Dan Schwarcz

Daniel Schwarcz

  • Fredrikson & Byron Professor of Law
  • Distinguished University Teaching Professor
320 Mondale Hall

Degrees

  • Amherst College, A.B.
  • Harvard Law School, J.D.

Expertise

  • Business Law
  • Commercial & Business Law
  • Contracts
  • Health Law
  • Insurance

Professor Daniel Schwarcz is an award-winning teacher and scholar. His research principally focuses on insurance law and regulation, spanning a broad range of issues such as systemic risk, regulatory federalism, health insurance, and coverage litigation. A separate strand of Schwarcz's research explores the impact of Artificial Intelligence on legal education, the practice of law,  and consumer protection. 

Schwarcz's scholarship has received numerous accolades. In 2017, the American Law Institute awarded Schwarcz its highly selective Early Career Scholars Medal, which recognizes “outstanding law professors whose work is relevant to public policy and has the potential to influence improvements in the law relevant to the real world.” Schwarcz has also been awarded the Liberty Mutual Prize for penning an outstanding insurance law article and been recognized as one of the most cited legal scholars writing on tort or insurance topics. 

Schwarcz’s scholarship has been published in a wide range of leading law reviews and journals, including the University of Chicago Law Review, Virginia Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Southern California Law Review and Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. He is also a co-author of the leading insurance law casebook in the country, Insurance Law and Regulation (7th edition 2020) 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 has testified to U.S. Congressional committees on more than a half-dozen occasions and regularly serves as an expert witness in insurance-oriented disputes.

Schwarcz has won the University of Minnesota Law School's Stanley V. Kinyon teaching award on three separate occasions since joining the law school, most recently in 2023.  In 2024, Schwarcz received the University of Minnesota's Award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate and Professional Education. He teaches a broad range of classes at the law school, including torts, contracts, insurance law, health care regulation and finance, health insurance law, regulation of financial institutions, commercial law, introduction to law for undergraduates, law and artificial intelligence, and judicial opinion writing.

Schwarcz joined the University of Minnesota Law School faculty in 2007, after completing a Climenko Fellowship at Harvard Law School.  He has also taught as a visiting professor at Washington University School of Law, UCLA Law School, and Berkeley Law School.

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.

Insurance Law


Contracts


Torts


Introduction to American Law and Legal Reasoning


Insurance Law


A.I. & the Future of Lawyering


Books

Insurance Law and Regulation: Cases and Materials (Foundation Press, 6th ed., 2015; 7th ed., 2020)
(with
Kenneth S. Abraham
)
Research Handbook on the Economics of Insurance Law (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015) (co-editor)
(with
Peter Siegelman
)
The Law and Economics of Insurance (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012) (editor)
Healthcare Supplement to Abraham's Insurance Law and Regulation (Foundation Press, 5th ed., 2010) (co-editor)
(with
Kenneth S. Abraham
)

Journal Articles

AI Tools for Lawyers: A Practical Guide, 108 Minnesota Law Review Headnotes 1 (2023)
(with
Jonathan H. Choi
)
How Privilege Undermines Cybersecurity,  36 Harvard Journal of Law & Technology 421 (2023)
(with
Josephine Wolff
and
Daniel W. Woods
)
ChatGPT Goes to Law School, 71 Journal of Legal Education 387 (2022)
(with
Jonathan H. Choi
,
Redesigning Widespread Insurance Coverage Disputes: A Case Study of the British and American Approaches to Pandemic Business Interruption Coverage, 71 DePaul Law Review 427 (2022)
Rules of Medical Necessity, 107 Iowa Law Review 423 (2022)
(with
The Limits of Regulation by Insurance, 98 Indiana Law Journal 215 (2022)
(with
Kenneth S. Abraham
)
Courting Disaster: The Underappreciated Risk of A Cyber Insurance Catastrophe, 27 Connecticut Insurance Law Journal 407 (2021)
(with
Kenneth S. Abraham
)
Health-Based Proxy Discrimination, Artificial Intelligence, and Big Data, 21 Houston Journal of Health Law & Policy 95 (2021)
The Role of Courts in the Evolution of Standard Form Contracts: An Insurance Case Study, 46 Brigham Young University Law Review 471 (2021)
Proxy Discrimination in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data, 105 Iowa Law Review 1257 (2020)
(with
Anya E.R. Prince
)
Towards A Civil Rights Approach to Insurance Anti-Discrimination Law, 69 DePaul Law Review 657 (2020)
Regulating Entities and Activities: Complementary Approaches to Nonbank Systemic Risk, 92 Southern California Law Review 1455 (2019)
(with
Jeremy C. Kress
and
Patricia A. McCoy
)
Ending Public Utility Style Rate Regulation in Insurance, 35 Yale Journal on Regulation 941 (2018)
Is U.S. Insurance Regulation Unconstitutional?, 25 Connecticut Insurance Law Journal 189 (2018)
Coverage Information in Insurance Law, 101 Minnesota Law Review 1457 (2017)
Do Credit-Based Insurance Scores Proxy for Income in Predicting Auto Claim Risk?, 14 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 397 (2017)
(with
Darcy Steeg Morris
and
Joshua C. Teitelbaum
)
The Impact of Individualized Feedback on Law Student Performance, 67 Journal of Legal Education 139 (2017)
(with
Dion Farganis
)
Regulation by Threat: Dodd-Frank and the Nonbank Problem, 84 University of Chicago Law Review 1813 (2017)
(with
David Zaring
)
A Critical Take on Group Regulation of Insurers in the United States, 5 UC Irvine Law Review 537 (2015)
The Risks of Shadow Insurance, 50 Georgia Law Review 163 (2015)
Regulating Systemic Risk in Insurance, 81 University of Chicago Law Review 1569 (2014)
(with
Steven L. Schwarcz
)
Towards a Universal Framework for Insurance Anti-Discrimination Laws, 21 Connecticut Insurance Law Journal 1 (2014)
(with
Ronen Avraham
and
Kyle D. Logue
)
Transparently Opaque: Understanding the Lack of Transparency in Insurance Consumer Protection, 61 UCLA Law Review 394 (2014)
Understanding Insurance Antidiscrimination Laws, 87 Southern California Law Review 195 (2014)
(with
Ronen Avraham
and
Kyle D. Logue
)
Limiting the ACA's Threats to Small Group Health Insurance Markets, 16 Risk Management and Insurance Review 25 (2013) (abridged version of Saving Small-Employer Health Insurance, 98 Iowa Law Review 1935 (2013))
(with
Monitoring, Reporting, and Recalling Defective Financial Products, 2013 University of Chicago Legal Forum 409 (2013)
Saving Small-Employer Health Insurance, 98 Iowa Law Review 1935 (2013)
(with
Transparency and Contrarian Experts in Financial Regulation: A Brief Response to Professor Bradley, 1 American University Business Law Review 33 (2011-2012)
Reevaluating Standardized Insurance Policies, 78 University of Chicago Law Review 1263 (2011)
Regulatory Contrarians, 89 North Carolina Law Review 1629 (2011)
(with
Will Employers Undermine Health Care Reform by Dumping Sick Employees?, 97 Virginia Law Review 125 (2011)
(with
Insurance Demand Anomalies and Regulation, 44 Journal of Consumer Affairs 557 (2010)
Regulating Consumer Demand in Insurance Markets, 3 Erasmus Law Review 23 (2010)
Regulating Insurance Sales or Selling Insurance Regulation?: Against Regulatory Competition in Insurance, 94 Minnesota Law Review 1707 (2010)
Differential Compensation and the "Race to the Bottom" in Consumer Insurance Markets, 15 Connecticut Insurance Law Journal 723 (2009)
Redesigning Consumer Dispute Resolution: A Case Study of the British and American Approaches to Insurance Claims Conflict, 83 Tulane Law Review 735 (2009)
Beyond Disclosure: The Case for Banning Contingent Commissions, 25 Yale Law & Policy Review 289 (2007)
A Products Liability Theory for the Judicial Regulation of Insurance Policies, 48 William & Mary Law Review 1389 (2007)
Shame, Stigma, and Crime: Evaluating the Efficacy of Shaming Sanctions in Criminal Law, 116 Harvard Law Review 2186 (2003) (note)

Book Chapters

Systemic Risk Regulation: Evolving Approaches in Insurance, in Research Handbook on International Insurance Law and Regulation (Julian Burling & Kevin Lazarus, eds., Edward Elgar Publishing, 2d ed., 2023)
(with
Jeremy C. Kress
and
Patricia A. McCoy
)
Lessons Lost: Incident Response in the Age of Cyber Insurance and Breach Attorneys, in Proceedings of the 32nd USENIX Security Symposium (2022)
(with
Daniel W. Woods
,
Rainer Böhme
and
Josephine Wolff
)
Activities Are Not Enough! Why Non-bank SIFI Designations Are Essential to Prevent Systemic Risk, in Systemic Risk in the Financial Sector: Ten Years after the Great Crash (Douglas W. Arner, Emilios Avgouleas, Danny Busch & Steven L. Schwarcz, eds., Centre for International Governance Innovation, 2019)
(with
Jeremy C. Kress
and
Patricia A. McCoy
)
Law and Economics of Insurance, in II The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics (Francesco Parisi, ed., Oxford University Press, 2017)
(with
Peter Siegelman
)
Anticipating New Sources of Systemic Risk in Insurance, in Systemic Risk and the Future of Insurance Regulation (Andromachi Georgosouli & Miriam Goldby, eds., Informa Law from Routledge, 2016)
(with
Steven L. Schwarcz
)
Insurance Agents in the Twenty-first Century: The Problem of Biased Advice, in Research Handbook on the Economics of Insurance Law (Daniel Schwarcz & Peter Siegelman, eds., Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015)
(with
Peter Siegelman
)
Preventing Capture Through Consumer Empowerment Programs: Some Evidence from Insurance Regulation, in Preventing Regulatory Capture: Special Interest Influence and How to Limit It (Daniel Carpenter & David A. Moss, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2013)