Albertina Antognini
Albertina Antognini is the James E. Rogers Professor of Law at the University of Arizona where she teaches Family Law, Property, Trusts & Estates, and a seminar surveying different legal regimes that shape the contemporary American family. She is a co-director of the Family and Juvenile Law Certificate Program.
Professor Antognini’s work examines the ways that legal rules actively regulate, and in the process define, families. Her research is centrally preoccupied with considering how categories that may appear “natural” are in fact products of law, with the aim of opening them up to a more rigorous critique. Her scholarship has focused on the regulation of nonmarriage. In particular, she has analyzed how private law addresses questions of property distribution at the end of a nonmarital relationship, and how constitutional law addresses questions of citizenship and equality in the context of unwed parents.
In 2023, Professor Antognini was awarded a Fulbright to conduct research on cohabiting couples in Sweden. Professor Antognini has received UA College of Law’s Distinguished Early Career Scholar Award, and her articles have been twice selected for the Yale/Stanford/Harvard Junior Faculty Forum. Her pieces have been published or are forthcoming in UC Irvine Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and Washington University Law Review, among others. Professor Antognini is a contributing editor to JOTWELL’s Family Law section, and is a co-founder and co-organizer of the Roundtable on Nonmarriage and the Law, an interdisciplinary conference focused on the study of nonmarital relationships.
Professor Antognini received her J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School and her B.A., with honors and distinction in Comparative Literature, from Stanford University, where she was awarded the Robert M. Golden Medal for her thesis on phenomenology and Italian literature. In 2010, she clerked for the Honorable Rosemary S. Pooler of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Prior to joining the UA College of Law, Professor Antognini was a Thomas C. Grey Fellow at Stanford Law School and an Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law.
Representative Publications
- Fraudulent Families, 15 U.C. Irvine L. Rev. (forthcoming 2024)
- Shallow Fakes, Penn St. L. Rev. 69 (2023) (co-authored with Andrew K. Woods)
- Unwed Parents: The Limits of the Constitution, 35 J. Am. Acad. Matrim. Law. 425 (2023)
- Sexual Agreements, 99 Wash. U. L. Rev. 1807 (2022) (co-authored with Susan Frelich Appleton)
- Nonmarital Contracts, 73 Stan. L. Rev. 67 (2021)
- Nonmarital Coverture, 99 B.U. L. Rev. 2139 (2019)
- Against Nonmarital Exceptionalism, 51 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1891 (2018)
- The Law of Nonmarriage, 58 B.C. L. Rev. 1 (2017)
- Family Unity Revisited: Divorce, Separation, and Death in Immigration Law, 66 S.C. L. Rev. 1 (2014), reprinted in 18 Minn. Fam. L.J. 61 (2015)
- Complete List of Publications
Education
- J.D. Harvard Law School
2008
Graduated cum laude - B.A. Stanford University
2004
Graduated with Departmental Honors and Distinction
Work Experience
- Professor of Law
James E. Rogers College of Law
2020 - Present - Associate Professor of Law
James E. Rogers College of Law
2018 - 2020 - Assistant Professor of Law
University of Kentucky College of Law
2015 - 2018 - Visiting Assistant Professor of Law
University of Kentucky College of Law
2014 - 2015 - Thomas C. Grey Fellow
Stanford Law School
2011 - 2014 - Law Clerk, The Hon. Rosemary S. Pooler
U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
2010 - 2011