Faculty Profile

Angela R. Riley

Professor of Law

B.A., summa cum laude, Letters, 1995, University of Oklahoma; J.D., 1998, Harvard University; Phi Beta Kappa; Member, California State Bar

Courses    Publications

Email:
Phone: (213) 738-6755
Room: BW415

Within only five years of graduating from law school, Angela Riley had already been appointed as an attorney, a law professor and a justice. A veteran litigator when she joined Southwestern's full-time faculty in 2003, she was also named that year as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation of Oklahoma, the court that hears all civil and criminal appeals arising from the Tribal District Court. Professor Riley holds the distinction of being the first female and youngest justice ever to serve on the Court. In addition, she has served as an Evidentiary Hearing Officer for the Morongo Band of Mission Indians since 2007.

A recipient of the Wilfred Bibb Scholarship awarded by the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and a former co-chair of the Native American Law Students Association at Harvard, Professor Riley served as a judicial clerk to Chief Judge Terry Kern of the Northern District of Oklahoma in Tulsa. She then spent a few years in Los Angeles as a litigation associate with the law firms of Katten Muchin Zavis, and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges.

Professor Riley left private practice in 2002 to serve as a Teaching Scholar at the Santa Clara University School of Law where she taught Race and Law and coordinated programs on race-related issues for the Center for Social Justice and Public Interest.

In 2007, Professor Riley was named as the Irving D. and Florence Rosenberg Professor of Law. She has focused her recent scholarship and presentations on protection of Native American intellectual and cultural property such as songs, ceremonies, sacred objects and human remains, and other legal issues related to rights of indigenous communities. She sees her writing, as "a form of advocacy to advance the issues I care about." Professor Riley has participated as moderator or panelist on rights of indigenous peoples and social justice law issues in forums around the country, including the Harvard Law School Native American Alumni Emerging Scholars Forum; the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; the Native Nations Law and Policy Center (University of California, Los Angeles); the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities; the Colorado Indian Bar Association; the Colorado Intellectual Property Bar Association; and the Annual Tribal Law and Governance Conference (University of Kansas), among others.