Naomi Schoenbaum

Naomi Schoenbaum is the William Wallace Kirkpatrick Dean's Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School. She holds a prestigious named professorship indicating her significant contributions to legal scholarship.

Education:

• BA, Yale University
• JD, Harvard Law School (Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Journal of Law & Gender)

Professor Schoenbaum's research spans three interconnected areas at the intersection of employment law, family law, and gender studies. Her work examines the legal regulation of geographic mobility and workplace relationships, the evolving law of sex equality including contemporary issues like pregnancy, breastfeeding, and gender nonconformity, and the structural design of employment discrimination law with particular focus on hiring discrimination. She approaches these topics through the lens of how legal frameworks interact with social norms and market forces.

Her scholarly publications reveal consistent focus on how antidiscrimination law addresses emerging social realities, particularly regarding gender identity and the sharing economy. Schoenbaum frequently analyzes how legal doctrines fail to accommodate biological phenomena in gender-neutral terms and how market structures perpetuate discrimination despite formal legal protections.

Professor Schoenbaum has held prestigious academic positions including the Samuel Williston Visiting Professorship at Harvard Law School and a Bigelow Fellowship at the University of Chicago Law School. Her professional experience also includes clerkship with the Honorable Karen Nelson Moore of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and fellowship work at the National Partnership for Women and Families.

Her scholarship appears in top law journals including the Alabama Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, Wisconsin Law Review, and Yale Law Journal Forum, as well as popular publications like The New Republic, The Atlantic, and Slate.