Danielle Kie Hart
The Honorable Arleigh M. Woods and William T. Woods Chair | Professor of Law
B.A., History and Economics, with honors in History, Whitman College J.D., University of Hawaii
LL.M., Harvard University
Member, Hawaii State Bar
Professor Danielle Kie Hart received her B.A. from Whitman College, her J.D. from the University of Hawaii, and her LL.M. from Harvard Law School. Previously, Professor Hart clerked for the Hawaii Supreme Court, worked as a commercial litigator, and then as a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Hawaii. Following a visit as an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Hawaii, Professor Hart joined the faculty at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles where she teaches Contracts, Sales, Secured Transactions, Law & Social Change, and Critical Race Theory. She has also been a Visiting Professor of Law at UC Irvine School of Law. Professor Hart has been awarded the Excellence in Teaching Award—First Year Professor by the Southwestern student body 4 times, most recently in 2022-2023. She is a co-author of one of leading Contracts casebooks in the country—Problems in Contract Law: Cases and Materials, Knapp, Crystal, Prince, Hart, & Silverstein (Aspen Publishing, 2023).
"I want students to understand how powerful and pervasive the law is, touching every aspect of peoples' lives." [I want to explore with them] the possible systemic changes that might be needed in the law."
Professor Hart currently serves as an at-large member on the Executive Board of ClassCrits, Inc. (a network of scholars and activists interested in critical analysis of law and economic relations), and a member of the Strategic Planning and Steering Committees of the Law & Political Economy Collective (a new collective of independent Law & Political Economy groups who have joined together to develop and amplify perspectives that examine the intersections and implications of political economy and law with the goal of advancing equality for marginalized people in the United States and around the world). She has also served as the Chair of the Executive Committee of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Gay and Lesbian Legal Issues and the Chair of the AALS Section on Contracts.
Professor Hart's scholarship is situated in the field of Law & Political Economy with a focus on access to justice, economic and otherwise, through the lens of contracts and contract law. Her current book project (From Contract to Status: The Story of Contract Law & Inequality under contract with Routledge) tells the story of how the neoliberal contract law system protects and institutionalizes the use and misuse of bargaining power and, in so doing, helps to create and perpetuate inequality in American society.
Selected Achievements
Excellence in Teaching Award Recipient: 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2023
Elected Commencement Grand Marshal: 2022