Background. Professor Kostritsky joined Case Western in 1984 after practicing in New York with Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy; she teaches Contracts, the Law and Business Colloquium, Sales, Advanced Contracts, and Commercial Paper.
Talks. On January 25, 2019, Professor Kostritsky presented a paper at American University School of Law conference on the supply chain entitled: A Bargaining Dynamic Transaction Cost Approach to Understanding Framework Contracts. It will appear in volume 68 of the American University Law Review. On January 11, 2019, Professor Kostritsky delivered a paper at a conference on Contract Law and the Legislature held at York University in the United Kingdom. Her paper will appear as a book chapter entitled: Statutes and the Common Law of Contracts: A Shared Methodology.
On February 28, 2014, Professor Kostritsky inaugurated a new lecture series honoring Professor John Kidwell, a renowned Contracts scholar and teacher, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, by presenting a paper called: “What Lawyers Say Determines Choice of Law in Merger Agreements.” It surveyed 812 lawyers about the choice of law made in a set of 343 merger agreements from 2011. She presented the article at the annual meeting of the American Law and Economics Association at the University of Chicago on May 8-9, 2014. It appears at 16 DePaul Business and Commercial Law Journal 1.
Articles on Contract Interpretation. Professor Kostritsky’s articles on Contract Interpretation include: “Efficient Contextualism” (co-authored with Peter M. Gerhart), which presents a structured methodology for Contract interpretation (76 Pittsburgh Law Review 509 (2015)) and Plain Meaning vs. Broad Interpretation: How the Risk of Opportunism Defeats a Unitary Default Rule for Interpretation" (accepted by the American Law and Economics Association and presented paper at Harvard Law School on May 6, 2007 (published in the Kentucky Law Journal). In 2011 she presented “Contract Interpretation: Judicial Rule Not Party Choice” in the United Kingdom; Cambridge University Press published the article in a book. Other articles include: “Contract as Promise and Contract Interpretation” solicited for the Suffolk Law School Symposium dedicated to Professor Charles Fried of Harvard University in the Suffolk Law Review and “Interpretive Risk and Contract Interpretation: A Suggested Approach for Maximizing Value” in the Elon Law Review.
Other Papers: Norms, Trade Usages, Promissory Estoppel, and Contract Illegality. Professor Kostritsky's article “The Law and Economics of Norms” appears at: 48 Texas Journal of International Law 465 (2013). She presented the solicited paper at a conference on “Is there Such a Thing as Custom in Modern European Law?” at the University of Texas School of Law in April, 2012.
Her article “Uncertainty, Reliance, Preliminary Negotiations and the Hold Up Problem” was accepted for presentation by the American Law & Economics Association and presented at ALEA’s annual meeting May 16-17, 2008, 91 SMU Law Review 1377 (2008). Another paper solicited for a symposium on “Freedom from Contract” sponsored by the John M. Olin Center for Law and Economics, the Contract Enrichment Fund, and the Wisconsin Law Review was published as “Taxonomy for Justifying Legal Intervention in an Imperfect World: What To Do When the Parties Have Not Achieved Bargains or Have Drafted Incomplete Contracts" in the 2004 Wisconsin Law Review. Further publications include: "Judicial Incorporation of Trade Usages: A Functional Solution to the Opportunism Problem” (Connecticut Law Review 2006), "The Rise and Fall of Promissory Estoppel or is Promissory Estoppel Really as Unsuccessful as Scholars Say It Is: A New Look at the Data, and "When Should Contract Law Supply A Liability Rule of Term? Framing a Principle of Unification for Contracts." Her article on Contract Illegality appears in the Iowa Law Review.
Professional Associations
Ms. Kostritsky is a member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and the American Law and Economics Association. She was a member of the Contracts Drafting Committee of the National Conference of Bar Examiners for 10 years.
Teaching Awards. Professor Kostritsky has been selected as teacher of the year for the 1L class five times (2001, 2002, 2004, 2007, 2013 and 2015) and honored by Case Western Alumni Board for her teaching in 2003.