Merton C Bernstein
Walter D. Coles Professor of Law Emeritus
E-mail:bernstem@wulaw.wustl.edu
Phone: (508) 896-8383
Education
A.B., 1943, Oberlin College
LL.B., 1948, Columbia University
Profile
Professor Bernstein, although retired from teaching, continues to speak and write about Social Security, pension, and health care issues, and to arbitrate labor-management contract disputes. Currently (2002-2003) he is preparing a lecture and an article on the drawbacks of the tort system and other programs addressed to injury and illness and his proposals for ameliorating them.
He founded and directed the Washington University law school’s Congressional Clinic and added the Administrative Law Clinic. Students work full-time their last semester in a Congressional office or a federal administrative agency.
Before joining the Washington University faculty, he had taught at Ohio State, Columbia and Yale Laws Schools. Prior to law school teaching, he served as counsel to the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Labor, chaired by Hubert H. Humphrey, and to Senator Wayne Morse; he also was special counsel to Senator John F. Kennedy’s Subcommittee on Labor.
Publications
"Social Security: the System that Works" (Basic Books, 1988; paperback 1989) with Joan B. Bernstein, WU Law, ‘90.
"Private Dispute Settlement: Case and Materials on Arbitration" (Basic Books, 1969)
"The Future of Private Pension" (Free Press/Macmillan, 1954) Awarded the Elizur Wright Award by the American Risk and Assurance Association (university teachers of insurance) and cited for excellence by the American Library Association and the Princeton University Industrial Relations Section.
His articles have appeared in the Columbia, Harvard, Illinois, NYU, Ohio State, and Pennsylvania, UCLA law reviews and the Yale Law Journal, and the Industrial and Labor Relations Review.
Numerous articles in popular journals such as Fortune and op-eds in the Atlanta Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Des Moines Register, the Milwaukee Journal and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Publications [more]