Lifelong Achievements

John E. Dunsford

As one of the nation's foremost arbitrators and labor law scholars, labor unions and companies have entrusted John E. Dunsford to settle their differences for the past four decades.

Dunsford was a young college professor when the legendary scholar and arbitrator Leo Brown, S.J., tapped him in the early 1960s to be an apprentice. Over the span of his career, Dunsford has arbitrated nearly 1,000 disputes for groups such as U.S. Steel and the United Steelworkers of America; the National Football League and the Bert Bell Retirement and Pension Plan; Southwestern Bell and the Communications Workers of America; and the Internal Revenue Service and the National Treasury Employees Union.

Dunsford has arbitrated for virtually all of the U.S. airlines and their unions. Most recently, he participated in an interest arbitration between Alaska Airlines and the Transport Workers Union to set rates during the difficult economic times following 9/11.
Professor Dunsford has held several leadership positions with the prestigious National Academy of Arbitrators, including serving as president. In 2000, he was named a fellow in the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers.

He directed the School's Wefel Center for Employment Law from 1987-1994 and remains a senior consultant. He also served as the McDonnell Professor of Justice in American Society from 1982-1987.

Except for a two-year break in the late 1970s when he practiced arbitration full time, Professor Dunsford has taught labor law at the School of Law since the early 1960s. In addition to a book, Individuals and Unions, he has written numerous articles and chapters on labor law, arbitration and the U.S. Constitution and personal freedom.

Most recently his scholarship has focused on church-state relations, specifically tuition vouchers that allow parents the option of using state money to send their children to the schools of their choice.

Sandra H. Johnson

After helping form the field of health care law, Professor Sandra H. Johnson recently retired after a 30-year career at the School of Law.

For decades, Johnson's work on regulatory issues has significantly impacted pain management research and public policy. The casebook she co-authored with fellow faculty member Thomas L. Greaney in 1987, Health Law: Cases, Materials and Problems, was literally the first to feature the title of "health law." Now in its sixth edition, the book has been studied in more than 150 universities across the United States and has been cited more than 500 times in scholarly articles and court opinions.

Johnson is also the co-author with Professor Thomas L. Greaney of the treatise, Health Law, which the U.S. Supreme Court has cited three times — a rarity for such publications. A prolific writer, her work has been published in prestigious journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association. She is also the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics and a fellow of the Hastings Center.

In collaboration with other scholars at the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics, Professor Johnson helped draft the Model Pain Relief Act that has been adopted by some state legislatures, and she has consulted with the Federation of State Medical Boards in developing standards used by many state medical boards. She also helped develop the Mayday Scholars Program, which encourages legal scholars to turn their talent and time toward the issue of improving pain management.

Last fall, Johnson served as the keynote speaker of the 2008 Childress Memorial Lecture, "Still Crazy After All These Years: Is Regulating Physician Practice an Exercise in Futility?" She was honored as Woman of the Year by the St. Louis Daily Record in 2002; Woman of the Year by Saint Louis University in 1997; and received the Distinguished Health Law Teacher Award from the American Society of Law & Medicine in 1991.