Brown University, B.S.
Georgetown University, J.D.
Professor Carol L. Chomsky is a recognized scholar of legal history and a leader in the field of teaching development. Her courses include contracts, sales, statutory interpretation, and American legal history, and she runs the year-round judicial externship program for the Law School. Her scholarly work has focused on the history of women lawyers, American Indian legal history, and late nineteenth century American legal history, and she is co-author of an innovative new contracts casebook. She helped establish and now co-directs the Law School’s Structured Study Group Program, the academic support program for first year students. She is a long-time board member of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) and is SALT liaison to the American Bar Association Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar.
Professor Chomsky received a B.S. degree from Brown University and a J.D. degree, summa cum laude, from Georgetown University. In law school, she was Case and Note Editor of the Georgetown Law Journal and earned the Francis E. Lucey, S.J. Award for maintaining the highest academic average in her graduating class. After completing her J.D., she clerked for Judge Spottswood W. Robinson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1979 to 1980. Following her clerkship, she worked for the law firm of Stefanson, Landberg & Alm in Moorhead, Minnesota. Professor Chomsky then served as an associate with Sharp, Green & Lankford in Washington, D.C., for four years, before joining the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School in 1985.
Professor Chomsky served as co-president of the Society of American Law Teachers (2000-2002) and is a member of the American Law Institute. She served as Coordinator for the University of Minnesota’s Early Career Teaching Program: Pursuing Excellence in Multicultural Education from 1999-2004, and as Co-Coordinator of the University’s Multicultural Fellows Program from 2003-2008. She is an active member of Minnesota Women Lawyers and served as President in 1993-94. She also served on the Minnesota Women Lawyers Task Force on the Status of Women in the Legal Profession.
Contracts: A Contemporary Approach (West, 2010) (with Christina L. Kunz)
Sale of Goods: Reading and Applying the Code (West Group, 1st ed., 2002; Thomson West, 2nd ed., 2004) (with Christina L. Kunz)
Book Chapters
The Story of Holy Trinity Church v. United States (1892): Spirit and History in Statutory Interpretation, in Statutory Interpretation Stories (William N. Eskridge, Jr., Philip P. Frickey & Elizabeth Garrett, eds., Foundation Press, 2011)
Teaching Students How to Read Statutes Critically, in Teaching the Law School Curriculum (Steven Friedland & Gerald F. Hess, eds., Carolina Academic Press, 2004) (with Christina L. Kunz)
Journal Articles
Viewing September 11 through the Lens of History, 89 Minnesota Law Review 1437 (2005) (reviewing September 11 in History: A Watershed Moment? (Mary L. Dudziak, ed., Duke University Press, 2003)) (review essay)
Voluntarism Triumphant: Forbath on Law and Labor, 18 Law & Social Inquiry 319 (1993) (reviewing William E. Forbath, Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement (Harvard University Press, 1991)) (review essay)
Book Review, 7 Women's Legal History 2 (1994) (reviewing Virginia Drachman, Sisters in Law: Women Lawyers and the Origins of Professional Identity in America (University of Michigan Press, 1993))
Book Review, 12 Law & History Review 395 (1994) (reviewing Edward Lazarus, Black Hills, White Justice: The Sioux Nation Versus the United States, 1775 to the Present (Harper Collins, 1991) and Petra T. Shattuck & Jill Norgren, Partial Justice: Federal Indian Law in a Liberal Constitutional System (Berg, 1991))
Selected Commercial Statutes (Thomson West, 2005) (Rev. eds. 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012) (Advisory Panel member) (with Christina L. Kunz, Linda J. Rusch & Elizabeth R. Schiltz)
Selected Commercial Statutes for Payment Systems Courses (Thomson West, 2006) (Rev. eds. 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012) (Advisory Panel member) (with Christina L. Kunz, Linda J. Rusch & Elizabeth R. Schiltz)
Selected Commercial Statutes for Sales and Contracts Courses (Thomson West, 2006) (Rev. eds. 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012) (Advisory Panel member) (with Christina L. Kunz, Linda J. Rusch & Elizabeth R. Schiltz)
Selected Commercial Statutes for Secured Transactions Courses (Thomson West, 2006) (Rev. eds. 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012) (Advisory Panel member) (with Christina L. Kunz, Linda J. Rusch & Elizabeth R. Schiltz)
