Robert A. Williams, Jr.

Robert A. Williams, Jr. (Enrolled Member, Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina) is Regents Professor, E. Thomas Sullivan Professor of Law and Faculty Co-Chair of the University of Arizona Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program. Professor Williams received his B.A. from Loyola College (1977) and his J.D. from Harvard Law School (1980). He is the author of The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest (1990), which received the Gustavus Meyers Human Rights Center Award as one of the outstanding books published in 1990 on the subject of prejudice in the United States.  He has also written Linking Arms Together: American Indian Treaty Visions of Law and Peace, 1600-1800 (1997), Like a Loaded Weapon: The Rehnquist Court, Indian Rights and the Legal History of Racism in America (2005), and Savage Anxieties: The Invention of Western Civilization (Palgrave Macmillan 2012). He is co-author of Federal Indian Law: Cases and Materials (7^th ed., with David Getches, Charles Wilkinson, Matthew Fletcher, and Kristen Carpenter, 2017). He received the Lawrence R. Baca Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Federal Indian Law in 2017 from the Federal Bar Association Indian Law Section. He was named the first Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (2003-2004), having previously served there as Bennet Boskey Distinguished Visiting Lecturer of Law. The 2006 recipient of the University of Arizona Koffler Prize for Outstanding Accomplishments in Public Service, and the 2020 recipient of the University of Arizona Gerald G. Swanson Prize for Teaching Excellence, Professor Williams has received major grants and awards from the Soros Senior Justice Fellowship Program of the Open Society Institute, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Justice, the National Institute of Justice, the Ford Foundation and NDN Collective. Interviewed by Bill Moyers and quoted on the front page of the New York Times, Professor Williams has represented tribal groups and members before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples, the United States Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court of Canada. Professor Williams served as Chief Justice for the Court of Appeals, Pascua Yaqui Indian Reservation, and as Justice for the Court of Appeals and trial judge pro tem for the Tohono O’odham Nation.

SSRN Published Papers

Representative Publications

• Cases and Materials on Federal Indian Law (7th ed. 2017) (co-author, with David H. Getches, Charles F. Wilkinson, Matthew L.M. Fletcher, & Kristen A. Carpenter).
• Savage Anxieties: The Invention of Western Civilization (2012).
• Cases and Materials on Federal Indian Law (6th ed. 2011) (co-author, with David H. Getches, Charles F. Wilkinson, & Matthew L.M. Fletcher).
• Like a Loaded Weapon: The Rehnquist Court, Indian Rights, and the Legal History of Racism in America (2005).
• Linking Arms Together: American Indian Treaty Visions of Law and Peace, 1600-1800 (1997).
• The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest (1990).
• Complete List of Publications

Education

Admitted to Practice

Work Experience

• Regents Professor, E. Thomas Sullivan Professor of Law
  James E. Rogers College of Law
  2024 - present
• Regents Professor, E. Thomas Sullivan Professor of Law; Faculty Co-Chair, Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program
  James E. Rogers College of Law
  2018 - 2024
• E. Thomas Sullivan Professor of Law; Faculty Co-Chair, Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program
  James E. Rogers College of Law
  2017 - 2018
• E. Thomas Sullivan Professor of Law; Faculty Chair, Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program
  James E. Rogers College of Law
  2016 - 2017
• E. Thomas Sullivan Professor of Law; Faculty Co-chair, Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program
  James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona
  1998 - 2016
• Faculty Chair, Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program and Clinic
  James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona
  1989 - 1998
• Judge, pro tem, Tohono O'odham Indian Nation
  Tucson, Arizona
  1988 - present
• Visiting Professor of Law and Bennet Boskey Visiting Lecturer of Law
  Harvard Law School
  Winter - Spring 2001
• Acting Director, Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy LL.M. Program
  James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona
  2000
• Visiting Professor of Law and Bennet Boskey Visiting Lecturer of Law
  Harvard Law School
  Winter - Spring 2000
• Visiting Professor of Law
  Harvard Law School
  Winter 1999
• Chief Justice, Court of Appeals, Pascua Yaqui Indian Tribe
  Tucson, Arizona
  1998 - 2000
• Cross Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law
  University of Washington School of Law
  1992 - 1993
• Director, Office of Indian Programs
  University of Arizona
  1990 - 1992
• Associate Justice, Court of Appeals, Pascua Yacqui Indian Tribe
  Tucson, Arizona
  1988 - 1997
• Professor of Law and American Indian Studies
  University of Arizona College of Law
  1987 - 1998
• Marks Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law
  University of Arizona College of Law
  Fall 1986
• Associate Professor of Law
  University of Wisconsin Law School
  1986
• Assistant Professor of Law
  University of Wisconsin Law School
  1984 - 1986
• Assistant Professor of Law
  Rutgers Law School
  1981 - 1984
• Legal Consultant
  Regional and Urban Planning Implementation, Inc., Cambridge, Mass.
  1980 - 1981
• Teaching Fellow
  Boston College Law School
  1980 - 1981

Organizations

Public & Institutional Service

Awards