Jennifer S. Hendricks

  • Lindsley Memorial Professor of Law
  • Co-Director, Juvenile and Family Law Program
A closeup of a woman with long brown hair teaching in front of a class.
Address

401 UCB
2450 Kittredge Loop Drive
Wolf Law Building
Boulder, CO  80309-0401
Office 432

Courses and Publications 

Jennifer Hendricks joined the CU faculty in 2012, teaching family law and civil procedure. She previously taught at the University of Tennessee College of Law. She has been a visiting scholar at NYU and Emory law schools and is an affiliated faculty member with the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at CU.

In her scholarship, Professor Hendricks has worked to revive relational feminist theory, adapting it to modern understandings of sex and gender and using it to show how the law consistently minimizes pregnancy—its risks, its burdens, and its role in creating a parent–child relationship. She has published this work in both law reviews and social science outlets. Her book on the law of pregnancy and motherhood, Essentially a Mother, has been called a “tour de force” that “reestablishes the importance of relational feminism as a critical theory.”

She has also published articles on a wide range of other topics related to feminism (including sex education, gender in sports, and building codes for all-gender bathrooms) and federalism (including the Erie doctrine, preemption of tort law, and the electoral college).

Professor Hendricks studied mathematics and women’s studies at Swarthmore College and law at Harvard University. She then practiced plaintiffs’ trial and appellate litigation in Montana, where she specialized in constitutional, employment, and discrimination cases. In her practice, she won cases that challenged illegal voter-redistricting and vote-counting, helped high school girls win equal sports opportunities, stopped the construction of a coal-fired power plant in violation of the right to a clean and healthful environment, won access to government documents for reporters and private citizens, and defended against defamation claims. She also represented victims of harassment and discrimination on the basis of sex and sexual orientation.

Areas of Specialty

Feminist Legal Theory, Family Law, Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure

Education

JD, Harvard Law School
BA, Swarthmore College