All Faculty & Staff.

Martha Ertman

Carole & Hanan Sibel Professor of Law

Email mertman@law.umaryland.edu
Office

439

Phone

(410) 706-3923

Fax

(410) 706-0407

Curriculum Vitae
Photo of Martha Ertman

Education

  • BA, 1985, Wellesley College
  • JD, 1990, Northwestern University

Affiliations

Martha M. Ertman is the Carole & Hanan Sibel Research Professor at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. She teaches Contracts, Commercial Law and Foundational Transaction Skills courses. She researches and writes about commodification – the upside of contracts into families, genetic materials, and remedies for racial injustice – as well as classroom materials for Contracts as well as the experiential transactional skills courses.

Professor Ertman’s books include a casebook Contract Law: An Integrated Approach (2020, with Billy Sjostrom & Debora Threedy), a coursebook covering the basics of transactional literacy titled  Developing Professional Skills: Secured Transactions (West Academic 2018), and  Love’s Promises: How Contracts and Deals Shape All Kinds of Families (Beacon Press 2015), which translates her academic writing about contracts and not-legally-binding “deals” in reproductive technology, adoption, cohabitation, and marriage for readers outside of law schools. This two-minute YouTube video describes the book, including the way contracts have shaped Professor Ertman’s family.

Her other law review articles, encyclopedia entries, and book chapters explore a range of topics, including office housework, adoption, and polygamy, and her book Rethinking Commodification: Cases and Readings in Law and Culture (2005, with Joan Williams) (NYU Press 2005) excerpts classic texts alongside newer takes on the reach of markets into all areas of our lives. Public presentations of her work on contracts include a New America Foundation reading, an online symposium on Concurring Opinions, and articles on Slate.com, Salon.com, and the Women=Books blog. She has also been interviewed by WYPR, Newstalk, and Keeping Democracy Alive.

Professor Ertman is a member of the American Law Institute. Before joining the Maryland Carey Law faculty in 2007, she taught at the University of Utah and University of Denver law schools. She has also been a visiting faculty member at the universities of Michigan, Connecticut, and Oregon. Prior to entering academia, she clerked for the Honorable Peter H. Beer, a U.S. district court judge in Louisiana, and practiced law at Davis, Wright Tremaine in Seattle.

Books

Contract Law: An Integrated Approach (2019) (with Debora L. Threedy and William K. Sjostrom Jr). Read Full Text.

Developing Professional Skills: Secured Transactions (2018). Read Full Text.

Love's Promises: How Formal and Informal Contracts Shape All Kinds of Families (2015). Read Full Text.

Editor, Rethinking Commodifcation: Cases and Readings in Law and Culture (2005) (with Joan C. Williams). Read Full Text.

Book Chapters

Commodification and Adoption, in Routledge Commodification Handbook (Vida Panitch & Elodie Bertrand eds., forthcoming 2023). Read Full Text.

Adoption, in Springer Encyclopedia of Law & Economics (Alain Marciano & Giovanni Battista Ramello eds., 2015).

Love and Contracts in Don Quixote, in Don Quixote: Interdisciplinary Connections 251 (Matthew D. Warshawsky & James A. Parr eds., 2013). Read Full Text.

The Productive Tension between Official and Unofficial Stories of Fault in Contract Law, in Fault in American Contract Law 132 (Omri Ben-Shahar & Ariel Porot eds., 2011). Read Full Text.

The Upside of Baby Markets, in Baby Markets: Money and the New Politics of Creating Families 23 (Michele Bratcher Goodwin ed., 2010). Read Full Text.

The Story of Reynolds v. United States: Federal "Hell Hounds" Punishing Mormon Treason, in Family Law Stories 51 (Carol Sanger ed., 2007) Read Full Text.

Private Ordering Under the ALI Principles: As Natural as Status, in Reconceiving the Family 284 (Robin Fretwell Wilson ed., 2006). Read Full Text.

The Business of Intimacy: Bridging the Private-Private Distinction, in Feminism Confronts Homo Economicus: Gender, Law, and Society 467 (Martha Albertson Fineman & Terence Dougherty eds., 2005). Read Full Text.

Articles

Reparations for Racial Wealth Disparities as Remedy for Social Contract Breach, 85 Law & Contemporary Problems, no. 2, 2022, at 231.

The Cost of Non-Billable Work, 99 Texas Law Review Online 184 (2020). Read Full Text.

Contract in Crisis, Jotwell, April 6, 2020. Read Full Text.

Keep it Simple, Smarty: Tips for Transactional Training Programs, 48 UCC Law Journal 1 (2018).

We Who Believe . . . Cannot Rest, 17 University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class 9 (2017). Read Full Text.

The Social Life of Blood, Milk & Sperm, 51 Tulsa Law Review 393 (2016). Read Full Text.

Drinking from the Data Well: Response to Gamete Donor Anonymity and Limits on Numbers of Offspring: The Views of Three Stakeholders, 3 Journal of Law and the Biosciences 655 (2016). Read Full Text.

Marital Contracting in a Post-Windsor World, 42 Florida State University Law Review 479 (2015). Read Full Text.

Unexpected Links Between Baby Markets and Intergenerational Justice, 8 Law & Ethics of Human Rights 271 (2014). Read Full Text.

The Legacy of Jane Larson: The Politics of Practicality and Surprise, 28 Wisconsin Journal of Law, Gender & Society 207 (2013). Read Full Text.

Exchange as a Cornerstone of Families, 34 Western New England Law Review 405 (2012). Read Full Text.

Race Treason: The Untold Story of America's Ban on Polygamy, 19 Columbia Journal of Gender & Law 287 (2010). Read Full Text.

Book Review, For Both Love and Money, The Far Reach of Viviana Zelizer’s The Purchase of Intimacy, 34 Law & Social Inquiry 1017 (2009). Read Full Text.

Mapping the New Frontiers of Private Ordering, 49 Arizona Law Review 695 (2007). Read Full Text.

Accepting the Court’s Invitation, 57 Journal of Legal Education 159 (2007). Read Full Text.

Legal Tenderness, 18 Yale Journal of Law & Feminism 545 (2006) (reviewing Feminist Perspectives on Contract Law (Linda Mulcahy & Sally Wheeler eds., 2005)). Read Full Text.

The Elasticity of Contract, 18 Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 202 (Supp. 2006). Read Full Text.

What's Wrong with a Parenthood Market? - A New and Improved Theory of Commodification, 82 North Carolina Law Revew 1 (2003). Read Full Text.

Love and Work: A Response to Vicki Schultz's Life's Work, 102 Columbia Law Review 848 (2002). Read Full Text.

Marriage as a Trade: Bridging the Private/Private Distinction, 35 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 79 (2001). Read Full Text.

The ALI Principles' Approach to Domestic Partnership, 8 Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy 107 (2001) Read Full Text.

Changing the Meaning of Motherhood, 76 Chicago-Kent Law Review 1733 (2001). Read Full Text.

Contract Sports, 48 Cleveland State Law Review 31 (2000). Read Full Text.

Oscar Wilde: Paradoxical Poster Child for both Identity and Post-Identity, 25 Law & Social Inquiry 153 (2000). Read Full Text.

Commercializing Marriage: A Proposal for Valuing Women's Work Through Premarital Security Agreements, 77 Texas Law Review 17 (1998). Read Full Text.

Reconstructing Marriage: An InterSEXional Approach, 75 Denver University Law Review 1215 (1998). Read Full Text.

Vive no Différence, 91 Northwestern University Law Review 642 (1997). Read Full Text.

Contractual Purgatory for Sexual Marginorities: Not Heaven, but Not Hell Either, 73 Denver University Law Review 1107 (1996). Read Full Text.

Denying the Secret of Joy: A Critique of Posner's Theory of Sexuality, 45 Stanford Law Review 1485 (1993). Read Full Text.