Professor Michael J. Higdon teaches and writes in the areas of Constitutional Law; Sexuality, Gender and the Law; Wills & Trusts; and Family Law. His scholarship in these areas has been published in several journals, including the Alabama Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the George Washington Law Review, the Georgia Law Review, the Indiana Law Journal, the Iowa Law Review, the Fordham Law Review, and the Wake Forest Law Review, just to name a few.  In 2023, he became an elected member of the American Law Institute.

Higdon received the J.D. in 2001 from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (“UNLV”), graduating first in his class and receiving the James E. Rogers Award for outstanding academic achievement. While in law school, he served as editor-in-chief of the Nevada Law Journal. After graduation, he clerked for Judge Procter Hug, Jr. of the U.S. Court of the Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Since joining the faculty in 2009, Higdon has received a number of awards, including the Carden Award for Outstanding Service to the Institution, the W. Allen Separk Faculty Scholarship Award, the Marilyn V. Yarbrough Faculty Award for Writing Excellence, and the Carden Award for Outstanding Achievement in Scholarship. Over the course of his career, the student body has also recognized him as professor of the year three different times – once when one he was a faculty member at UNLV and twice through the Harold C. Warner Outstanding Teacher Award here at the University of Tennessee.

He currently serves as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. Prior to that, he served as the Associate Dean for Faculty Development for four years.  He has also served as Faculty Fellow in the Provost’s Office of Faculty Affairs, recently represented the University of Tennessee as one of its delegates in the SEC Academic Development Leadership Program, and currently serves as a program coordinator for the University’s Leadership Development Program as well as its Faculty Mentoring Certificate Program.

• Education & Experience
• Publications

J.D. (summa cum laude) 2001, University of Nevada, William S. Boyd School of Law

M.A., 1997, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

B.A., 1995, Erskine College

Curriculum Vitae

Books

Wills, Trusts, And Estates: An Integrated Approach (Foundation Press 2d.ed., 2021) (with Danaya C. Wright & Bridget J. Crawford).

Articles

Common Law Divorce, 74 Alabama Law Review 365 (2022)

LGBTQ Youth and the Promise of the Kennedy Quartet, 43 Cardozo Law Review 2385 (2022)

If You Grant It, They Will Come: The History and Enduring Legal Legacy of Migratory Divorce, 2022 Utah Law Review 2095

(In)Formal Marriage Equality, 89 Fordham Law Review 1351 (2021)

Parens Patriae and the Disinherited Child, 95 Washington Law Review 619 (2020)

While They Waited:  Pre-Obergefell Lives and the Law of Nonmarriage, 129 Yale Law Journal Forum 1 (2019)

The Quasi-Parent Conundrum, 90 University of Colorado Law Review 941 (2019)

Biological Citizenship and the Children of Same-Sex Marriage, 87 George Washington Law Review 124 (2019)

Constitutional Parenthood, 103 Iowa Law Review 1483 (2018)

Polygamous Marriage, Monogamous Divorce, 67 Duke Law Journal 79 (2017)

State Misdemeanant, Federal Felon: Adolescent Sexual Offenders and the INA, 2017 University of Illinois Law Review 963

Social Science Research Network (SSRN)

Full list of SSRN scholarly papers