Professor Malin is director of the Institute for Law and the Workplace and teaches Labor Law, Employment Relationships, Public Sector Employees, and Justice and the Legal System. He received his B.A. from Michigan State University's James Madison College and his J.D. from George Washington University, where he was an editor of the law review and elected to the Order of the Coif. He joined the Chicago-Kent faculty in 1980 after serving as law clerk to United States District Judge Robert E. DeMascio in Detroit and on the faculty of Ohio State University.
Professor Malin is a former national chair of the Labor Relations and Employment Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools, a former member of the Executive Committee of The Labor Law Group, and a former member of the Board of Governors of the National Academy of Arbitrators. He currently serves on the Board of Governors of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and is a Secretary of the ABA Section on Labor and Employment Law. During 1984 and 1985, Professor Malin served as consultant to the Illinois State, Local and Educational Labor Relations Boards and drafted the boards' regulations implementing the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act and the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act. From 2004 to 2008, he served as reporter to the Neutrality Project of the Association of Labor Relations Agencies, which produced a mini-treatise on labor board and mediation agency impartiality. In October 2009, President Obama appointed Professor Malin as a member of the Federal Service Impasses Panel, which resolves impasses in collective bargaining between federal agencies and unions that represent their employees.
Professor Malin has written extensively on all aspects of labor and employment law, including Public Sector Employment (West 2004, 2d ed. 2011), the leading casebook on the law governing public employees, and Labor Law in the Contemporary Workplace (West 2009, 2d ed. 2014), a leading casebook on labor law.