Kit Kinports | |
---|---|
Born | Mary Kathleen Kinports |
Nationality | American |
Education | Brown University (BA) University of Pennsylvania (JD) |
Occupation | Law professor |
Known for | Expert on feminism and criminal law |
Mary Kathleen "Kit" Kinports is an American legal scholar who is Professor of Law and the Polisher Family Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Pennsylvania State University. She has taught there since 2006 and specializes in feminism, criminal law and constitutional law. In 2024, Kinports announced her retirement from Penn State Law after nearly two decades of service.
Kinports studied at Brown University, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in 1976. She attended the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, serving as editor-in-chief of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review , and graduating with a J.D. in 1980. [1] [2] After law school, she clerked for Judge Abner Mikva of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and then for Justice Harry Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court, from 1981 to 1982. [3] Following her clerkships, she practiced law in Washington, D.C. as an associate of Ennis, Friedman, Bersoff & Ewing.
In 2006, she joined the faculty of Penn State, having previously taught at the University of Illinois College of Law. [4] [5] In 2005, she explained the Battered Woman's defense in criminal law. [6] In 2010, she commented on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court. [7] In October 2018, she signed a letter opposing the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. [8]
She is co-author of a popular case book, Criminal Law: Cases and Materials, now in its fourth edition. In early 2023, Kinports was invited to contribute as an author to the McCormick treatise on Evidence, hailed as a standard text among law students and scholars. [9]
Kinports was previously married to an antitrust scholar and fellow law professor at Dickinson College of Law. [10]
The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School is the law school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Penn Carey Law offers the degrees of Juris Doctor (J.D.), Master of Laws (LL.M.), Master of Comparative Laws (LL.C.M.), Master in Law (M.L.), and Doctor of the Science of Law (S.J.D.).
The University of Chicago Law School is the law school of the University of Chicago, a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It employs more than 180 full-time and part-time faculty and hosts more than 600 students in its Juris Doctor program, while also offering the Master of Laws, Master of Studies in Law and Doctor of Juridical Science degrees in law.
Yale Law School (YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824. The 2020–21 acceptance rate was 4%, the lowest of any law school in the United States. Its yield rate of 87% is also consistently the highest of any law school in the United States.
The University of Pennsylvania Law Review, formerly known as the American Law Register, is a law review published by an organization of second and third year J.D. students at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. It is the oldest law journal in the United States, having been published continuously since 1852. Currently, seven issues are published each year with the last issue traditionally featuring papers from symposia held by the review each year. It is one of the four law reviews responsible for publication of the Bluebook. It is one of seven official scholarly journals at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and was the third most cited law journal in the world in 2006.
Elena Kagan is an American lawyer who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was appointed in 2010 by President Barack Obama and is the fourth woman to serve on the Court.
Notre Dame Law School is the law school of the University of Notre Dame. Established in 1869, it is the oldest continuously operating Catholic law school in the United States.
Neal Kumar Katyal is an American appellate lawyer and professor of law. He is a partner at the Hogan Lovells law firm and is the Paul and Patricia Saunders Professor of National Security Law at Georgetown University Law Center. During the Obama administration, Katyal served as Acting Solicitor General of the United States from May 2010 until June 2011. Previously, Katyal served as a lawyer in the Solicitor General's office and as Principal Deputy Solicitor General in the United States Department of Justice.
Stephen B. Burbank is the David Berger Professor for the Administration of Justice Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Harry Thomas Edwards is an American jurist. He served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1980 to 2005, taking senior status in 2005, and a professor of law at the New York University School of Law.
James Wilson was a Scottish-born American Founding Father, legal scholar, jurist, and statesman who served as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1789 to 1798. Wilson was elected twice to the Continental Congress, was a signatory of the Declaration of Independence, and was a major participant in drafting the U.S. Constitution becoming one of only six people to sign both documents. A leading legal theorist, he was one of the first four Associate Justices appointed to the Supreme Court by George Washington. In his capacity as the first professor of law at the College of Philadelphia, he taught the first course on the new Constitution to President Washington and his Cabinet in 1789 and 1790.
Stephanos Bibas is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as a U.S. circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Before his appointment to the bench, Bibas was a professor of law and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he also served as director of its Supreme Court clinic.
Camreta v. Greene, 563 U.S. 692 (2011), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that in the general case the Court may review a lower court's constitutional ruling at the behest of government officials who have won final judgment on qualified immunity grounds but could not for this case due to details specific to it.
Cornelia Thayer Livingston Pillard, known professionally as Nina Pillard, is an American lawyer and jurist serving since 2013 as a U.S. circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Before becoming a judge, Pillard was a law professor at Georgetown University.
Heien v. North Carolina, 574 U.S. 54 (2014), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, ruling that a police officer's reasonable mistake of law can provide the individualized suspicion required by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution to justify a traffic stop. The Court delivered its ruling on December 15, 2014.
In the law, the totality of the circumstances test refers to a method of analysis where decisions are based on all available information rather than bright-line rules. Under the totality of the circumstances test, courts focus "on all the circumstances of a particular case, rather than any one factor". In the United States, totality tests are used as a method of analysis in several different areas of the law. For example, in United States criminal law, a determination about reasonable suspicion or probable cause is based on a consideration of the totality of the circumstances.
Susan Bandes is an American lawyer and the current Centennial Distinguished Professor Emeritus at DePaul University. Bandes is considered one of the 20 most cited law professors in criminal law and procedure.
American Legion v. American Humanist Association, 588 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with the separation of church and state related to maintaining the Peace Cross, a World War I memorial shaped after a Latin cross, on government-owned land, though initially built in 1925 with private funds on private lands. The case was a consolidation of two petitions to the court, that of The American Legion who built the cross, and of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission who own the land and maintain the memorial. Both petitions challenged the Fourth Circuit's ruling that, regardless of the secular purpose the cross was built for in honoring the deceased soldiers, the cross emboldened a religious symbol and had ordered it altered or razed. The Supreme Court reversed the Fourth Circuit's ruling in a 7–2 decision, determining that since the Cross had stood for decades without controversy, it did not violate the Establishment Clause and could remain standing.
Mitchell N. Berman is an American legal scholar. He serves as the Leon Meltzer Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and, in addition, is also a professor of philosophy. He is also the Co-Director of the Institute for Law & Philosophy at the university.
Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, 587 U.S. 230 (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case that determined that unless they consent, states have sovereign immunity from private suits filed against them in the courts of another state. The 5–4 decision overturned precedent set in a 1979 Supreme Court case, Nevada v. Hall. This was the third time that the litigants had presented their case to the Court, as the Court had already ruled on the issue in 2003 and 2016.
Margaret Raymond is an American legal scholar who is professor of law and was formerly the Fred W. and Vi Miller dean at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Her research interests include ethics and criminal law.