Awards

Titled Professor - 2023

Cleon H. Foust Professorship

About Michael Jude Pitts

Professor Pitts is the Cleon H. Foust Professor of Law at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. Pitts’ scholarly work focuses on the law of democracy, particularly voting rights and election administration. He has written over two dozen articles, essays, and book reviews that have appeared in journals such as The Florida State Law Review, The U.C.-Irvine Law Review, The American University Law Review, and The Alabama Law Review. His work has been cited numerous times in law reviews, political science journals, briefs, federal and state judicial opinions, and congressional testimony. He was elected to the American Law Institute (ALI) in 2014.

For his efforts in the classroom, where he teaches Civil Procedure, Evidence, and Election Law, Professor Pitts has received the Red Cane Award for Best New Professor (2008 and 2009), the Black Cane Award for Best Professor (2010 and 2014), and a Trustee’s Teaching Award (2010). He is also a co-author of an election law casebook titled Election Law Litigation (Aspen 2014, 2d Ed. 2021).

Professor Pitts also served as a vice dean from July 1, 2018, to June 30, 2022. During his four years in this role, he was involved in managing virtually all law school operations. His accomplishments as vice dean include managing faculty, student, and curricular affairs during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic; aligning the law school’s curriculum with the Uniform Bar Examination adopted by Indiana in 2021; creating a program to award institutional aid to upper-level students who did not receive institutional aid when admitted but performed well in their 1L year; improving opportunities for clinical faculty to receive summer research grants and sabbatical-like teaching leaves; hiring several outstanding assistant deans; partnering with the assistant dean for enrollment management to improve entering student metrics while maintaining revenue targets; partnering with the assistant dean for academic and bar success on a strategic plan that helped improve bar passage outcomes; and significantly increasing the diversity of McKinney’s adjunct faculty.

Professor Pitts joined the law school faculty in the fall of 2006 after serving as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Nebraska College of Law. Prior to entering academia, he practiced as a trial attorney in the Voting Section of the United States Department of Justice. He is a graduate of Georgetown Law, where he was a member of the Order of the Coif and served as an associate editor of The Georgetown Law Journal. Following law school, he clerked for The Honorable C. Arlen Beam, United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.