Kit Kinports

Mary Kathleen ("Kit") Kinports is an American legal scholar who is Professor of Law and the Polisher Family Distinguished Faculty Scholar at the Dickinson School of Law of Penn State University. She has taught there since 2006 and specializes in feminism, criminal law and constitutional law.

Kinports studied at Brown University, where she received an A.B. in 1976. She attended the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, serving as editor-in-chief of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and graduating with a J.D. in 1980. After law school, she clerked first for Judge Abner Mikva of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and then Harry Blackmun, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, from 1981 to 1982. Following her clerkships, she practiced law in Washington, D.C. as an associate of Ennis, Friedman, Bersoff & Ewing.

In 2006, she joined the faculty of Penn State, having previously taught at the University of Illinois College of Law. In 2005, she explained the Battered Woman's defense in criminal law. In 2010, she commented on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court. In October 2018, she signed a letter opposing the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court.

She is co-author of a popular case book, Criminal Law: Cases and Materials, now in its fourth edition.

Kinports is married to Stephen F. Ross, an antitrust scholar who is also a law professor at Dickinson College of Law.

Books

• Kinports, Kit; Saltzburg, Stephen A.; Diamond, John L.; Morawetz, Thomas; Little, Rory (2017). Criminal Law: Cases and Materials (4th ed.). Carolina Academic Press. ISBN 978-1-5310-0418-7.
• Kinports, Kit; Brown, Mark (2014). Constitutional Litigation Under Section 1983 (3rd ed.). Carolina Academic Press. ISBN 978-0-76989-276-4.

Articles

• Kinsport, Kit (2018). "Illegal Predicate Searches and Tainted Warrants After Heien and Strieff". Tul. L. Rev. 92: 837.
• Kinsport, Kit (2017). "What Does Edwards Ban?:Interrogating, Badgering, or Initiating Contact?". N. Ky. L. Rev. 43: 359.
• Kinsport, Kit (2016). "Heien's Mistake of Law". Ala. L. Rev. 68: 121.
• Kinsport, Kit (2015). "The Myth of Battered Woman Syndrome". Temple Pol. & Civ. Rts. L. Rev. 24: 313.
• Kinsport, Kit (2010). "Iqbal and Supervisory Immunity". Penn St. L. Rev. 114: 1291.
• Kinsport, Kit (1988). "Defending Battered Women's Self-Defense Claims". Or. L. Rev. Rev. 67: 393.