illegal, following on the decision of a London judge that, in 1772, outlawed it in England itself. A Bookwatch reviewer termed the book a "lively history," while Library Journal reviewer Robert Flatley found it a "well-researched book [that] is sure to be controversial." Similarly, writing in the Journal of Southern History, Robin Einhorn thought Slave Nation, despite some "factual errors," was "a passionate and interesting work."