Judge (retired) Stephen (Steve) Adler

Judge (retired) Steve Adler served as the President (equivalent of “Chief Justice”) of the National Labor Court for 13 years until retiring in November 2010. His judicial career began at the end of 1975 with his appointment as a judge in the Regional Labor court. Prior to his appointment he had experience in labor law and labor relations. He worked as a United States Government attorney with the National Labor Relations Board (“N.L.R.B”) in Washington, D.C and then Los Angeles, California.

Judge (retired) Adler was born in the United States. He received a Bachelor's of Science in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University and a Juris Doctor from Columbia University in N.Y.C. Afterwards, he became a member of both the New York and California Bars.

In 1968, Judge (retired) Adler and his wife decided to spend a year in Israel and have been here since. They arrived with one baby son, Jay, and four more sons were born in Israel: Eitan, Noam, Chanan and Shmuel.

After becoming admitted to the Israeli Bar in 1970, Steve worked as a private attorney in Israel for five years and, at the end of 1975 was appointed judge on the Regional Labor Court. He was Chief Judge of the Tel Aviv Regional Labor Court from 1981 to 1985, was appointed to the National Labor Court in 1985, became it’s Deputy President in 1990 and President in 1997.

After his retirement from the bench, Steve continued to teach Labor Law courses at the Hebrew University Law School in Jerusalem, Israel and do arbitrations and mediations in Labor Law disputes. He is also a Judge of the Appeals Authority of the Claims Conference [Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Inc.].

He also taught Comparative Labor Law and Industrial Relations courses at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations until 2015. Judge Adler has also been an adjunct Professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York City and a visiting distinguished scholar at St. Johns College, Oxford University, England. For three years he taught a summer course in Dispute Settlement, Mediation and Arbitration at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.

For many years Judge Adler has been on the organizing committee of the European Labour Court Judges Annual Meeting, which is held under the auspices of the International Labour Organization (ILO), is Chairperson of the Israel Chapter of the Labor Law and Social Security Society and a member of the Advisory Committee to the Prime Minister’s National Economic Council.