Daniela Caruso

Biography

Professor Daniela Caruso teaches Contracts to first-year law students and an upper-class course on European Union Law. She also teaches a variety of law seminars and interdisciplinary courses, including a seminar on International Trade Regulation. Since January 2020, Professor Caruso has served as Director of the Center for the Study of Europe at the Frederick Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. In her publications, she focuses on private law and on the regulation of markets (whether domestic, regional, or international) as crucial elements in the political transformation of institutions and governance. At the core of her research is the relation between the laws of the market and the rise of inequality. In 2008 and 2014, Professor Caruso was visiting professor and John Harvey Gregory Lecturer on World Organization at Harvard Law School. In 2015, she was awarded a Jean Monnet Chair by the EU Commission. “The legal integration of the European Union illustrates most vividly the impact of free trade on the social and political structures of sovereign nations,” she explains. In matters of contract law, her articles have dealt with the distributive impact of pseudo-contractual mechanisms in the delivery of special education services, with the links between contract doctrines and welfare reform, and with the distributive effects of contract-law paradigms in the context of trade agreements. Her article, “Non-Parties: The Negative Externalities of Regional Trade Agreements in a Private Law Perspective,” was recently published by the Harvard Journal of International Law (2018). Her pro bono work concerns persons with autism. She developed a course on Autism for the Law School and for the Kilachand Honors College, and her article, “Autism in the US: Social Movement and Legal Change,” was published by the American Journal of Law and Medicine (2010).