Professor Angela J. Davis

Angela J. Davis, Distinguished Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law, is an expert in criminal law and procedure with a specific focus on prosecutorial power and racism in the criminal justice system. Davis previously served as director of the D.C. Public Defender Service, where she began as a staff attorney representing indigent juveniles and adults. She also served as executive director of the National Rainbow Coalition and is a former law clerk of the late Honorable Theodore R. Newman, the former Chief Judge of the D.C. Court of Appeals.

Professor Davis is the author of Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor (Oxford University Press 2007) and the editor of Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution and Imprisonment (Pantheon, 2017).  She is also the co-editor of Criminal Law (Sage Publications 2015) (with Professor Katheryn Russell-Brown), Trial Stories (Foundation Press 2007) (with Professor Michael E. Tigar) and the 9th edition of Basic Criminal Procedure (Thomson West 2024) (with Professors Stephen Saltzburg and Daniel Capra). Professor Davis' other scholarly publications include articles in the Michigan, Iowa, Fordham, and Hofstra Law Reviews. Davis won the Pauline Ruyle Moore award for Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor in 2009 and for her Fordham Law Review article, Prosecution and Race: The Power and Privilege of Discretion in 2000. She was awarded a Soros Senior Justice Fellowship in 2003. She won the American University Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award in 2015, the American University Faculty Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Research, Creative Activity, and Other Professional Contributions in 2009 and the American University Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching in a Full-Time Appointment in 2002.

Professor Davis is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Frederick Douglas Jordan Scholarship Board and the Sentencing Project. She was a reporter for the ABA Justice Kennedy Commission and a member of the ABA Commission for Effective Criminal Sanctions. Professor Davis also served as a member of the Advisory Board for the Vera Institute of Justice Prosecution and Racial Justice Program. She teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Criminal Defense: Theory and Practice, and Criminal Justice Ethics:  Prosecution and Defense.