Daniel Schwarcz

Professor Daniel Schwarcz is the Fredrikson & Byron Professor of Law and a Distinguished University Teaching Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. His scholarship focuses on insurance law, financial regulation, consumer protection, and the growing role of artificial intelligence in legal practice and legal education.

Schwarcz’s work has appeared in many of the nation’s leading law reviews, including the University of Chicago Law Review (three times), Virginia Law Review (twice), UCLA Law Review, Southern California Law Review (twice), Washington University Law Review, Minnesota Law Review (three times), and Iowa Law Review (three times). His scholarship has also been published in leading peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, the Journal of Law and Empirical Analysis (twice), and the Journal of Legal Education (three times).

His research has received numerous honors, including the American Law Institute’s Early Career Scholars Medal, awarded to law professors whose work shows exceptional promise in shaping public policy and improving the law. Schwarcz has repeatedly been recognized among the most cited scholars in tort and insurance law and consistently ranks among the most downloaded law professors on SSRN.

A leading authority on insurance law and regulation, Schwarcz is the co-author, with Kenneth Abraham, of Insurance Law and Regulation: Cases and Materials, now in its eighth edition and used as the principal text in insurance law courses at more than one hundred American law schools. His research has been featured in major media outlets including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, CNN, Reuters, and Bloomberg. He has testified before U.S. congressional committees on financial and insurance regulation and has served as an expert witness and consultant in litigation and regulatory matters involving a wide range of insurance law and policy issues.

Schwarcz is also an award-winning teacher. He has received the University of Minnesota Law School’s Stanley V. Kinyon Teacher of the Year Award three times and, in 2024, received the University of Minnesota’s university-wide Award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate and Professional Education. At Minnesota Law he teaches courses including Torts, Contracts, Insurance Law, Financial Regulation, Health Law, and Law and Artificial Intelligence, as well as introductory law courses for undergraduates.

Before joining the Minnesota faculty in 2007, Schwarcz was a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. He has also served as a visiting professor at Washington University School of Law, UCLA School of Law, and Berkeley Law. Schwarcz earned his A.B., magna cum laude, from Amherst College and his J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he served as an Articles Editor of the Harvard Law Review and was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics. After law school he clerked for Judge Sandra Lynch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and practiced law at Ropes & Gray.