Elizabeth D. Katz

Professor Elizabeth D. Katz is an award-winning legal historian. Her research explores the development of family law and criminal law doctrines and institutions, with special attention to the influence of gender, religion, and race. Professor Katz’s scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Yale Journal of Law & Feminism, and the William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law. Her writing for popular audiences has appeared in the Washington Post and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She teaches first-year criminal law, family law, and a seminar on the law’s treatment of race and religion in family contexts, historically and today.

Professor Katz’s scholarship has been recognized by prizes including the American Society for Legal History’s Kathryn T. Preyer Award, the Association of American Law School’s Section on Law and Religion Harold Berman Award for Excellence in Scholarship, and the Haub Law Emerging Scholar Award in Gender and Law. Her research has been supported by the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Early Career Scholar Fellowship awarded by the American Society for Legal History; an Albert J. Beveridge Grant from the American Historical Association; the Carrie Chapman Catt Center’s Prize for Research on Women and Politics; a fellowship and grant from Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies; and a fellowship in the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s History and Public Policy Initiative in the Ash Center for Democratic Governance.

Professor Katz received her Ph.D. in History from Harvard University and her B.A., M.A., and J.D. from the University of Virginia. After law school, she clerked for Judge J. Frederick Motz on the United States District Court for the District of Maryland. She then worked as a litigation associate at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. At Covington, she represented clients in matters including white-collar crime and legal ethics at the trial and appellate levels and advised global technology companies regarding data privacy laws and compliance with electronic surveillance requests from U.S. and foreign law enforcement agencies. Professor Katz also participated in Covington’s six-month pro bono rotation at Neighborhood Legal Services Program, where she represented low-income residents of D.C. in divorce, custody, and child support cases. Immediately prior to joining Washington University Law, she was the inaugural fellow in Stanford Law School’s Center for Law and History.