Collins was born in
Santa Monica, California in 1949. graduated from the
University of California at Santa Barbara with a B.A. degree. He received a
J.D. degree from
Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. After graduating from law school, he worked as a law clerk to
Hans A. Linde on the Oregon Supreme Court and was a judicial fellow under Chief Justice Warren Burger. He is the recipient of Supreme Court Fellows Alumni Association's Administration of Justice Award for legal scholarship (February 2011). After teaching at Syracuse Law School and George Washington Law School, he was a scholar at the Newseum's First Amendment Center in Washington, D.C. for six years. Thereafter, he was the Harold S. Shefelman Scholar at the
University of Washington School of Law. In 2011 and thereafter, Collins was the book editor for
SCOTUSblog; as of 2026, he is a columnist for the blog. He is the cofounder of the Washington Independent Review of Books. He has written, edited and co-authored (with
David Skover) books related to law, freedom of speech, and constitutional justice in the United States. His other works include ''A Declaration of Duties Toward Humankind: A Critical Companion to Simone Weil's The Need for Roots
(co-edited with Eric Springsted) and Tragedy on Trial: The Story of the Infamous Emmett Till Murder Trial''. Collins was selected as a Norman Mailer Fellow in fiction writing with a residence in Provincetown (Winter 2010). He is currently on the advisory council of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He has written scholarly articles for
Harvard Law Review,
Stanford Law Review,
University of Chicago Law Review,
Supreme Court Review, and
Michigan Law Review, among other publications. His popular press articles or reviews have appeared in
The New York Times,
The Washington Post,
Los Angeles Times,
Chicago Tribune,
The Baltimore Sun,
The Forward, and
The Nation. In 2025, he launched (with Paul Sparrow) The Singer-Songwriter Series. == Bibliography ==