Boston University School of Law

Kristin Collins

Education

Yale Law School
J.D., June 2000

  • Yale Law Journal, Editor
  • Coker Fellow
  • Yale Law Women, Executive Committee
  • Community Legal Services, Student Attorney
  • Global Constitutional Law Project, Editor

Columbia University
M.A. English Literature, May 1996

  • Marjorie Hope Nicholson Fellowship (full funding for Ph.D.)

Oxford University
M.LITT., English Literature, 1995

  • Dissertation: Merchants, Moors and the Politics of Pageantry
  • Shapiro Graduate Scholarship

George Washington University
B.A., magna cum laude, English Literature, June 1992

  • Distinguished Scholar (faculty-voted award to top student in graduating class)
  • Phi Beta Kappa
  • University Scholar-Athlete Award
  • Department Prize in Literature
  • National Endowment for the Humanities Younger Scholar (1990)
  • Several merit-based scholarships

Selected Experience

Boston University School of Law, Boston, Massachusetts
Associate Professor of Law and Peter Paul Development Professor (2006-present)
Teach first-year and upper-level courses concerning civil procedure and gender and law. Principal areas of research include federalism, federal courts, the history of family law and policy, and gender and law.

University of Colorado School of Law, Boulder, Colorado
Research Fellow (2005-2006)
Taught upper-level course on complex civil procedure.

Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady, New York, New York
Associate (2003-2005)
Attorney at civil rights litigation firm with national practice. Responsible for all aspects of litigation involving constitutional and statutory civil rights protections. Practice focused on First Amendment law, takings violations, prisoners’ rights, employment discrimination, and legal ethics.

Chief Judge John M. Walker, Second Circuit Court of Appeals
Law Clerk (2002-2003)

Judge Kimba M. Wood, U.S. District Court for the S.D.N.Y.
Law Clerk (2001-2002)

Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA), Cape Town, South Africa
Senior Fellow (2000-2001)
Researched and designed publication concerning the role of the courts in South Africa’s ongoing process of democratization for prominent South African human rights organization. Developed database to track constitutional decision making in South African courts.

Research and Teaching Interests

  • Civil procedure
  • Federal courts
  • Federalism
  • Family law and policy
  • Gender and law
  • Citizenship
  • Legal history

Publications

"Administering Marriage: Marriage-Based Entitlements, Bureaucracy and the Legal Construction of the Family," 62 Vanderbilt Law Review 1085 (2009). 

"Hoyt v. Florida, 368 U.S. 57 (1961)," in 2 Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States 424, David S. Tanenhaus, ed., Gale (2008). 

"Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522 (1975)," in 5 Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States 20, David S. Tanenhaus, ed., Gale (2008). 

"Federalism's Fallacy: The Early Tradition of Federal Family Law and the Invention of States' Rights," 26 Cardozo Law Review 1761 (2005). 

"Terms of Art: Et Ux," Legal Affairs 16 (Jun 2003). 

"When Fathers' Rights are Mothers' Duties: The Failure of Equal Protection in Miller v. Albright," 109 Yale Law Journal 1667 (2000). 

"White-Washing the Black-a-Moor: Othello, Negro Minstrelsy, and the Parody of Blackness," 19 Journal of American Culture 87 (1996). 

Book Review, Robert Allen, Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture, University of North Carolina Press (1991), 30 American Studies International  (1992).