Pauline Kim
Daniel Noyes Kirby Professor of Law
Pauline Kim is the Daniel Noyes Kirby Professor of Law at Washington University School of Law. A renowned expert on the law governing the workplace, she has published dozens of articles and book chapters on issues affecting workers such as privacy, discrimination, and job security, was well as co-authoring one of the leading textbooks on employment law, Work Law: Cases and Materials. She has done foundational research on workers’ understanding of their legal rights, and on the risks of discrimination and unfairness posed by the use of automated decision systems and artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace. She has also made significant contributions to the literature on judging, focusing on how judicial hierarchies shape decision-making. Her current research centers on the legal and policy challenges raised when AI is used to make consequential decisions in employment, housing, and credit markets, focusing in particular on the risks of discrimination and increasing economic inequality. She currently directs Washington University’s Center for Empirical Research in the Law, is a member of the Labor Law Group, and has served as an Adviser to the American Law Institute’s Restatement of Employment Law. She holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Sociology and is a faculty affiliate at the Center for Race, Ethnicity, and Equity, and the Cordell Institute. She also serves on the program committee of the Privacy Law Scholars’ Conference. Professor Kim earned her A.B. and J.D. from Harvard University, and was a Henry Fellow at New College, Oxford University. Before joining the faculty, she clerked for the Honorable Cecil F. Poole on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Following her clerkship, she was the Félix Velarde-Muñoz Fellow, and later a staff attorney, at the Employment Law Center/Legal Aid Society of San Francisco (now Legal Aid at Work), where she represented low-income workers. In 2007-08, she was the inaugural John S. Lehmann Research Professor at Washington University Law School, and from 2008-2010, she served as the law school’s Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development. In 2024, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
- Education
- J.D., Harvard Law School, 1988
- Henry Fellow, New College, Oxford University, 1984-85
- AB, Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, 1984
- Courses
- Civil Procedure
- Employment Discrimination
- Employment Law
- Areas of Expertise
- AI Law and Policy
- Employment Law
- Employee Privacy
- Employment Discrimination
- Fairness in Algorithmic Decision-making
- Publications
- “Less Discriminatory Algorithms” (with Emily Black, John Logan Koepke, Solon Barocas & Mingwei Hsu), forthcoming 113 Georgetown Law Journal ___ (2024)
- “Limitations of the ‘Four-Fifths Rule’ and Statistical Parity Tests for Measuring Fairness”, 8 Georgetown Law Technology Review 93 (2024) (with Manish Raghavan)
- “Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Algorithmic Management, and Labour Law,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Law of Work, Guy Davidov, Brian Langille & Gillian Lester, editors (2024)
- “AI and Inequality” in The Cambridge Handbook on Artificial Intelligence & the Law, eds. Kristin Johnson & Carla Reyes, editors (forthcoming 2024)
- “Race-Aware Algorithms: Fairness, Nondiscrimination and Affirmative Action,” 110 California Law Review 1539 (2022)
- “Addressing Algorithmic Discrimination,” Viewpoints on Law & Technology, 65 Communications of the ACM, 25-27 (2022)
- “Artificial Intelligence and the Challenges of Workplace Discrimination and Privacy,” ABA Journal of Labor and Employment Law (forthcoming 2020) (with Matthew T. Bodie)
- “Mapping the Iceberg: The Impact of Data Sources on the Study of District Courts,” 17 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 466 (2020) (with Christina L. Boyd and Margo Schlanger)
- “Manipulating Opportunity,” 106 Virginia Law Review 867 (2020)
- “Data Mining and the Challenges of Protecting Employee Privacy under U.S. Law,” 40 Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal 405 (2019)
- “Big Data and Artificial Intelligence: New Challenges for Workplace Equality,” 57 University of Louisville Law Review 313 (2019) (Carl A. Warns, Jr. Keynote Speech).
- “Discrimination in Online Employment Recruiting,” 63 St. Louis University Law Journal 93 (2018) (with Sharion Scott), Symposium on Law, Technology and the Organization of Work, reprinted in Sharing the Gains of the U.S. Global Economy: Proceedings of the New York University 70th Annual Conference on Labor (Charlotte Garden, ed.; Samual Estreicher, series ed.) (Carolina Academic Press) (2021).
- “Auditing Algorithms for Discrimination,” 166 University of Pennsylvania Law Review Online 189 (2017)
- “Data-Driven Discrimination at Work,” 58 William & Mary Law Review 857 (2017)
- “People Analytics and the Regulation of Information under the Fair Credit Reporting Act,” 61 St. Louis University Law Journal 17 (2016) (with Erika Hanson), Symposium on the Law and Business of People Analytics
- “Market Norms and Constitutional Values in the Government Workplace,” 94 North Carolina Law Review 601 (2016)
- “Addressing Systemic Discrimination: Public Enforcement and the Role of the EEOC,” 95 Boston University Law Review 1133 (2015), Symposium on The Civil Rights Act of 1964 at 50: Past, Present, and Future
- Work Law: Cases and Materials (4th ed.), with Marion Crain & Michael Selmi, Matthew Bender & Co./LexisNexis Group (2015)
- “The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Structural Reform of the American Workplace,” 91 Washington University Law Review 1519 (2014) (with Margo Schlanger)
- “A Holistic Approach to Teaching Work Law,” 58 St. Louis University Law Journal 7 (2013) (with Marion Crain), Symposium on Teaching Employment and Labor Law
- “A Dynamic Model of Doctrinal Choice,” 4 Journal of Legal Analysis 301 (2012) (with Scott Baker)
- “Electronic Privacy and Employee Speech,” 87 Chicago-Kent Law Review 901 (2012) (The Kenneth M. Piper Lecture)
- “Beyond Principal-Agent Theories: Law and the Judicial Hierarchy,” 105 Northwestern University Law Review 535 (2011)
- “Regulating the Use of Genetic Information: Perspectives from the U.S. Experience,” 31 Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal 693 (2010)
- “Reply: Exploring Panel Effects,” 158 University of Pennsylvania Law Review PENNumbra 269 (2010)
- “Deliberation and Strategy on the United States Court of Appeals,” 157 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1319 (2009)
- “How Should We Study District Judge Decision-Making,” 29 Washington University Journal of Law and Policy 83 (2009) (with Margo Schlanger, Christina Boyd and Andrew D. Martin), Symposium on Empirical Research on Decision-Making in the Federal Courts
- Labor Law Group-U. C. Hastings Symposium on the Proposed Restatement of Employment Law, “Commentary on Chapter 4 of the Proposed Restatement of Employment Law: The Tort of Wrongful Discharge in Violation of Public Policy” (Section II) 13 Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal 161 (2009) (co-author Catherine Fisk)
- “Lower Court Discretion,” 82 New York University Law Review 383 (2007)
- “Collective and Individual Approaches to Protecting Employee Privacy: The Experience with Workplace Drug Testing,” 66 Louisiana Law Review 1009 (2006), Symposium on Examining Privacy in the Workplace
- “The Supreme Court Forecasting Project: Legal and Political Science Approaches to Predicting Supreme Court Decision-Making,” 104 Columbia Law Review 1150-1209 (2004) (with Theodore W. Ruger, Andrew D. Martin and Kevin M. Quinn)
- “Competing Approaches to Predicting Supreme Court Decision Making,” 2 Perspectives on Politics 761 (2004) (with Andrew D. Martin, Kevin M. Quinn and Theodore W. Ruger)
- WERL, “On Tournaments for Appointing Great Justices to the U.S. Supreme Court,” 78 Southern California Law Review 157 (2004)
- “The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993: Ten Years of Experience,” 15 Washington University Journal of Law & Policy 1 (2004)
- “The Colorblind Lottery,” 72 Fordham Law Review 9 (2003)
- “Genetic Discrimination, Genetic Privacy: Rethinking Employee Protection for a Brave New Workplace,” 96 Northwestern University Law Review 1497 (2002)
- “Norms, Learning and Law: Exploring the Influences on Workers’ Legal Knowledge,” 1999 University of Illinois Law Review 447 (1999)
- “An Empirical Challenge to Employment at Will,” 23 New Zealand Journal of Industrial Relations 91 (1998)
- “Cynicism, Reconsidered,” 76 Washington University Law Quarterly 193 (1998)
- “Bargaining with Imperfect Information: A Study of Worker Perceptions of Legal Protection in an At-Will World,” 83 Cornell Law Review 105 (1997)
- “Privacy Rights, Public Policy and the Employment Relationship,” 57 Ohio State Law Journal 671 (1996)
- “Common Law Privacy: A Limit on an Employer’s Power to Test for Drugs,” 12 George Mason University Law Review 651 (1990) (with Edward M. Chen and John M. True)
- Activity and Affiliations
- American Law Institute
- Labor Law Group
- Society for Empirical Legal Studies
- Department of Sociology (by courtesy)
- Faculty affiliate, Center for Race, Ethnicity and Equity
- Resident Fellow, The Cordell Institute
- Program Committee, Privacy Law Scholars’ Conference
- Honors and Awards
- Elected, American Association of Arts & Sciences, 2024
- Future of Privacy Forum’s Privacy Papers for Policymakers Award for “Less Discriminatory Algorithms” (with Emily Black, John Logan Koepke, Solon Barocas & Mingwei Hsu), January 2024
- Faculty Fellow, Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Equity, 2023
- Washington University Founders Day Distinguished Faculty Award, 2021
- David M. Becker Professor the Year, 2019
- International Association of Privacy Professionals, Best Paper award for Data-Driven Discrimination at Work, 2016
- David M. Becker Professor of the Year, 2016
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