Biography

Michael J. Yelnosky became a member of the founding faculty at Roger Williams University School of Law in 1993. He served as associate dean for academic affairs from 2004 to 2008, and as the fifth dean of RWU Law from 2014 to 2020.  Yelnosky’s primary scholarly focus is on employment and labor law, and much of his scholarship explores alternatives or adjuncts to traditional enforcement of employment discrimination laws.  Another focus of his scholarship is judicial selection, and he has written several articles and hosted a major symposium about Rhode Island’s merit selection system. The findings of his research into the role of the American Bar Association in the federal judicial selection process were summarized in a Washington Post op-ed he wrote in 2013, he is regularly quoted in the local and national media on these and other topics, and he has published several op-ed pieces in the Boston Globe and Providence Journal.