Law School’s Higginbotham Receives Top USM Award
September 10, 2004
Contact: University Relations
Phone: 410.837.6190
F. Michael Higginbotham, professor in the University of Baltimore School of Law and a nationally known scholar and commentator on the impact of race on the law and vice versa, has been named a recipient of the 2004-05 Wilson H. Elkins Professorship. The professorship, named in honor of former University of Maryland President Wilson H. Elkins, was awarded to four faculty members from across the University System of Maryland (USM). USM Chancellor William E. Kirwan announced the recipients last week.
Higginbotham teaches constitutional law and race and the law at UB. Prior to joining the faculty in 1988, he was a clerk to United States Court of Appeals Judge Cecil F. Poole, an associate with Davis, Polk and Wardwell in Washington, D.C., and a lecturer in law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has published articles in the New York University Law Review, Columbia University International Law Journal, Boston University International Law Journal, Howard University Law Journal, and the University of Illinois Law Review.
“Michael Higginbotham is highly deserving of an Elkins Professorship,” said School of Law Dean Gilbert Holmes. “Not only does he craft highly sophisticated scholarly articles for some of our most prestigious law reviews, but he also teaches young lawyers just starting out and popularizes his ideas with the general public. He is accessible, and when it comes to matters of race and the law that seems to me to be an essential quality to have.”
Higginbotham earned an A.B. from Brown University in 1979, then went on to receive a law degree from Yale University in 1982 and an LL.M. as a Rotary Scholar from Cambridge University in 1985.
A prolific scholar, Higginbotham’s lengthy publication record in the nation’s most prominent law journals is augmented by his contributions to the popular press.
Higginbotham is one of the founding members of the Baltimore Scholars Program. This program identifies undergraduates at historically black colleges and universities in Maryland interested in post-graduate professional education. With the goal of increasing the pool of qualified minority applicants to law and other professional schools, the program uses faculty and student volunteers to help these students improve their writing and analytical skills.
Higginbotham also served as board chairman of the Public Justice Center and as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is former chairperson of the Association of American Law Schools Committee on Recruitment and Retention of Minority Faculty and is a member of the District of Columbia Bar.
The Wilson H. Elkins Professorship is awarded for varying terms of up to three years. Each $80,000 award will fund projects that will contribute significantly to the USM’s teaching, research, and service missions. Higginbotham plans to use his award to help fund his future teaching and research.
The Elkins Professorship was established in 1978 as the first permanently endowed, university-wide professorship at the then five-campus University of Maryland. When the USM was formed in 1988, the professorship was extended to the entire system.
The University of Baltimore is an upper-division, graduate and professional university. UB—the state’s career-minded university—is a member of the University System of Maryland and comprises the School of Law, the Yale Gordon College of Liberal Arts and the Robert G. Merrick School of Business.