Tracy Higgins

Professor of Law
Co-Director, Leitner Center for International Law and Justice

Tracy Higgins is a Professor of Law at Fordham Law School and the founder and co-director of the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice, the human rights center at Fordham. Higgins received her B.A. in Economics at Princeton and her J.D. at Harvard Law School. She was previously the Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law and the Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center. Higgins’ work has been published in numerous journals, including Fordham International Law Journal, Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, and Harvard Law Review, among others. In 2011, Higgins co-edited The Future of African Customary Law with fellow PEN America Trustee Jeanmarie Fenrich and Paolo Galizzi. Since 1994 she has conducted human rights fieldwork in Afghanistan, Turkey, Hong Kong, Burma, Mexico, Ghana, Bolivia, Kenya, Romania, South Africa, and Malawi. Higgins is on the Board of Advisors at Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former member of the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, Trial Observation Delegation to Turkey, and a Women’s Studies Delegation to South Africa. Higgins is currently working on Regulatory Feminism: A Critique of State Power in Feminist Legal Theory and African Customary Law and Women’s Access to Property: A Case Study of Tanzania. She joined the PEN America Board in 2013.

Career

EDUCATION

HARVARD, J.D., 1990, magna cum laude
PRINCETON, A.B., magna cum laude, 1986

HONORS

Law Clerk to Judge Levin Campbell, U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (1990-91)
Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellow, Georgetown University Law Center (1991-92)
Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University Law Center (Spring 1992)
Editor, Harvard Law Review

Publications

Legal Pluralism, Gender, and Access to Land in Ghana, 23 Fordham Envtl. Law Rev. 7 (with Jeanmarie Fenrich) (2012).
Customary Law, Gender Equality, and the Family: The Promise and Limits of a Choice Paradigm in THE FUTURE OF AFRICAN CUSTOMARY LAW, Cambridge University Press, Jeanmarie Fenrich, Paolo Galizzi, and Tracy Higgins, eds. (with Jeanmarie Fenrich) (2011)
THE FUTURE OF AFRICAN CUSTOMARY LAW, Cambridge University Press (Co-Editor with Jeanmarie Fenrich and Paolo Galizzi) (2011).
We Will Still Live: Confronting Stigma and Discrimination Against Women Living with HIV/AIDS in Malawi, Fordham Int’l L. J. (with Jeanmarie Fenrich and Chi Mgbako) (2008).
Gender Equality and Customary Marriage: Bargaining in the Shadow of Post-Apartheid Legal Pluralism, Fordham Int’l L. J. (with Jeanmarie Fenrich and Ziona Tanzer) (2008).
Book Review: Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues by Catharine A.MacKinnon, Yale J. L. & Feminism (2006).
Constitutional Chicken Soup, Fordham L. Rev. (Fall 2006) (symposium contribution).
The Children Left Behind: Roma Access to Education in Contemporary Romania, Fordham Int’l L. J. (with Martin Flaherty and Aram Schvey) (2006).
Exporting Despair: United States Foreign Aid Policy and the Right to Health Care in Kenya, Fordham Int’l L. J. (with Martin Flaherty and Mehlika Hoodbhoy)(2006).
A Reflection on the Uses and Limits of Western Feminism in a Global Context, T. Jefferson L. Rev. (2006).
No Recourse: Multinational Corporations and the Protection of Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights in Bolivia, Fordham Int’l L. J. (with Maria McFarland)(Spring 2004).
Gender, Sexuality, and Power: Is Feminist Theory Enough?, Colum. J. Gender & L. (with Brenda Cossman, Dan Danielson, and Janet Halley) (2003).
Job Segregation, Gender Blindness, and Employee Agency, Me. L. Rev. (Spring 2003).
Promise Unfulfilled: Law, Culture, and Women’s Inheritance Rights in Ghana, Fordham Int’l L. J. (with Jeanmarie Fenrich) (Spring 2002).
Agency, Equality, and Antidiscrimination Law, Cornell L. Rev. (with Laura Rosenbury) (Spring 2000).
Reviving the Public/Private Distinction in Feminist Theorizing, in Symposium: Unfinished Feminist Business, Chi.-Kent L. Rev. (Spring 2000).
“One Country, Two Systems?”: Rule of Law, Democracy, and Rights in Hong Kong Two Years After Reversion to Chinese Sovereignty, Fordham Int’l L. J. (Winter 1999).
Justice on Trial: State Security Courts, Police Impunity, and the Intimidation of Defense Lawyers in Turkey, Fordham Int’l L. J. (Summer 1999).
Democracy and Feminism, reprinted in INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY OF ESSAYS IN LAW AND LEGAL THEORY: FAMILY, STATE, AND LAW (Michael D. Freeman ed., 1999).
Regarding Rights: An Essay in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 30 Colum. Hum. Rts L. Rev. 225 (1998).
Democracy and Feminism, 110 Harv. L. Rev. 1657 (1997).
Straying from The Path, 110 Harv. L. Rev. (1997) (solicited essay commemorating the 100th anniversary of the publication of Oliver Wendell Holmes’ The Path of the Law).