TU boasts a number of faculty members with recognized expertise in Indian law. The Center faculty publish and speak regularly in their areas of specialization, and most are involved in the revision of Felix S. Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian law, the premier treatise in the field.

No other law school can match the quality and experience of these professors. That, combined with TU's tradition of small classes and extensive faculty/student interaction, means that students are able to work closely with all members of the Center faculty.

In addition to the five Co-Directors of the Center, more than a dozen other TU professors write in the area of Indian law and incorporate Indian law into their courses.

As is demonstrated below, our faculty include nationally recognized experts, including an attorney who won an Indian law case before the Supreme Court . . .

 

Center Faculty:

Judith Royster

 

Professor of Law
Co-Director, Native American Law Center

Professor Royster is a nationally recognized expert in the areas of Indian environmental law, water law, and mineral development; as such, she is regularly sought after to speak at conferences. She co-authored the leading textbook oon Native American natural resources law and is published extensively on a variety of Indian law topics. In addition to her role as a contributing author of Felix S. Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law, she is also one of seven editors for the book.

Professor Royster has served as president of the Oklahoma Indian Legal Services Board of Directors and as a faculty member of the Essential Skills for Tribal Court Judges program at the National Judicial College. She manages the listservs for the National Native American Bar Association and the Oklahoma Indian Bar Association.

Professor Royster received her B.A., M.A., and J.D. (cum laude) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif and served on the Wisconsin Law Review. She clerked for Chief Judge Barbara B. Crabb of the Western District of Wisconsin and was the Natural Resources Law Institute Fellow at the Northwestern School of Law, Lewis and Clark College. She was a visiting assistant professor at Tulsa in 1990-91 and joined the TU faculty as an associate professor in 1992. She has also taught at the law schools of Stetson University and Chicago-Kent. She has been admitted to practice in Wisconsin and before the Muscogee (Creek) Nation courts, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She is a member of the Oklahoma Indian Bar Association and the Native American Bar Association.

Professor Royster teaches Federal Indian Law and Native American Natural Resources Law, as well as Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure and Administrative Law.

Melissa L. Tatum

 

Professor of Law
Co-Director, Native American Law Center

Professor Tatum is nationally known for her work in jurisdiction and procedure (particularly with respect to tribal courts) and is developing a national reputation in the field of group rights. She served on a joint federal/state/tribal working group on cross-jurisdictional enforcement of protection orders and co-authored a model tribal code for enforcement of foreign protection orders. Professor Tatum served as a judge on the Southwest Intertribal Court of Appeals from 1999-2006. She is the general editor of the Mvskoke Law Reporter, which contains the court decisions of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation from 1832-present, and in her role as general editor, she developed a system for indexing and publishing the tribal court opinions of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She also manages a variety of listservs for both faculty and students interested in Indian law.

Professor Tatum received her B.A. (magna cum laude) from Trinity University, and her J.D. (magna cum laude) from the University of Michigan. While at Michigan, she served on the Michigan Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. After law school, Professor Tatum clerked for U.S. Magistrate Judge Steven D. Pepe of the Eastern District of Michigan, U.S. Circuit Judge James Ryan of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and U.S. Circuit Judge Cornelia Kennedy, also of the Sixth Circuit. Professor Tatum began teaching at TU in 1995. She is admitted to practice in Michigan, as well as before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She is also a member of the Native American Bar Association and the Oklahoma Indian Bar Association.

Professor Tatum teaches Protection of Minority and Indigenous Cultures and the American Indian Law Seminar. She also teaches Criminal Procedure: Police Practices and Conflicts of Law.

More information about Professor Tatum's publications and presentations

G. William Rice

 

Associate Professor of Law
Co-Director, Native American Law Center

Professor Rice is one of a handful of tenured law professors who are members of federally recognized tribes. He is a member of the United Keetowah Band of Cherokee, which he has served as assistant chief.

Professor Rice successfully argued on behalf of the Sac and Fox Nation in the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Oklahoma Tax Commission v. Sac and Fox Nation, 508 U.S. 114 (1993), has attended meetings of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations, and has spoken at the United Nations conference on Indigenous Children and Youth. He has spent more than 20 years representing Indian tribes and entities, serving in various capacities with tribal governments.

He has served as the Attorney General for the Sac and Fox Nation, Chief Justice for the Citizen Potowatomi Nation, Supreme Court Justice for the Sac and Fox of Kansas, Judge for the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee in Oklahoma and the Otoe-Missouria Tribe of Oklahoma, and in other capacities with various Indian tribal governments. He also serves on the Enforcement Subcommitee of the EPA's National Environmental Justice Advisory Council. Professor Rices has also taught at Antioch School of Law's Indian Paralegal program, visited at the University of Oklahoma and Cornell Law Schools, and served as the Director of the Northern Plains Tribal Judicial Training Institute at the University of North Dakota School of Law.

Professor Rice earned his B.A. from Phillips University and his J.D. at the University of Oklahoma College of Law in 1978.

Professor Rice teaches Tribal Government, Native American and Indigenous Rights, Federal Indian Gaming Law, Jurisprudence, and Constitutional Law.

Vicki J. Limas

 

Associate Dean of Students and Professor of Law
Co-Director, Native American Law Center

Professor Vicki Limas is the leading national expert on labor and employment law in Indian country. She has published articles on the juxtaposition of tribal sovereign rights and individual civil rights in suits by employees and on the applicability of federal labor and employment laws to Indian nations. She is a contributing author to the 2005 Revisions of Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law.

Professor Limas is an adjunct settlement judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma. She has been president of the Board of Directors for Legal Services of Eastern Oklahoma and secretary-treasurer of Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma.

Professor Limas teaches Employment Law, Employment Discrimination Law, Mediation and Introduction to Alternative Dispute Resolution.

NALC Fellows:

Credit for TU's depth of expertise rests on the University as a whole, and in recognition of the University-wide commitments, the Native American Law Center instituted a NALC Fellows Program. NALC Fellows are those whose primary emphasis is not Indian law, but who incorporate Indian issues into their work.

President Steadman Upham

became the seventeenth president of The University of Tulsa in June 2004. Prior to entering administration, he was a professor of anthropology and archaeology, with a specialty in the sociopolitical and economic structure (AD 1250-1600) of late prehispanic Puebloan populations of the American Southwest.

Gary D. Allison, Professor of Law

teaches environmental law, regulated industries, hazardous waste control, and water law. He is a fellow of the National Energy-Environmental Law and Policy Institute and serves as the Director of the Public Policy and Regulation Certificate Program.

Garrick Bailey, Professor of Anthropology

has served as a member of the Indian Health Advisory Committee, Department of Heath, Education and Welfare and as a consultant to the Indian Claims division of the Department of Justice. Professor Bailey is presently a member of the National NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) Review Committee, Department of the Interior.

Marianne Blair, Professor of Law

teaches family law and is co-author of a textbook on international family law. She has incorporated Indian and indigenous law into her courses.

John Coward, Professor and Chair of the Communication Department

is the author of The Newspaper Indian: Native American Identity in the Press, 1820-1890 (Univ. of Illinois Press 1999). Dr. Coward has also published articles on twentieth-century representations of Indians and on the Native press itself.

Faye Hadley, Native American Resources Law Librarian

is an invaluable resource to both faculty and students. She compiled a much-used pathfinder on Native American Resources, which can be found at www.law.utulsa.edu/library/research/pathfinders/natam

Janet Koven Levit, Dean

writes about international finance and international human rights issues, and she teaches international law, international commercial law, international human rights, contracts, and administrative law.

Marla E. Mansfield, Professor of Law

serves as editor of the Year in Review for the ABA's Section on Natural Resources, Energy, and Environmental Law and as Associate Director of NELPI. A former attorney with the Dept. Of Interior, Mansfield teaches in the area of energy law and has written a textbook in that field.

Madeleine Plasencia, Associate Professor of Law

has written extensively in the area of telecommunications access and race, gender and Native Americans.

James P. Ronda, H. G. Barnard Chair in Western American History,

is a past president of the Western History Association. A specialist in the history of the exploration of the American West, he is the author of many books and essays as well as a consultant for several national museum exhibitions. Much of Dr. Ronda's work centers on relations between Euro-American explorers and native people.