Biography

Robin Fretwell Wilson is the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair in Law at the University of Illinois College of Law. Professor Wilson co-directs the College of Law’s Epstein Health Law and Policy Program and co-directs and founded its Family Law and Policy Program. She specializes in family law and health law, and her research and teaching interests also include biomedical ethics, law and religion, children and violence, and law and science.

Professor Wilson is the author and editor of twenty books, including her recent books, International Survey Of Family Law 2022 with University of Minnesota Professor June Carbone and Religious Freedom, LGBT Rights, and the Prospects for Common Ground, with Yale University Professor William Eskridge, Jr., which is now in paperback at Cambridge University Press. Her other books include: The Contested Place of Religion in Family Law (Cambridge University Press, 2018, ed.); Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008, with Douglas Laycock and Anthony Picarello, eds.); Health Law and Bioethics:  Cases in Context (Aspen, 2008, with Joan Krause, Sandra Johnson, and Richard Saver, eds.); Reconceiving the Family:  Critical Reflections on the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution (Cambridge University Press, 2006, ed.); and The Handbook of Children, Culture & Violence (Sage Publications, 2006, with Nancy Dowd and Dorothy Singer, eds.). She is also the co-author of a leading case book in domestic relations, Domestic Relations: Cases and Materials, 9th edition (Foundation Press, 2021 with the late Walter Wadlington and Raymond C. O’Brien) and a treatise, Understanding Family Law, 4th edition (LexisNexis, 2013, with John DeWitt Gregory and Peter N. Swisher). Professor Wilson’s book-length examination on the Medicalization of Poverty (with Lois Shepherd and David Shi) was published in China in 2021.

In 2019, Professor Wilson was named a Fulbright Specialist Roster by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and World Learning for work on Civil Rights Complementarity. Professor Wilson will serve as a Fulbright Specialist in the United Kingdom in Spring 2021, where she will be in residence at Queen Mary University of London as the IHSS Distinguished Visiting Fellow. Professor Wilson has ranked among the Top Ten Family Law Scholars in the United States for scholarly impact in each ranking done by the Leiter Report since 2010. Professor Wilson was also honored as one of the 150 for 150: Celebrating the Accomplishments of Women at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for its sesquicentennial celebration in 2018. She ranks among the Top 10% of Authors in all-time downloads on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). Professor Wilson’s scholarship has been cited by the Fifth, Seventh and Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, lower federal courts, and the Supreme Courts of Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, and Washington.  

A member of the American Law Institute, Professor Wilson was elected Vice President of the International Society of Family Law in 2020 and has served on ISFL’s Executive Committee since 2014. Professor Wilson is a consultant to the United Arab Emirates’ Judicial Department and is assisting them to create a parallel court system for the adjudication by expatriates of family law matters using the laws of their home country or of their faith traditions. She chairs the Law and Religion section of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). She is the past chair of the AALS’ Section on Family and Juvenile Law and the AALS’ Section on Law, Medicine & Healthcare.

Professor Wilson has worked extensively on behalf of state law reform efforts, helping Utah lawmakers pass anti-discrimination legislation that balances religious liberty and LGBT rights. In 2007, she received the Citizen’s Legislative Award for her work on changing Virginia’s informed consent law. In 2018, Professor Wilson received the Thomas L. Kane Religious Freedom Award from the J. Reuben Clark Law Society, which is presented annually to an individual who exemplifies the spirit of religious liberty for all and has contributed significantly to the defense of religious freedom in the public square. In 2022, Professor Wilson assisted Congress in its consideration and passage of P.L. 117-228, the Respect for Marriage Act. Members of the U.S. Senate acknowledged her co-authored analysis of the bill by name in the Congressional Register and she was invited to attend the White House signing ceremony.

Professor Wilson is the founder and directs the Fairness for All Initiative, which seeks to provide tangible support and advice to thought-leaders, stakeholders, policymakers, and state and local legislators who seek balanced approaches that respect both LGBT rights and religious freedom. The Fairness for All Initiative is made possible by the generous support of the Templeton Religion Trust.

Professor Wilson holds appointments at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine in the Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences and the University of Illinois College of Medicine Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Pathology. Professor Wilson is a co-investigator with researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the National Center for State Courts on access to justice during the COVID-19 pandemic, with an in-depth of racial disparities.  She is also a co-principal investigator on a study support by the MacArthur Foundation of Community Health Workers as Citizen Scientists, which will work with Black and Latin-x teens and young adults in the City of Chicago.  Professor Wilson is a co-principal investigator with faculty at the University of Illinois College of Agriculture, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences (ACES) on a project supported by the National Science Foundation examining “Family Court Decisions About Child Custody in the Context of Intimate Partner Violence.”

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