Daniel Schwarcz

Professor Daniel Schwarcz is an award-winning teacher and scholar. His research focuses on a broad range of issues in insurance law and regulation, spanning systemic risk, regulatory federalism, consumer protection, employer-sponsored health insurance, and insurance coverage litigation. In 2017, the American Law Institute awarded Schwarcz its highly selective Young Scholars Medal, which recognizes the scholarship of one or two outstanding early-career law professors whose work has the potential to influence improvements in the law. He has also been awarded the Liberty Mutual Prize, which is given annually for the most outstanding article on property and casualty insurance law.

Schwarcz’s scholarship has been published in a wide range of leading law reviews and journals, such as the University of Chicago Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. He is also a co-author of the leading insurance law casebook in the country, Insurance Law and Regulation (6th edition), which has been used as the principal text in courses on insurance law in more than 100 American law schools. Media outlets such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and National Public Radio have covered Schwarcz’s scholarship. He regularly testifies to U.S. Congressional committees on insurance matters, and he has served as an expert witness in a wide range of insurance disputes. From 2007 to 2014, he served as a consumer representative at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Schwarcz teaches courses on contract law, insurance law, the regulation of financial institutions, commercial law, health care regulation and finance, and judicial opinion writing. He has twice received teaching awards at the Law School, in 2008 and 2012.

Schwarcz earned his A.B., magna cum laude, from Amherst College and his J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School. While in law school, he was an articles editor for the Harvard Law Review and a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics. After law school, he clerked for Judge Sandra Lynch of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and practiced at the law firm Ropes & Gray, where he worked mainly on insurance law matters. He subsequently spent two years as a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School.

Professional affiliations

University of Minnesota