Professional Career
Wood clerked for Judge Irving Goldberg of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals from 1975 to 1976 and for Associate Justice Harry Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1976 to 1977. Wood was one of the first women to serve as a law clerk for a Supreme Court Justice. After clerking at the Supreme Court, Wood was an attorney-advisor for the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State from 1977 to 1978. From 1978 to 1980, she practiced at the law firm Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C.
Wood began her teaching career as an assistant professor of law at Georgetown University from 1980 to 1981. In 1981, Wood settled in Chicago and joined the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School. She was the third woman ever hired as a law professor at the University of Chicago and the only woman on the faculty when she began in 1981. Wood served as Professor of Law from 1989 to 1992, Associate Dean from 1990 to 1995, and (as the first woman to be honored with a named chair) the Harold J. and Marion F. Green Professor of International Legal Studies from 1992 to 1995. Since her appointment to the Seventh Circuit, Wood has continued to teach at the University of Chicago Law School as a Senior Lecturer in Law, along with fellow Seventh Circuit judges Frank Easterbrook and Richard Posner.
Wood was a special assistant to the Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice from 1985 to 1987. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for international, appellate, and policy in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice.
Wood holds memberships in the American Law Institute and the American Society of International Law. She is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves on its Midwest Council. In the past, she was also a member of the American Bar Association. She has served on the governing councils of the ABA’s Section of Antitrust Law and its Section of International Law and Practice. Wood has pursued various law reform projects through the American Bar Association and the Brookings Institution Project on Civil Justice Reform. She was also instrumental in developing the University of Chicago’s first policy on sexual harassment. While still a full-time law school professor (prior to joining the Department of Justice and the Court of Appeals), she was a member of Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women.
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