Biography

A prolific scholar of labor and discrimination law, William B. Gould IV has been an influential voice on worker-management relations for more than forty years and served as chairman of the National Labor Relations Board. Professor Gould has been a member of the National Academy of Arbitrators since 1970 and has arbitrated and mediated more than 200 labor disputes, including the 1992 and 1993 salary disputes between the Major League Baseball Players Association and the Major League Baseball Player Relations Committee. He served as Independent Monitor for FirstGroup America, addressing freedom of association complaints (2008-2011). Professor Gould has acted as Special Advisor to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (2011-2012).

A critically acclaimed author of ten books and more than sixty law review articles, Professor Gould’s work includes his historical record of the experiences of his great-grandfather in Diary of a Contraband: The Civil War Passage of a Black Sailor, and his own Washington story, Labored Relations: Law, Politics and the NLRB: A Memoir. A tenth book, Bargaining with Baseball: Labor Relations in an Age of Prosperous Turmoil appeared in 2011.

Professor Gould is the recipient of five honorary doctorates for his significant contributions in the fields of labor law and labor relations. Before joining the Stanford Law School Faculty in 1972, he was a professor of law at Wayne State University Law School and was an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board, as well as for United Auto Workers.

Key Works

• William B. Gould IV, Kissing Cousins?: The Federal Arbitration Act and Modern Labor Arbitration, 55 Emory Law Journal 609
• William B. Gould, IV, Labor Issues in Professional Sports: Reflections on Baseball, Labor, and Antitrust Law (Symposium: Sports and the Law), 15 Stanford Law and Policy Review 61-98.
• William B. Gould, IV, The Idea of the Job as Property in Contemporary America: The Legal and Collective Bargaining Framework, 1986 Brigham Young University Law Review 895-918.
• William B. Gould IV, Japan’s Reshaping of American Labor Law, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984.
• William B. Gould IV, To Strike A New Balance: A Report of the Adhoc Committee On Termination At Will And Wrongful Discharge Appointed By The Labor And Employment Law Section Of The State Bar Of California. Labor and Employment Law Section, State Bar of California (1984).
• William B. Gould IV, On Labor Injunctions Pending Arbitration: Recasting Buffalo Forge, 30 Stanford Law Review 533
• William B. Gould IV, Black Workers in White Unions: Job Discrimination in the United States, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977.
• William B. Gould IV, Taft-Hartley Comes to Great Britain: Observations on the Industrial Relations Act of 1971, 81 Yale Law Journal 1421 (1972).
• William B. Gould IV, Black Power in the Unions: The Impact Upon Collective Bargaining Relationships, 79 Yale Law Journal 46.

In the News

• Legal Expert: Union May Be Fighting Losing Battle In Bounty Grievances
  CBS Sports.com, May 04, 2012
• William Gould To Throw First Pitch at Stanford-Vandy Friday
  Palo Alto Patch, February 16, 2012
• Experts: Tough Road For Any Brodkorb Lawsuit
  Associated Press, February 02, 2012
• League, Union Need To Cross Goal Line With HGH Testing
  USA Today, January 31, 2012
• Mitt Romney Ad Says Labor Board Tried To Block Boeing From Building Factory In South Caroline
  Tampa Bay Times - PolitiFact.com, January 05, 2012

Courses & Programs

Courses

• Labor Law

Publications & Cases

Recent Publications View All

• William B. Gould IV, Beyond Labor Law: Private Initiatives to Promote Employee Freedom of Association, 87 Indiana Law Journal 69 (2012).
• William B. Gould IV, The 2011 Basketball Lockout: The Union Lives to Fight Another Day—Just Barely, 64 Stanford Law Review Online 51 (2012).
• William B. Gould IV, Crippling the Right to Organize, New York Times, December 17, 2011, p. A25.
• William B. Gould IV, Baseball: The Poster Child of Labor Peace, Chicago Tribune, Dec. 2, 2011.
• William B. Gould IV, Using an Independent Monitor to Resolve Union-Organizing Disputes Outside the NLRB: The FirstGroup Experience, 66 Dispute Resolution Journal 46 (2011).
• William B. Gould IV, A Half Century of the Steelworkers Trilogy: Fifty Years of Ironies Squared, in, Arbitration 2010: The Steelworkers Trilogy at 50: Proceedings of the Sixty-Third Annual Meeting, National Academy of Arbitrators, Paul D. Staudohar, Mark I. Lurie, editors, Arlington, Va.: BNA Books, 2011.
• William B. Gould IV, Bargaining with Baseball: Labor Relations in an Age of Prosperous Turmoil, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2011.
• William B. Gould IV, Speech to Turkish Confederation of Employer Associations (TSK), Presented in Ankara, Turkey, March 9, 2011.
• William B. Gould IV, The Essence of Democracy, Room for Debate: A Running Commentary on the News, New York Times, February 19, 2011.
• William B Gould IV, Labor Issues in Professional Sports: The Upcoming Negotiations in the NFL, NBA, and MLB, delivered at the Orange County Labor & Employment Relations Association, Anaheim, California on January 19, 2011.

Affiliations & Honors

Professional Affiliations

• Member (1970-Present), National Academy of Arbitrators
• Member (1994-1996), Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States
• Chairman (1994-1998), National Labor Relations Board