Brian Highsmith

Brian Highsmith is an incoming assistant professor at the UCLA School of Law and a PhD candidate in government and social policy at Harvard University. His research focuses on state constitutions, political geography, fiscal federalism, and local democracy. Recent projects have explored the governance of historical company towns and contemporary corporate enclaves, the relationship between jurisdictional fragmentation and fiscal capacity within U.S. metro areas, the market structure consequences of location incentive megadeals, 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); before joining NCLC, he worked in Washington, DC, on domestic economic policy with a focus on income support programs and fiscal policy. His writing has appeared in the Stanford Law Review, Duke Law Review, Perspectives on Politics, American Prospect, and The New York Times.