Professor Julie Nice

Julie A. Nice

Herbst Foundation Professor of Law

Full-Time Faculty
Kendrick Hall 319
Socials

Biography

Professor Julie Nice joined the USF Law faculty in 2009 as the Herbst Foundation Professor of Law. She was featured as one of the nation's top-25 law teachers in the evidence-based study What the Best Law Teachers Do (Schwartz, Hess & Sparrow, Harvard University Press 2013). As of 2022, she has received 15 awards for law teaching, including being voted six times as the Distinguished Professor of the Year at USF Law. Nice previously served as the Delaney Professor of Law at the University of Denver, where she received numerous Professor of the Year awards and several university-wide awards for teaching and scholarship. She previously taught as a clinical fellow at Northwestern University School of Law and as a visiting professor at University of Michigan School of Law and University of Connecticut School of Law. Before she began teaching, she was a public interest litigator at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago. Nice focuses her scholarly work on constitutional law, poverty law, and sexuality law. She is the lead author of the textbook Poverty Law: Theory and Practice, and has written numerous articles and blogs.

Expertise

  • Constitutional Law - Individual Rights and Structure 
  • Poverty Law and Economic Justice 
  • Sexuality Law - LGBTQ+ Rights and Reproductive Justice 
  • Equality and Liberty 
  • Comparative Social and Economic Rights

Education

  • JD, Northwestern University
  • BS, Northwestern University

Prior Experience

  • Charles W. Delaney Jr. Professor of Law, University of Denver Sturm College of Law 
  • Visiting Professor, University of Michigan Law School 
  • Visiting Professor, University of Connecticut School of Law 
  • Clinical Teaching Fellow, Northwestern University School of Law 
  • Public Interest Trial Lawyer, Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago

Awards & Distinctions

  • Distinguished Professor of the Year, USF Law:  2010, 2011, 2012, 2017, 2019, 2020 
  • Professor of the Year for Teaching Excellence, University of Denver College of Law: 1993, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2005 
  • USF Gender Justice Award 2013 
  • University of Denver "Law Star" Teaching Award 2008; University Master Educator Award 2003; University Scholar/Teacher of the Year 1999

Books

  • Poverty Law: Theory and Practice (Eagan, Minn.: West, 1997)

Selected Publications

Law Review and Journal Articles

  • “The Responsibility of Victory: Confronting the Systemic Subordination of LGBT Youth and Considering a Positive Role For the State,” Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review (2014).
  • “Whither the Canaries?: On the Exclusion of Poor People from Equal Constitutional Protection,” 60 Drake Law Review (2012).
  • “The Descent of the Responsible Procreation: A Genealogy of an Ideology,” 45 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 781 (2012). SSRN
  • “How Equality Constitutes Liberty: The Alignment of CLS v. Martinez,” 38 Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly 681 (2011). SSRN
  • “Forty Years of Welfare Policy Experimentation: No Acres, No Mule, No Politics, No Rights,” 4 Northwestern Journal of Law and Social Policy 1 (2009). SSRN
  • “No Scrutiny Whatsoever: Deconstitutionalization of Poverty Law, Dual Rules of Law, and Dialogic Default,” 35 Fordham Urban Law Journal 629 (2008). SSRN
  • “Promoting Marriage Experimentation: A Class Act?,” 24 Washington University Journal of Law and Policy 31 (2007). SSRN
  • “Equal Protection's Antinomies and the Promise of a Co-Constitutive Approach,” 85 Cornell Law Review (2000). SSRN
  • “The Emerging Third Strand in Equal Protection Jurisprudence: Recognizing the Co-Constitutive Nature of Rights and Classes,” University of Illinois Law Review 101 (1999). (Reprinted in Civil Rights Litigation Annual Handbook, 2000.) SSRN