- Family Law
- Property
- Trusts & Estates
- The Regulation of the Modern Family (Seminar)
Links
Education
- BA, Honors and Distinction, Stanford University
- JD, cum laude, Harvard Law School
Background
Professor Albertina Antognini teaches Family Law, Property, Trusts & Estates, and a seminar on the state of the contemporary American family. Her research examines how law regulates intimate relationships across fields spanning property, contracts, and constitutional law. She is centrally preoccupied with the question of how categories that may appear “natural” are in fact products of law, with the goal of opening them up to a more rigorous critique.
Professor Antognini’s pieces have recently been published in UC Irvine Law Review, Washington University Law Review, and Stanford Law Review, among others. In 2023, she was awarded a Fulbright to conduct research on nonmarital couples in Stockholm, Sweden. Her pieces have been twice selected for the Yale/Stanford/Harvard Junior Faculty Forum, and while at the University of Arizona, she received the College of Law’s Distinguished Early Career Scholar Award.
Professor Antognini is a co-founder and co-organizer of the Roundtable on Nonmarriage and the Law, an interdisciplinary conference focused on the study of nonmarital relationships. She has co-chaired the Family Law and Scholars Teachers conference, and participated as an observer in the Uniform Law Commission’s drafting of the Uniform Cohabitants’ Economic Remedies Act. She is currently a contributing editor to JOTWELL’s Family Law section.
Professor Antognini received her J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School and her B.A., with honors and distinction in Comparative Literature, from Stanford University, where she was awarded the Robert M. Golden Medal for her thesis on phenomenology and Italian literature. In 2010, she clerked for the Honorable Rosemary S. Pooler of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Prior to joining Loyola, Professor Antognini was the James E. Rogers Professor of Law at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, an Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law, and a Thomas C. Grey Fellow at Stanford Law School.
Selected Scholarship
- Abolishing the Family, 61 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 445 (2026) (co-authored with Susan Frelich Appleton) (Selected for peer review in JOTWELL)
- Fraudulent Families, 15 U.C. Irvine L. Rev. 128 (2024)
- Shallow Fakes, 128 Penn St. L. Rev. 69 (2023) (co-authored with Andrew K. Woods)
- Unwed Parents: The Limits of the Constitution, 35 J. Am. Acad. Matrim. Law. 425 (2023)
- Sexual Agreements, 99 Wash. U. L. Rev. 1879 (2022) (co-authored with Susan Frelich Appleton) (Selected for peer review in JOTWELL)
- Nonmarital Contracts, 73 Stan. L. Rev. 67 (2021) (Selected for peer review in JOTWELL)
- Nonmarital Coverture, 99 B.U. L. Rev. 2139 (2019)
- Against Nonmarital Exceptionalism, 51 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1891 (2018)
- The Law of Nonmarriage, 58 B.C. L. Rev. 1 (2017)
- Family Unity Revisited: Divorce, Separation, and Death in Immigration Law, 66 S.C. L. Rev. 1 (2014)
- From Citizenship to Custody: Unwed Fathers Abroad and at Home, 36 Harv. J. L. & Gender 405 (2013)
Other Writings
- Who Wants What?, JOTWELL (June 1, 2026) (reviewing John Morley & Yair Listokin, What Should You Owe Your Ex? A Survey of Attitudes About the Law of Married and Cohabiting Relationships (unpublished manuscript))
- The Formal Limit on Privatizing Support, 105 B.U. L. Rev. Online 43 (2025) (invited response to Serena Mayeri’s MARITAL PRIVILEGE)
- Whose Liberty?, JOTWELL (May 8, 2025) (reviewing Laura Portuondo, Gendered Liberty, 113 GEO. L.J. 707 (2025))
- Against Normalizing Bodies, JOTWELL (June 21, 2024) (reviewing KATE CLANCY, PERIOD: THE REAL STORY OF MENSTRUATION (2023))
- The Persistent Failure to Value Care, JOTWELL (May 17, 2023) (reviewing Yiran Zhang, The Care Bureaucracy, 99 IND. L.J. 1241 (2024))
- Whose Body?, JOTWELL (July 28, 2022) (reviewing EMILY RATAJKOWSKI, MY BODY (2021))
- Bringing the Nineteenth Amendment Home, JOTWELL (June 29, 2021) (reviewing Reva B. Siegel, The Nineteenth Amendment and the Democratization of the Family, 129 YALE L.J. FORUM 450 (2020))
- Reflections on Family Law, JOTWELL (May 11, 2020) (reviewing JIA TOLENTINO, TRICK MIRROR: REFLECTIONS ON SELF-DELUSION (2019))
- Rewritten Opinion, Michael H. v. Gerald D., FEMINIST JUDGMENTS: REWRITTEN FAMILY LAW OPINIONS (edited collection) (2020, Cambridge University Press)
- Regulating Nonmarriage, UK LAW NOTES 47 (Fall 2017)