Sperino elected to prestigious American Law Institute

Sandra Sperino, Judge Joseph P. Kinneary Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, has been elected a member of the American Law Institute (ALI), the leading independent organization in the United States producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and otherwise improve the law.  Sperino joins 37 other new members who will bring their perspective, insight, and expertise to the ongoing work of the Institute.  

The ALI drafts, discusses, revises, and publishes Restatements of the Law, Model Codes, and Principles of Law that influence courts and legislatures, as well as legal scholarship and education. ALI membership is based on professional achievement and demonstrated interest in improving the law. Its members have “the opportunity to influence the development of the law in both existing and emerging areas, to work with other eminent lawyers, judges, and academics, to give back to a profession to which they are deeply dedicated, and to contribute to the public good.” 

Professor Sperino has been a member of the academy for 15 years, teaching in the areas of civil procedure, torts, and employment law. Her scholarship focuses on the intersection of tort and employment law, with special emphasis on employment discrimination. She is the author of numerous articles and books in this area, including

• Into the Weeds: Modern Discrimination Law, 95 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1077 (2020)
• Let’s Pretend Title VII is a Tort, 75 Ohio St. L. Rev. 1107 (2014)
•  Discrimination Statutes, the Common Law and Proximate Cause, 2013 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1
•  Statutory Proximate Cause, 88 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1199 (2013)
• The Law of Employment Discrimination (West 2019)
• McDonnell Douglas: The Most Important Case in Discrimination Law (Bloomberg, updated annually) 
• Unequal: How America’s Courts Undermine Discrimination Law (w/ Thomas) (Oxford Univ. Press 2017)
• Employment Discrimination: A Context and Practice Casebook (w/ Gonzalez) (3d ed. 2019)
•  Federal Discrimination law in a Nutshell (West 2020)
• Employment Discrimination, in Employment Law (Mark Rothstein ed., 2019)
• Rethinking Discrimination Law, 110 Mich. L. Rev. 69 (2011).

Prior to joining the College of Law faculty, Professor Sperino served on the faculty of Temple University Beasley School of Law and the University of Illinois College of Law. She worked in private practice as an attorney for the litigation and labor and employment departments at Lewis, Rice & Fingersh in St. Louis. While there she co-authored the successful petition for writ of certiorari and the brief argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Sell.

As a new member of ALI Professor Sperino joins several College of Law faculty, including Verna L. Williams, Dean and Nippert Professor of Law; Joseph P. Tomain, Dean Emeritus and Wilbert and Helen Ziegler Professor of Law; Jacob Cogan, Judge Joseph P. Kinneary Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Cincinnati Center for the Global Practice of Law; and Ronna Schneider, Professor of Law.