Justin Richland is a Faculty Fellow at the American Bar Foundation. He currently serves as Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. Prior to his appointment as an ABF Faculty Fellow, Professor Richland served as a Research Professor at the ABF from 2016-2018. He studies contemporary Native American law and politics, particularly with a focus on the interactions between tribal nations in the U.S. and the U.S. federal and state governments. His work has been published in several leading peer-reviewed journals, including the Annual Review of Anthropology, Law and Social Inquiry, and the Maryland Journal of International Law. He is the author of two books: Arguing with Tradition: The Language of Law in Hopi Tribal Court (University of Chicago Press, 2008) and Introduction to Tribal Legal Studies (with Sarah Deer), (Alta Mira Press, 2015). In April 2016, he was named a J.S. Guggenheim Fellow.
From 2011-2018, Professor Richland served as an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Social Sciences at the University of Chicago, and as an Associate Member at the University of Chicago Law School. From 2005-2011, he was a professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine. In 2014, he was appointed Adjunct Curator of North American Anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History and in 2015, he was appointed to his second term by the Hopi Tribal Government as Associate Justice of the Hopi Appellate Court. From 2006-2009, he served as Justice Pro Tempore.
