Over Seventy Employment and Labor Law Professors Gather at Seton Hall Law for the 20th Annual COSELL Conference

On September 19-20, 2025, Seton Hall School of Law hosted the 20th Colloquium on Scholarship in Employment and Labor Law (COSELL). This conference is held each year at law schools across the country, most recently Minnesota, Vanderbilt, and San Diego. Seton Hall professors Doron Dorfman and Timothy Glynn organized this year’s event.

COSELL brought together over seventy scholars to present, hear, and provide feedback on research and scholarship in labor law, employment law, and related areas. Participants ranged from well-known senior scholars to new professors and practitioners interested in entering the academy. This year’s program covered a diverse range of important legal developments in the modern workplace. Topics included emerging challenges to worker collective rights, reconceptualizing antiretaliation protections, the state of discrimination law and policy, the ways in which bankruptcy and other doctrines undermine worker  power, innovative approaches to worker classification and employer accountability, the impact of  emergent technologies on the workplace, the status of public sector workers in a changing world, and the future of parental leave policies, among others.

At the conference dinner, Professors Dorfman and Glynn also presented COSELL’s two annual scholarship awards. Professor Catherine Fisk from UC Berkeley Law School, received the Paul Steven Miller Award for a senior scholar who has made outstanding academic and public contributions to the field of labor and employment scholarship.  Professor Ryan Nelson from South Texas College of Law, received the Michael J. Zimmer Award for a rising scholar who values workplace justice and already has made significant contributions to the field.

“The conference was a great success,” said Professor Dorfman, who is a recent winner of the Zimmer Award. “This is the preeminent conference on labor and employment law scholarship in the country, and ideas that are formulated and exchanged here eventually have an impact on legal and policy discussions across the U.S. and beyond.”

“Our participants expressed gratitude for how professionally engaging and enjoyable this year’s conference was,” Professor Glynn added. “And we are grateful to Dean Weich, our administrators and staff, and our student volunteers and attendees for their support of this program. We believe this showcased our academic community in the best possible way.”

This year’s event extended the long legacy of Seton Hall faculty involvement in COSELL, which includes Professor Emeritus Charles Sullivan and Professor Glynn hosting the event in 2009. Next year’s conference will be held at UC Berkeley.