Catherine Smith is an Associate Professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. During the 2009-2010 academic year, she was a Visiting Scholar at UCLA Law School’s Williams Institute.

After graduating from the University of South Carolina School of Law, Professor Smith clerked for the late Chief Judge Henry A. Politz of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and for U.S. Magistrate Judge William M. Catoe Jr. She then served as a legal fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Before joining the faculty at the University of Denver, Professor Smith was an Assistant Professor at the Thurgood Marshall School of Law from 2000 to 2004.

Professor Smith teaches Torts, Advanced Torts, and Employment Discrimination. Her research interests include torts, civil rights law, and critical race theory. Her articles have been published in Wisconsin Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, and Rutgers Law Review, and Connecticut Law Review. Professor Smith’s current work in progress is entitled “Straight Scrutiny,” which explores how state and federal courts reinforce heterosexism by ignoring the racial and class diversity of the LGBT community in order to deny a “politically powerful minority” heightened scrutiny in equal protection law.

Featured Publications

• Equal Protection for Children of Same-Sex Parents, Washington University Law Review, forthcoming 2012.
• Foreword to Social Class, Race and Legal Education, co-authored with Joyce Sterling, 88 Denv. U. L. Rev. (2012).
• Seven Principles: Increasing Access to Law School Among Students of Color, 96 Iowa Law Review 1677 (2011).
• The Rights of the Child, 88 Denv. U. L. Rev. Online (2011).
• Equal Protection for Children of Gay and Lesbian Parents: Challenging the Three Pillars of Exclusion - Legitimacy, Dual-Gender Parenting, and Biology, 28 Law and Inequality 307 (2010).