Michelle Anderson

Michelle Wilde Anderson is a public law scholar and practitioner focused on state and local government, including urban policy, city planning, local democracy, and public finance. Her work combines legal analysis with the details of human experience to understand the local governance of high poverty areas, both urban and rural, and the legal causes of concentrated poverty and fiscal crisis.

Her current research explores legal restructuring (such as bankruptcy, disincorporation, and receiverships) for cities and counties in distress—issues that affect not only Rust Belt capitals such as Detroit, but also post-industrial cities in California, rural areas in Oregon, and small towns across the Northeast and South. These issues are examined in her recent publications including “The New Minimal Cities,” Yale Law Journal (2014); “Detroit: What a City Owes its Residents,” Los Angeles Times (2013); “Making a Regional School District: Memphis City Schools Dissolves into its Suburbs,” Columbia Law Review Sidebar (2012); and “Dissolving Cities,” Yale Law Journal (2012).