Brian Highsmith

Assistant Professor of Law

Brian Highsmith is an assistant professor at the UCLA School of Law and a Ph.D. candidate in Government and Social Policy at Harvard University. His research explores the design of subnational democratic institutions in the United States, focusing on state constitutions, political geography, and fiscal federalism. Recent projects have examined the governance of company towns; the interjurisdictional market for corporate investment; interactions between residential segregation and fiscal capacity within metropolitan areas; and the role of courts in the American political economy.

After graduating from Yale Law School in 2017, he was a Skadden Fellow at the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC); his litigation and advocacy there challenged the unaffordable financial obligations that are imposed by private companies on poor families as a result of their contact with the criminal system. Before joining NCLC, he worked in DC on domestic economic policy with a focus on income support programs and fiscal policy—including at President Obama’s National Economic Council, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the office of Senator Cory Booker. 

Immediately prior to joining UCLA, he was an academic fellow in law and political economy at Harvard Law School; before that, he was a fellow in law and public policy at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. His recent academic work is in or forthcoming at the Stanford Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Perspectives on Politics, and the Socio-Economic Review. His writing for public audiences has appeared in the American Prospect, New York Times, and Washington Monthly.

Bibliography

  • Academic Publications
    • Governing the Company Town, 77 Stanford Law Review __ (forthcoming 2025). Full Text
    • Off-Balance: How U.S. Courts Privilege Conservative Policy Outcomes (with Kathy Thelen & Maya Sen), Perspectives on Politics (2025). (peer-reviewed). Full Text
    • Regulating Location Incentives, 75 Duke Law Journal 741 (2024). Full Text
    • Partisan Constitutionalism: Reconsidering the Role of Political Parties in Popular Constitutional Change, 2019 Wisconsin Law Review 4 (2019). Full Text
    • The Implications of Inequality for Fiscal Federalism (or Why the Federal Government Should Pay for Local Public Schools), 67 Buffalo Law Review 2 (2019). Full Text
    • Crimsumerism: Combating Consumer Abuses in the Criminal Legal System (with Alex Kornya, Danica Rodarmel, Mel Gonzalez, and Ted Mermin), 75 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 3 (2019). Full Text
    • Progressive Politics and the Courts: Lessons from the United States (with Chye-Ching Huang), Judicial Power and the Left: Notes on a Skeptical Tradition (2017). Full Text
    • Welfare Reform at Twenty: The Consequences of Making Work Status a Proxy for Deservingness, 34 Yale Law & Policy Review (2016). (review of Kathryn Edin, $2.00 A Day: Living on almost nothing in America), Full Text
  • Public Scholarship And Commentary
    • Court Reform Can’t be Limited to ‘Reforming Courts, Roosevelt Institute (May 2025). Full Text
    • Jackson, Mississippi, and the Contested Boundaries of Self-Governance, LPE Blog (June 2023). Full Text
    • Averting Local Fiscal Crises—and Resolving the “Trilemma”—by Centralizing Infrastructure Funding, State & Local Government Law Blog (June 2023). Full Text
    • The Role of Courts in the American Political Economy (with Kathy Thelen), LPE BLog (Feb. 2022).
        Full Text
      • The Bondholders’ Veto: Fiscal Federalism and Local Democracy, LPE Blog (Sept, 2021). Full Text
      • Republicans Want You (Not the Rich) to Pay for Infrastructure, New York Times (June 2021). Full Text
      • The Structural Violence of Municipal Hoarding, American Prospect (July 2020). Full Text
      • On Reimagining State and Local Budgets in an Abolitionist Moment, LPE BLog (June 2020). Full Text
      • Defund Our Punishment Bureaucracy, American Prospect (June 2020). Full Text
      • A Simple Plan to Make Moving Less Awful, Washington Monthly (Spring 2019). Full Text
      • Don’t Be So Sure Obamacare Will Survive the Latest Lawsuit, Washington Monthly (December 2018). Full Text
    • Policy Reports, Testimony, And Selected Other Writing
      • Commercialized (In)Justice Litigation Guide: Applying Consumer Laws to Commercial Bail, Prison Retail, and Private Debt Collection (with Ariel Nelson, Alex Kornya, and Stephen Raher), National Consumer Law Center (June 2020). Full Text
      • Commercialized (In)Justice: Consumer Abuses In The Bail And Corrections Industry, National Consumer Law Center (March 2019). Full Text
      • The Rent-To-Own Racket: Using Criminal Courts to Coerce Payments from Vulnerable Families (with Margot Saunders), National Consumer Law Center (February 2019). Full Text
      • Misconceptions and Realities About Who Pays Taxes, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (with Chuck Marr), CBPP (September 2012). Full Text
      • Six Tests for Corporate Tax Reform (with Chuck Marr), CBPP (February 2012). Full Text
      • Repeal of Contractor Withholding Provision Would Encourage Tax Abuse (Chuck Marr & Chye-Ching Huang) (October 2011). Full Text
      • Letting Payroll Tax Cut Expire Would Shrink Worker Paychecks and Damage Weak Economy (with Chuck Marr), CBPP (September 2011). Full Text
      • Tax Holiday for Overseas Corporate Profits Would Increase Deficits, Fail to Boost the Economy, and Ultimately Shift More Investment and Jobs Overseas, CBPP (June 2011). Full Text
      • Reforming Tax Expenditures Can Reduce Deficits While Making the Tax Code More Efficient and Equitable (with Chuck Marr), CBPP (April 2011). Full Text
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