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Michael A. Fitts is a lawyer, legal scholar, and current dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He is the Bernard G. Segal Professor of Law.

Biography
Fitts was born and raised in West Philadelphia. He received a bachelor's degree from Harvard College in 1975, where he was the recipient of the Detur Prize and elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He was a Harvard National Scholar. Fitts received a J.D. degree from Yale University Law School in 1979, where he was editor of the Yale Law Journal.

He was a law clerk for Hon. A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., Chief Judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Fitts began his career as an Attorney Advisor to the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice, from 1981-1985. He received a Special Commendation Award from the Attorney General of the United States for his work there.

He then joined the Penn Law faculty, concentrating his scholarship on issues affecting the Federal Government. He has written extensively on questions of administrative law, presidential powers, and separation of powers, often using the tools of political science. He has argued for improving the structure of political parties and executive branch decision-making.

Fitts is a member of the Law and Political Process Study Group of American Political Science Association, the World Affairs Council, and the Committee of Seventy, a community watch-dog group.

As a scholar and as an administrator, he is dedicated to cross-disciplinary education, co-authoring and co-teaching with scholars from other disciplines and establishing new joint programs within the University. Fitts’s grandfather was a professor and Dean of the Wharton Business School, and his father was a professor and chair of the department of surgery at University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.