Kathryn Watts

Professor Kathryn A. Watts, a native of Oregon, joined the law school faculty in 2007 as an assistant professor. She teaches administrative law, constitutional law, and Supreme Court decision making. She was selected by the students as Philip A. Trautman Professor of the Year in 2009, and she serves on the law school's Executive Council.

Professor Watts earned her J.D., summa cum laude, from Northwestern University School of Law, where she was awarded the John Paul Stevens Prize for Academic Excellence for graduating first in her law school class and the Raoul Berger Prize for her senior research paper on the history of general rulemaking grants. Following law school, Professor Watts clerked for Judge A. Raymond Randolph of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court. After her clerkships, Professor Watts worked at Sidley Austin LLP in Chicago where she specialized in appellate work and brief writing. She then joined Northwestern's law school from 2005 to 2007 as a visiting assistant professor to teach administrative law, federal courts, and a Supreme Court seminar.

Professor Watts's research focuses on interaction between the federal courts and executive actors, with a particular emphasis on interaction between the judiciary and administrative agencies. Some of her recent works include Proposing A Place for Politics in Arbitrary and Capricious Review, 119 Yale L.J. ___ (forthcoming 2009), and Adapting to Administrative Law's Erie Doctrine, 101 Nw. U. L. Rev. 997 (2007). She also is an author of Agency Rules with the Force of Law: The Original Convention, 116 Harv. L. Rev. 467 (2002) (co-authored with Thomas W. Merrill), which received the ABA Section on Administrative Law Award for Distinguished Scholarship in 2003.