Christopher W. Schmidt is a Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation and a Professor and Co-Director of the Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States at Chicago-Kent College of Law, where he has also served as Associate Dean for Faculty Development. He was the Editor of Law & Social Inquiry from 2013 to 2024.

Schmidt teaches and writes primarily in the areas of legal history and constitutional law. He is the recipient of the 2014 Association of American Law Schools’ Scholarly Papers Competition and the 2016 American Society for Legal History’s Surrency Prize. He is the author of two books, The Sit-Ins: Protest and Legal Change in the Civil Rights Era (University of Chicago Press, 2018) and Civil Rights in America: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and he is currently writing a history of the U.S. Supreme Court and its relationship with the American people over the last century. He received his Ph.D. in American Studies from Harvard and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Schmidt has been an active member of the Law and Society Association. He served on the Willard Hurst Award Committee three times, once as chair, and he has been particularly engaged with programs aimed at supporting junior scholars. He often participates in LSA Early Career and Graduate Student workshops and annual meeting panels on the dynamics of peer-reviewed journals. His commitment to advancing the careers of junior scholars is also reflected in his work with the American Society for Legal History, where he has served as the faculty leader of both its Student Research Colloquium and its First Book Program.