Kristin Hickman

Professor Kristin E. Hickman is a leading authority in the fields of tax administration, administrative law, and statutory interpretation. Her articles on these topics have appeared in the Columbia Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, and Duke Law Journal, among other publications. She co-authors the Administrative Law Treatise on federal administrative law with Richard J. Pierce, Jr., as well as a textbook on federal administrative law with Pierce and Christopher J. Walker. Her scholarly work has been cited several times in opinions of the United States Supreme Court and as well as regularly in lower court judicial opinions and court briefs.

In 2018-19, Professor Hickman served as Special Adviser to the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in Washington, D.C.  She is a Senior Fellow for the Administrative Conference of the United States, which she previously served as one of forty public members and chair of the judicial review committee. She also has served as a member of the Governing Councils of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice and the Minnesota State Bar Association Administrative Law Section. She is a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel.

Professor Hickman joined the Law School in 2004. She held the Law School's Julius E. Davis Chair in Law in 2010-11, was the Donald C. Alexander Visiting Professor in Tax Law at Harvard Law School for the 2012-13 academic year, and also taught at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law as a Visiting Assistant Professor in 2003-04. She was a Vance Opperman Research Scholar for summer 2020 and the Stanley V. Kinyon Tenured Teacher of the Year for the 2016-17 academic year.

Professor Hickman received her B.S. degree in business administration with a concentration in accounting and a second major in history from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. After practicing for several years as a certified public accountant, she earned her J.D. degree, magna cum laude, from Northwestern University School of Law, where she was awarded the Raoul Berger Prize and the Lowden-Wigmore Prize. Following law school, Professor Hickman clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and practiced law as an associate with the Chicago office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, concentrating on corporate and international tax transactions and matters.