Homer C. La Rue

Professor La Rue has a MA in Industrial & Labor Relations and a JD from Cornell University.  He has a BA from Purdue University.  He is Professor of Law at the Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C. He is the founder and co-director of the Howard Law ADR Program.  Professor La Rue also is the founder and director of the Law School’s ADR Certificate Program.  He also directs an ADR externship program for third-year law students with the World Bank Group’s Internal Justice System.

Professor La Rue has extensive experience as a preeminent and highly sought-after labor and employment law arbitrator and mediator.   For more than 35 years, he has served as an arbitrator and a mediator in numerous complex national and global matters, including labor, employment, and commercial disputes.

Professor La Rue is past President of the National Academy of Arbitrators (President, May 2022), and the recipient of the 2020 D’Almeberte-Raven Award for outstanding service to the ADR field. The Award is the highest honor given by the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution.  La Rue is past Chair of the Council of the Section of Dispute Resolution of the American Bar Association.

He is the permanent arbitrator for several collective bargaining agreements.  Professor La Rue is a member of the labor-management and employment roster of arbitrators of the American Arbitration Association and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.  Professor was recently selected to serve as an independent arbitrator to hear antidoping disputes arising under the USADA Protocol for Olympic and Paralympic Movement Testing (“USADA Protocol”). He will serve a six-year term that began May 2022.

Professor La Rue is a past president of the Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution (SPIDR), now the Association for Conflict Resolution. He is a Fellow in the College of Labor & Employment Lawyers. He also is a Distinguished Fellow in the International Academy of Mediators (IAM) and has served on its Board of Governors. The Peggy Browning Fund’s 2015 DC Awards Reception recognized Professor La Rue for his fair and impartial work as a labor-management neutral. Professor La Rue was the 2017-18Neutral-In-Residence at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) at Cornell University. 

He has lectured extensively and conducted training in the dispute resolution field to a variety of bar, business, and labor groups, both domestically and internationally. He has served as a technical advisor and trainer for the Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP) of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The project on which he worked was designed to assist in the development of a regional ADR system for the resolution of commercial disputes in Central and West Africa. As a technical consultant to the project, he lectured and conducted training programs and conferences in countries in Central and West Africa. He has published several scholarly [articles], including contributing a chapter in “Evolution of a Field: Personal Histories in Conflict Resolution”,  eds. Welsh and Gadlin (DRI Press, December 1, 2020). Professor La Rue currently serves on the Board of Directors of the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution (“CPR”) and on the Board of CPR Dispute Resolution Services, Inc.

He has published several scholarly articles, including contributing a chapter entitled, The Road to Becoming a Neutral: Working in the Interest of Human Needs, in EVOLUTION OF A FIELD: PERSONAL HISTORIES IN CONFLICT RESOLUTION, eds. Welsh and Gadlin (DRI Press, December 1, 2020).

One of his current initiatives, known as the Ray Corollary Initiative (RCI), now a non-profit organization, is designed to address the lack of diversity in the selection of ADR neutrals throughout the ADR field.  The initiative is based on his co-authored law review article, The Ray Corollary Initiative: How to Achieve Diversity and Inclusion in Arbitrator Selection published in the Howard Law Journal in 2019.

• MA in Industrial & Labor Relations
• JD from Cornell University
• BA from Purdue University

• Board Chair Ray Corollary Initiative
• National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals
• Past-President of the National Academy of Arbitrators (NAA)
• Professor of Law Howard University School of Law 
• Member of the National Academy of Arbitrators
• Cornell ILR School's Jean McKelvey Neutral-in-Residence for the 2017-2018 academic year
• Former Member of the Panel of JAMS Neutrals
• Past Chair of the SectionPast Chair of the Section American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution
• Director Cornell University

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