Boyd School of Law’s Addie Rolnick Appointed to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Committee

LAS VEGAS – Addie C. Rolnick, the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians Professor of Law at the William S. Boyd School of Law at UNLV, has been appointed to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s (NASEM) Committee on Law and Justice (CLAJ). Professor Rolnick also serves as the Faculty Director of the Indian Nations Gaming & Governance Program, as well as the Associate Director of the Program on Race, Gender & Policing.

“We are incredibly proud of Professor Rolnick’s appointment to NASEM’s Committee on Law and Justice,” said Leah Chan Grinvald, Dean and Richard J. Morgan Professor of Law at Boyd Law. “Her appointment – one of the only law professors to be appointed to this committee – is a testament to her nationally-recognized work in criminal justice reform.”

The CLAJ works to influence policy, set a national research agenda to help reduce crime, and use their research/evidence to amend laws and legal actions. The group focuses their work on three areas including youth and the justice system, the workings of the criminal justice system, and crime and victimization. 

“I’m excited to be a part of a national conversation on how research can affect law,” said Professor Rolnick. “It will be interesting to dig in. I look forward to working with the other board members to synthesize contributions from across the scientific disciplines and identify areas where further research is needed, particularly those involving Indigenous peoples.”

Professor Rolnick has degrees from Oberlin College, UCLA School of Law, and UCLA. Professor Rolnick has been a member of the faculty at Boyd Law since 2011, after serving as the inaugural Critical Race Studies Law Fellow at the UCLA School of Law. Before that, she represented tribal governments as a lawyer and lobbyist in Washington, D.C. Professor Rolnick was previously a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Ad Hoc Committee on Reducing Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice System.

Professor Rolnick specializes in Indigenous rights, juvenile and criminal law, and racial justice. She has written about Native people’s encounters with tribal, federal, and state justice systems; equal protection-based attacks on indigenous rights; formal and informal policing; and indigenous justice systems. 

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