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Author:Benjamin Levin

Benjamin Levin is a Professor at WashU Law.

Name-Image-Likeness and the Post-Work Economy

Apr 3, 2025 Benjamin Levin

For years, it’s been hard not to feel at least a little guilty watching March Madness. The annual college basketball tournament generates over a billion dollars. Schools, coaches, advertisers, and tv networks make money hand over fist. Yet, one group was always left out in the cold: the players. Despite the obvious profit motive of […]

Prosecutorial Power, Prisons, and the Problem with Wage Theft Criminalization: A Reply

Apr 30, 2018 Benjamin Levin

Thanks to Ben Sachs for allowing me space for a reply and to Terri Gerstein and David Seligman for taking the time to respond to my post. While I appreciate Gerstein and Seligman’s perspective, and I agree with them about the need to stop wage theft and protect workers, I have to part ways with […]

Rethinking Wage Theft Criminalization

Apr 13, 2018 Benjamin Levin

“Wage theft” is an evocative turn of phrase, but how literally should we take it? Used to refer to employers underpaying workers or denying them compensation to which they are entitled, the phrase increasingly crops up in conversations about work law and policy. Scholars, activists, and politicians have leveraged its powerful rhetorical force: theft is a crime and thus invokes issues of moral culpability and wrongdoing.

Guest Post: Criminal Employment Law

Apr 13, 2017 Benjamin Levin

Ben Levin is Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. What role do private employers have to play in the criminal justice system? And, what does employment law doctrine have to do with mass incarceration? In Criminal Employment Law (forthcoming in the Cardozo Law Review), I answer these questions. I argue that […]

Second Circuit Drops the Ball on Workers’ Rights

Apr 27, 2016 Benjamin Levin

Ben Levin is Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. That sound you hear isn’t the air being let out of footballs. It’s the collective groans of New England Patriots fans. On Monday, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reinstated quarterback Tom Brady’s four-game suspension […]

Guest Post: Free Riding and Friedrichs

Jan 13, 2016 Benjamin Levin

Ben Levin is Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. Trying to read the tea leaves in oral argument questions can be a risky proposition. But, one particular exchange during Monday’s argument in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association between Chief Justice John Roberts and California Solicitor General Edward DuMont is worth a […]

Guest Post: N.L.R.B. Missed Shot by Declining Jurisdiction in Northwestern Football Case for "Stability"

Aug 20, 2015 Benjamin Levin

Ben Levin is Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. Earlier this week, the NLRB declined to exercise jurisdiction in a much-publicized case involving Northwestern University Wildcats football players’ efforts to claim employee status and unionize. The reason for the Board’s decision? A concern for “stability in labor relations.” As the Board […]

OnLabor

Law. Workers. Organizing.

OnLabor is a blog devoted to workers, unions, and their politics. We interpret our subject broadly to include the current crisis in the traditional union movement (why union decline is happening and what it means for our society); the new and contested forms of worker organization that are filling the labor union gap; how work ought to be structured and managed; how workers ought to be represented and compensated; and the appropriate role of government — all three branches — in each of these issues.

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Name-Image-Likeness and the Post-Work Economy

Prosecutorial Power, Prisons, and the Problem with Wage Theft Criminalization: A Reply

Rethinking Wage Theft Criminalization

Guest Post: Criminal Employment Law

Second Circuit Drops the Ball on Workers’ Rights

Guest Post: Free Riding and Friedrichs

Guest Post: N.L.R.B. Missed Shot by Declining Jurisdiction in Northwestern Football Case for "Stability"