MORGANTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA — West Virginia University College of Law professors Robert M. Bastress and Anne Marie Lofaso have been elected Fellows of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers (CLEL).
Election as a Fellow is the CLEL’s highest recognition of outstanding performance in labor and employment law. There are just 14 Fellows in West Virginia.
Bastress and Lofaso will be inducted at the 20th Installation of Fellows on November 7 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, coinciding with the American Bar Association Labor and Employment Law Section’s Continuing Legal Education Conference. They will join more than 1,300 members in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Canada.
Bastress is the John W. Fisher II Professor of Law and has taught at WVUsince 1978, specializing in constitutional law and employment discrimination. He is the author of numerous influential law articles and books including Interviewing, Counseling and Negotiating: Skills for Effective Lawyering (Little Brown & Co Law & Business,1990, with Joseph Harbaugh) and The West Virginia State Constitution (Oxford University Press, 2011).Bastress was the recipient the 2013 College of Law Professor of the Year Award, the college’s 2003 Outstanding Scholarship Award, and the 2002WVU Foundation Award for Outstanding Teaching. He earned a J.D. from Vanderbilt University and an L.LM. from Temple University.
Lofaso joined the WVU Law faculty in 2007 and specializes in labor and employment law. From 2011-15, she served as the college’s Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development and she is currently the first Leadership Research Fellow in the Arts and Humanities at the WVU Research Office. In spring 2016, she will be the Keeley Visiting Fellow at Wadham College at the University of Oxford, while conducting research on her next book, The Once and Future Worker. Lofaso is the author of many law review articles, including What We Owe Our Miners (Harvard Law and Policy Review), and books, such as Modern Labor Law in the Private and Public Sectors (Lexis/Nexis, 2013).
Lofaso is a winner of the 2014 Benedum Distinguished Scholar Award, the 2013 WVU Foundation Award for Outstanding Teaching, and the 2010 College of Law Professor of the Year. She is also a multiple winner of the College of Law Outstanding Scholarship Award. Lofaso is a graduate of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Oxford.
About the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers
The College of Labor and Employment Lawyers, based in Annapolis, Maryland, was founded in 1995 on the 60th anniversary of the National Labor Relations Board. It began as a non-profit professional association honoring the leading lawyers nationwide in the practice of labor and employment law. The college has evolved into an intellectual and practical resource for recognizing those who, by long and outstanding service, have distinguished themselves as leaders in the field, and for building and delivering knowledge to support the profession.
