Professor Kristine Bowman

Kristine Bowman is Professor of Law and Education Policy at Michigan State University and has been an education law scholar for twenty years. She currently serves as Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs at the internationally top-ranked College of Eduation at Michigan State University.

Bowman is a past recipient of the Education Law Association’s prestigious Goldberg Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Education Law and Policy and a Distinguished Fellow of the National Education Finance Conference. She has published extensively in the area of elementary and secondary education law.  Her roughly two-dozen articles, essays, and book chapters have appeared in leading peer-reviwed and student-edited publications.  Additionally, she has played a leading role in four books: Oxford Handbook of US K-12 Education Law (forthcoming 2020, editor) brings together over forty leading education law scholars to describe the current state of education law and look to the future. Educational Policy and the Law (5th edition 2012, co-author with Mark Yudof, Betsy Levin, Rachel Moran, and James Ryan) is the textbook that defined the field. The Pursuit of Racial and Ethnic Equality in Public Schools (2015, editor) is an edited volume selected as an Outstanding Academic Title by the Association for College & Research Libraries); and An Introduction to Constitutional Rights to and in Education in the United States (2016, editor) was published in Italy and is designed for use by European lawyers and scholars.

Bowman has taught or presented about U.S. education law across the country and in nine other countries. She received her B.A. from Drake University in 1998, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa; in 2001 she received her J.D. magna cum laude, M.A., and graduate certificate in Women’s Studies from Duke University. Prior to teaching, she clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and practiced law in Chicago at Franczek PC (then Franczek Sullivan), where she represented school districts and appeared regularly in both state and federal court.  She is past president of the AALS Education Law Section and a continuing member of the Section’s Executive Committee.