Robert A. Williams, Jr.
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Robert A. Williams Jr. is an American lawyer, author, and legal scholar. He works in the fields of federal
Indian law The legal system of India consists of civil, common law and customary, Islamic ethics, or religious law within the legal framework inherited from the colonial era and various legislation first introduced by the British are still in effect i ...
,
international law International law (also known as public international law and the law of nations) is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognized as binding between states. It establishes normative guidelines and a common conceptual framework for ...
,
indigenous peoples Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
' rights, critical race and post-
colonial theory A multicellular organism is an organism that consists of more than one cell, in contrast to unicellular organism. All species of animals, land plants and most fungi are multicellular, as are many algae, whereas a few organisms are partially uni ...
. Williams teaches at the
University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...
's
James E. Rogers College of Law University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law is the law school at the University of Arizona located in Tucson, Arizona and was the first law school founded in the State of Arizona, opening its doors in 1915. Also known as University of Ar ...
, serving as Regents Professor, E. Thomas Sullivan Professor of Law and Faculty Chair of the
Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program The James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona has created an academic center for the study of American Indian and indigenous peoples law, policy, and human rights. The Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy (IPLP) Program furthers the ...
.Tribal Leaders Program, "Robert A. William, Jr.
University of Washington School of Law, accessed 17 Aug 2009


Family

Williams is the son of Robert Anthony Williams Sr. and Sallie Williams. He has a wife and two children, Sam and Marley. He has a sister named Karen Amanda Cooper (née Williams) who has four children: Zac, Andrew, K.C., and Ben Cooper.


Early life and education

Williams is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Indian Tribe of North Carolina. He earned his B.A. from
Loyola College in Maryland Loyola University Maryland is a private Jesuit university in Baltimore, Maryland. Established as Loyola College in Maryland by John Early and eight other members of the Society of Jesus in 1852, it is the ninth-oldest Jesuit college in the U ...
in 1977 and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1980.


Career

Now at University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, Williams has established a notable career in the fields of American Indian and International law, indigenous people's rights, and critical race and colonial theory. He has published several books on these topics. For the 2003-2004 academic year, Williams was named the first
Oneida Indian Nation The Oneida Indian Nation (OIN) or Oneida Nation is a federally recognized tribe of Oneida people in the United States. The tribe is headquartered in Verona, New York, where the tribe originated and held its historic territory long before European ...
Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He previously taught there as the Bennet Boskey Distinguished Visiting Lecturer of Law."Robert A. Williams, Jr."
Harvard Law, accessed 15 Aug 2009 Williams served as Chief Justice for the Court of Appeals, Pascua Yaqui Indian Reservation. He also served as Justice for the Court of Appeals and trial judge ''pro tem'' for the Tohono O'odham Nation. Williams has represented tribal groups before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and
the United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmonizi ...
Working Group on Indigenous Peoples The Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP) was a subsidiary body within the structure of the United Nations. It was established in 1982, and was one of the six working groups overseen by the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of ...
. He served as co-counsel for Floyd Hicks in the
United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
case, '' Nevada v. Hicks'' .


Awards and honors

Williams has received awards from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the
Soros Foundation Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, is a grantmaking network founded and chaired by business magnate George Soros. Open Society Foundations financially supports civil society groups around the world, with a st ...
Open Society Institute, the
National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...
, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Institute of Justice in recognition of his research and advocacy on behalf of Indian tribes and indigenous peoples. *1990 Annual Gustavus Meyers Human Rights Center Award, for outstanding book on the subject of prejudice in the United States - ''The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest'')


Selected works

* * * * *


References


External links


Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy ProgramArizonaNativeNet
{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Robert A. Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers Harvard Law School alumni University of Arizona faculty American male non-fiction writers