Maria O’Brien

Biography

Noted employee benefits law and insurance law specialist Maria O’Brien began her teaching career at Boston University School of Law in 1988. She taught at De Paul University College of Law from 1989 until rejoining the Boston University faculty in 1995, and was a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School in 1993.

While in law school, Professor O’Brien was editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review. After graduation, she served as a law clerk for Judge Gilbert S. Merritt of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and then as an associate at the Boston law firm of Hale and Dorr. She has numerous publications to her credit, most recently articles about pension plan recoupment of over payments in the Kansas Law Journal and the effects of overruling Abood on public sector employees in the Connecticut Insurance Law Journal. She also is the co-author of Cases and Materials on Employee Benefits Law and Using Civil Remedies for Criminal Behavior: Rationale, Case Studies, and Constitutional Issues. Her most recent lectures include “Friedrichs and the Move Toward Private Ordering of Public Employee Wages and Benefits,” at the 5th Annual Employee Benefits Conference (2016), “Understanding the Moral Hazard of Public Pensions” at the Creighton Law Review Symposium in 2014 and “Employee Benefits in Turmoil” at the Law & Society meeting in 2012.

Professor O’Brien teaches courses on employment law, ERISA, contracts, and insurance law. She has long been active in a number of professional organizations. She is a member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and an editor of the Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal. She serves on the board of the Pension Action Center which provides free legal services to low income retirees and their dependents.