Ruben J. Garcia is the Ralph Denton Professor of Law and Director of the Workplace Law Program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law. From 2017 to 2019, he served as Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Research at the UNLV Boyd School of Law. Prior to joining the UNLV faculty in 2011, he was Professor of Law and Director of the Labor and Employment Law Program at California Western School of Law in San Diego, where he taught for eight years. His scholarship has appeared in a number of leading law reviews, including the Hastings Law Journal, the Loyola Law Review, the University of Chicago Legal Forum and the Florida State University Law Review, and peer-reviewed publications such as the Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal and the Annual Reviews of Law and Social Science.  He is co-author of an employment law casebook published by the Labor Law Group, entitled Legal Protection for the Individual Employee (West, 7th ed. 2025). His 2024 book, Critical Wage Theory: Why Wage Justice is Racial Justice (UC Press) focuses on the ways in which race and immigration affect how, and whether, workers are paid.  His first well-received book, Marginal Workers: How Legal Fault Lines Divide Workers and Leave Them Without Protection, was published by New York University Press in 2012, about how labor and employment laws fail the workers they are supposed to protect, and what can be done to bridge the margins between different labor and employment laws.

In addition, his significant recent publications include:

• Ruben J. Garcia, Keynote Address: Envisioning Wage Justice, University of Minnesota Journal of Law and Inequality, 43 Law & Ineq. 279 (2025).

• Ruben J. Garcia, The FAA and the LMRA at the Margins: Workers of Color Caught Between Collectivism and Individualism, in The Federal Arbitration Act: Successes, Failures, and a Roadmap for Reform (Richard Bales & Jill Gross eds., Cambridge Univ. Press 2025).

• Ruben J. Garcia, Politically Engaged Unionism: The Culinary Workers Union in Las Vegas, in The Cambridge Handbook of U.S. Labor Law for the Twenty-First Century (Richard Bales & Charlotte Garden eds., Cambridge Univ. Press 2019).

• Ruben J. Garcia, Pandémie et travail de plateforme: réglementation du « lieu de travail » après le Covid-19 aux USA [The Gig and The Platform: Regulating the “Workplace” After the Pandemic], Revue de Droit Comparé du Travail et de la Sécurité Sociale [J. Compar. Lab. & Soc. Sec. L.], Apr. 2023 at 214 (Fr.).

• Ruben J. Garcia, The Human Right to Workplace Safety in a Pandemic, 64 Wash. U. J.L. & Pol'y 113 (2021).

• Ruben J. Garcia, Building Worker Collective Action Through Technology, 63 St. Louis U. L.J. 25 (2020).

Professor Garcia has served as a Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley Law, the University of California, Davis School of Law, the University of Wisconsin Law School, Brooklyn Law School, and at the University of California, San Diego. Before beginning his teaching career in 2000, Garcia worked at Rothner, Segall and Greenstone as an attorney for public and private sector labor unions and employees in the Los Angeles area. He is a graduate of Stanford University, received his Juris Doctor from UCLA School of Law, and has a Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School, where he was a William H. Hastie Fellow. He has lectured at Stanford, Harvard, the University of Chicago, Georgetown University, the Brookings Institution, the University of Minnesota Law School, the International Labour Organization Training Center and many other law schools and colleges.   From January 2014 to January 2016, he served as the Co-President of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT), and has served on the Board of Directors of the ACLU of Nevada.   He is a member of the Board of Academic Advisors of the American Constitution Society (ACS), and an advisor to the Boyd Law Student and Las Vegas Lawyer Chapters of the ACS.

In October 2022, he was elected as a fellow of the American Law Institute. Like other members of the ALI, Professor Garcia's nomination and election was based on his experience, potential to contribute to future ALI activities, achievement, and his professional standing among peers. Three years earlier, he was elected as a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers (the CLEL) based on more than twenty years as a labor lawyer and academic in the field of Labor and Employment Law. He now serves on the Board of Governors of the CLEL, and as Chair of the Labor Law Group.  A frequent contributor to media stories on issues of constitutional law, labor law and employment law, he has been interviewed by National Public Radio, the New York Times, and Marketplace, among other news outlets. 

Marginal Workers 
How Legal Fault Lines Divide Workers and
Leave Them without Protection