Melissa L. Tatum

Professor Tatum specializes in tribal jurisdiction and tribal courts, as well as in issues relating to cultural property and sacred places. She was a contributing author to Felix Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law, and has written extensively about both civil and criminal procedural issues, as well as about the relationship between tribal, state, and federal courts. Professor Tatum consulted with the Pascua Yaqui Tribe as it became one of the first in the nation to implement VAWA 2013's special domestic violence criminal jurisdiction. She has also served on task forces in Michigan and New Mexico charged with developing procedures to facilitate cross-jurisdictional enforcement of protection orders, and has taught seminars on domestic violence and protection orders throughout the United States for judges, attorneys, law enforcement, and victim advocates, including at the National Tribal Judicial Center. Between 1999 and 2006 she served as a judge on the Southwest Intertribal Court of Appeals. Professor Tatum joined the University of Arizona faculty in January 2009, after serving as a faculty member at the University of Tulsa for more than thirteen years.

Curriculum Vitae

SSRN Published Papers

Representative Publications

• Constitution as Dialogue:  Legal Pluralism and the American Experience. in Constitutional Recognition of First Peoples in Australia:  Theories and Comparative Perspectives 160 (Simon Young, Jennifer Nielsen, & Jeremy Patrick eds., 2016) (co-author, with Jennifer Hendry).
• Human Rights, Indigenous Peoples, and the Pursuit of Justice, 34 Yale L. & Pol'y Rev. 351 (2016) (co-author, with Jennifer Hendry).
• Tribal Legal Code Resource:  Tribal Laws Implementing TLOA Enhanced Sentencing and VAWA Enhanced Jurisdiction (2015) (co-author, with Maureen L. White Eagle & Chia Halpern Beetso).
• Law, Culture, & Environment (2014) (co-author, with Jill Kappus Shaw).
• Structuring Sovereignty:  Constitutions of Native Nations (2014) (co-author, with Miriam Jorgensen, Mary Guss, & Sarah Deer).
• General Editor, Navajo Law Reporter, Vol. 8 (2008).
• Contributing Author, Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law (2005).
• A Jurisdictional Quandary:  Challenges Facing Tribal Governments in Implementing the Full Faith and Credit Provisions of the Violence Against Women Acts, 90 Ky. L.J. 123 (2001 - 2002).
• Complete List of Publications

Education