Lu-in Wang’s scholarship examines ordinary and extraordinary forms of discrimination and the connections between them. Her recent work explores the legal implications of economic and social stereotypes in the service industry, particularly with respect to discrimination in employment and against customers. An earlier book, Discrimination By Default: How Racism Becomes Routine (New York University Press 2006), draws on social psychology to detail three commonplace but generally unrecognized ways in which unconscious assumptions lead to discrimination in a wide range of everyday settings and how these dynamics interact to produce an invisible, self-fulfilling, and self-perpetuating prophecy of racial disparity. Wang also has written on more extreme forms of discrimination. In addition to being the author of Hate Crimes Law (West 1994), the first legal treatise on that subject, she has published several articles that apply insights from historical, sociological, and social psychological literature to illuminate the legal issues related to bias-motivated violence and crime. Wang's articles have appeared in journals including the Southern California Law Review, the Ohio State Law Journal, the Boston University Law Review, the Lewis & Clark Law Review, the Michigan Journal of Race and Law, the Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law, and the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology.
Wang serves as the University’s Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs and has served as the law school’s Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. She has received the University of Pittsburgh Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award and has twice received the Student Bar Association's Excellence in Teaching Award. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute and The Fellows of the American Bar Foundation. Wang has also served as a member of the faculty of the University of New Mexico School of Law. Before she began teaching, Wang practiced with firms in Chicago, Illinois, and Ann Arbor, Michigan. She also served as a staff attorney for The Center for Social Gerontology, a national support center on law and aging, and as a law clerk for the late Justice Ralph J. Cappy of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.
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- JD, University of Michigan Law School
- BS, The Pennsylvania State University
- BA, University of Pittsburgh
Education & Training
Books and Chapters
- Discrimination by Default: How Racism Becomes Routine (NYU Press, 2006).
- Hate Crimes Law (Clark Boardman Callaghan, 1994)
Scholarly Articles
- Reframing Hate, 112 Crim. L. & Criminology 847 (2022
- Race, Dignity, and Commerce, 39 J. L. & Commerce 113 (2021)
- Dignity Transacted: Emotional Labor and the Racialized Workplace, 53 Michigan Journal of Law Reform 531 (2020) (with Zachary W. Brewster)
- Explicit Expressions of Anti-Black Biases in the Full-Service Restaurant Industry: Legal Responsibilities and Risks, 85 Int'l J. Hospitality Mgmt. 102435 (Feb. 2020) (with Zachary W. Brewster)
- When the Customer is King: Employment Discrimination as Customer Service, 23 VA. J. Social Policy & L 249 (2016)
- At the Tipping Point: Race and Gender Discrimination in a Common Economic Transaction, 21 VA. J. Social Policy & L. 101 (2014)
- Race as Proxy: Situational Racism and Self-fulfilling Stereotypes, 53 Depaul L. Rev. 1013 (2004)
- The Complexities of "Hate," 60 Ohio State L. J. 799 (1999)
- The Transforming Power of "Hate": Social Cognition Theory and the Harms of Bias-Related Crime, 71 S. Cal. L. Rev. 47 (1997)
Employment Discrimination
Hate Crimes
Contracts