Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Elizabeth R. Schiltz graduated magna cum laude from Yale University and received her juris doctor from Columbia Law School, where she served on the Columbia Law Review. After law school, she spent a year in Germany as a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow. Schiltz was in private practice for nine years with law firms in Washington, D.C. (Morrison & Foerster) and Minneapolis (Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly and Faegre & Benson), focusing on banking regulation, general corporate law and international law. Most recently, she practiced banking law at Faegre & Benson, Minnesota 's second largest law firm, where, among many other things, she assisted Dayton Hudson Corporation, Fingerhut Companies, Carson Pirie Scott, and other major retailers in obtaining charters for their credit card banks.
Schiltz was a member of the faculty of Notre Dame University Law School from 1996 through 2000. She was a member of the founding faculty of the University of St. Thomas Law School, which opened in fall of 2001. She teaches classes in contracts, sales, consumer law, and disability law. Her research interests include disability rights, consumer law, and feminist legal theory. Schiltz has received numerous awards at the School of Law including the Dean's Award for Outstanding Scholarship (2007), Mission Awards for Scholarly Engagement and Societal Reform (2012, 2017), and Dean's Award for Outstanding Teaching (2019). She was also elected Professor of the Year by the graduating class of 2007 and recognized with the University Advocates for Women and Equity's Good Sister Award (2014).
Schiltz serves on the boards of directors of the National Catholic Partnership on Disability and L'Arche USA. She is also a contributor to the Catholic legal theory blog Mirror of Justice. Schiltz is a 1998 graduate of the Partners in Policymaking Academy, a nationwide, state-based training program in disability advocacy.
BOOKS
Learning Sales Law (2nd Edition) with Carol Chomsky, Jennifer Martin, and Christina Kunz (West Academic Publishing, 2022)
Contracts: A Contemporary Approach with Christina Kunz, Carol Chomsky, and Jennifer Martin (West Academic Publishing, 2018)
Marie Failinger, Susan Stabile & Elizabeth R. Schiltz, Eds., Feminism, Law and Religion in Gender in Law, Culture and Society Series (Routledge, 2013).
CHAPTERS
The Promise and the Threat of the “Three” in Integral Complementarity, in Promise and Challenge: Catholic Women Reflect on Feminism, Complementarity and the Church Mary Hasson, ed., Our Sunday Visitor (2015)
Elizabeth R. Schiltz, Finding Common Ground in the Disability Rights Critiques of Selective Abortions in Search of Common Ground on Abortion (Meredith Esser, Justin Murray, and Robin West, eds, Ashgate Press, 2014)
ARTICLES
The Contradictory Expressive Functions of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Physician-assisted Suicide Laws Journal of Disability & Religion, 22:3, 228-245, DOI: 10.1080/23312521.2018.1486772 (2018)
The Ties that Bind Idiots and Infamous Criminals: Disenfranchisement of Persons with Cognitive Impairments (invited contribution to symposium on The ADA at 25: The Continued Inequality of Americans with Disabilities, 13 U of St. Thomas L. J. 1 (2016)
Exposing the Cracks in the Foundations of Disability Law 75 J. L & CONTEMP. PROB. 23 (2012) (invited contribution to symposium on Theological Argument in Law: Engaging Stanley Hauerwas)
The Paradox of the Global and the Local in the Financial Crisis of 2008: Applying the Lessons of Caritas in Veritate to the Regulation of Consumer Credit in the United States and the European Union 26 J. OF LAW & RELIGION 173 (2010) (peer-reviewed journal; invited contribution to symposium on The Global Economic Crisis, Law and the Religious Traditions)
Damming Watters: Channeling the Power of Federal Preemption of State Consumer Banking Laws 35 FLA. ST. U. L. REV. 893 (2008)
West, MacIntyre and Wojtyła: Pope John Paul II's Contribution to the Development of a Dependency-Based Theory of Justice 45 J. OF CATH. L STUDIES 369 (2007) (invited contribution to symposium on The Jurisprudential Legacy of Pope John Paul II)
The Amazing, Elastic, Ever-Expanding Exportation Doctrine and its Effect on Predatory Lending Regulation 88 MINN. L. REV. 518 (2004)