Paula A. Monopoli, JD
Sol & Carlyn Hubert Professor of Law
University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law
Paula Monopoli is an internationally recognized legal scholar whose work has focused on three distinct areas: gender and constitutional design, feminist legal history, and inheritance law.
Professor Monopoli joined the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law in 2004. She was awarded a Marbury Research Professorship in 2008 and was named the Sol & Carlyn Hubert Professor of Law in 2016. Monopoli held an appointment as a visiting scholar at the Moller Institute, Churchill College, Cambridge University from 2017 to 2020.
Monopoli is the author and editor of four books, and she has published widely on probate reform, the nexus between law and leadership, and the intersection of gender and constitutional design. Her 2020 book, “Constitutional Orphan: Gender Equality and the Nineteenth Amendment,” was published by Oxford University Press. It provides a compelling historical lens to understand the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as an affirmative promise of gender equality beyond the right to vote.
She also has been an influential scholarly voice and mentor to promote gender equality in the legal profession and legal academia. In 2002, she founded Maryland Carey Law’s innovative Women, Leadership & Equality Program, the first law school women’s fellowship program of its kind in the nation. The program educates students about cutting-edge issues relating to gender in the legal profession and equips them with the knowledge and skills needed to dismantle systemic barriers in law and society.
She is one of the authors of the leading casebook, “Contemporary Trusts and Estates,” used to teach inheritance law.
Her influential law review articles have been published in top-tier journals such as the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law & Policy Review, and Virginia Law Review Online. Monopoli’s scholarship has been cited by feminist legal scholars globally, and her Yale Law Journal article “Gender and Constitutional Design” was included in a volume of the “most important and influential” scholarship in the field of feminist constitutionalism.
Monopoli’s contributions have been recognized with several prestigious awards and honors. As a distinguished scholar of inheritance law, her peers have elected her as an academic fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and as a member of the American Law Institute. She has been selected as one of Maryland’s Top 100 Women by The Daily Record and received the Baltimore Bar Foundation’s 2020 Fellows Award.
At Maryland Carey Law, Monopoli teaches core subjects, including Property and Trusts & Estates. Her innovative teaching methods and commitment to student success have earned her numerous awards, including the American Association of Law Schools’ Professor of the Year Award for Maryland Carey Law in 2024, Professor of the Year at Maryland Carey Law in 2004 and 2013, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore Teacher of the Year in 2013.
She earned her bachelor’s degree from Yale College and her JD from the University of Virginia School of Law.
