Lolita Buckner Inniss

Dean and Provost's Professor of Law

401 UCB
2450 Kittredge Loop Drive
Wolf Law Building Room 323
Boulder, CO  80309
Office: 323C
E-mail: lawdean@colorado.edu

Bio:
Lolita Buckner Inniss is a distinguished academic leader, scholar, and public servant. She currently serves as the 17th dean of the University of Colorado Law School and holds the title of Provost's Professor of Law. She is also an affiliate of the Center for African & African American Studies. As Dean, she has worked to advance access and equity for students, met critical instructional needs through the recruitment of one of the most accomplished and largest cohorts of faculty in the school's history, and overseen one of the largest clinical education gifts ever received by the institution.

Scholarly Work and Teaching

Dean Inniss is a widely respected scholar with a prominent national and international reputation. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute, an organization comprised of many of the nation's most accomplished legal professionals and scholars. Her scholarly contributions include scores articles and essays, as well as the acclaimed legal history book The Princeton Fugitive Slave: The Trials of James Collins Johnson (Fordham University Press, 2020).

The book received the New Jersey Academic Alliance Book Award in 2022 and was invited for nomination for the Yale Gilder Lehrman Frederick Douglass Book Prize. It was also selected by the Association of University Presses as a Community Read and reviewed by the New York Review of Books. Additionally, the Center for Compassionate Leadership named The Princeton Fugitive Slave one of five essential books for leaders engaging with the topic of racism, alongside works by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michelle Alexander. The book has been adopted as required reading at colleges and universities nationwide and is regarded as a vital resource for the study of slavery and higher education.

Her most recent scholarly book, Social Movements and the Law, is an edited volume that brings together leading scholars and public intellectuals to explore how contemporary social movements shape, challenge, and redefine legal norms. The collection has received early praise from experts in law, race, and gender studies and is expected to make a lasting contribution to the field of socio-legal scholarship.

Dean Inniss brings extensive experience in legal education, having taught across a broad range of courses. She began her academic career in legal reasoning and writing and later transitioned to clinical teaching, with a focus on immigration law and political asylum. Over time, her teaching has concentrated on property law, criminal law, and the intersection of race and legal systems, particularly through comparative approaches to racism and the law.

Books
Social Movements and the Law (with Bridget Crawford) (University of California Press, 2024)
The Princeton Fugitive Slave: The Trials of James Collins Johnson (Fordham University Press, 2019; 2020)

Recent Articles, Essays and Book Chapters
* The Past and Present of Slavery in the United States, in Critical Legal Perspectives on Contemporary Slavery: On the Presence of the Past' Adelle Blackett, Edward Van Daalen, eds. (Brill, 2024)
* Abortion Law as Protection Narrative, 101 Oregon Law Review 213 (lead article, 2023)
* Expanding the Boundaries of Knowledge About Slavery and Its Legacy, 94 Colorado Law Review 381 (Invited author, 2023)
* Should I Stay or Should I Go? 26 Green Bag 2D 19 (2023)
* "Roxanne Shante's 'Independent Woman': Making Space for Women in Hip Hop," in Gregory S. Parks and Frank Rudy Cooper, editors, Hip Hop Law and Policy (2022, Cambridge University Press)
* "Property Law Revolution, Devolution, and Feminist Legal Theory," in Eloisa C. Rodriguez-Dod and Elena Maria Marty-Nelson, editors, Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Property Opinions of The United States Supreme Court (Invited author, 2021; Cambridge University Press)
* Slavery and the Postbellum University, 74 SMU Law Review (2021)
* It's About Bloody Time and Space, 41 Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 146 (Invited author, 2021)
* Race, Space and Surveillance: A Response to #LivingWhileBlack: Blackness as Nuisance, by Taja-Nia Henderson and Jamila Jefferson-Jones, American University Law Review Forum 213 (Invited author, 2020)
* (Un)Common Law and the Female Body, 61 Boston College Law Review Electronic Supplement (Invited author, 2020)
* While the Water is Stirring: Sojourner Truth as Proto-agonist in the Fight for (Black) Women's Rights, 100 Boston University Law Review 1637 (Invited author, 2020)

Education
Dean Inniss earned her A.B. from Princeton University, where she majored in Romance Languages and Literature and completed certificates in African American Studies and Latin American Studies. While at Princeton, she was awarded the National Urban League Essay Prize, a Latin American Travel Studies Scholarship, and was named a Princeton-in-France Scholar. She received her J.D. from the UCLA School of Law, where she was a moot court honors participant and served as an editor of the National Black Law Journal, the first legal journal in the United States dedicated to issues at the intersection of race and law. Dean Inniss later earned an LL.M. with Distinction and a Ph.D. in Law from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Canada. At Osgoode, she was the recipient of the Mary Jane Mossman Award for Excellence in Feminist Legal Studies, the Harley D. Hallett Award, and was named a Peter Hogg Scholar.

Previous Employment Highlights
Before joining the University of Colorado Law School, Dean Inniss served as Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at SMU Dedman School of Law, the second-highest leadership position within the law school, and held the title of Professor of Law. At SMU, she was named a University Distinguished Professor--one of the institution's highest faculty honors--awarded to those who have demonstrated excellence in teaching and scholarship based on nationally recognized standards. She also served as the inaugural Robert G. Storey Distinguished Faculty Fellow.

Earlier in her career, Dean Inniss was a member of the faculty at Cleveland State University College of Law, where she held the Joseph C. Hostetler-Baker and Hostetler Chair in Law and was recognized with the Provost's Merit Award for outstanding faculty achievement. She also held the Elihu Root Peace Fund Visiting Professorship in Women's Studies at Hamilton College, a prestigious visiting chair. Additionally, she was a fellow at the New York University-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, France--one of Europe's leading research institutions.

Selected Public and Non-profit Service
* Chair, the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Women in Legal Education section
* Board member, Law School Admissions Council (LSAC)
* Co-founder, AALS Law Deans' Clearinghouse on Freedom of Speech
* Member, AALS Deans' Steering Committee
* United States Special Rapporteur on the topic of contemporary slavery for the International Academy of Comparative Law
* Legal Resource Team Member, American Bar Association/United Nations Development Program
* Founding Board Member, Princeton Charter School
* Member, Executive Committee, Princeton University Alumni Council
* Founding Board Member, Lutie Legacy Society (a national organization dedicated to recruiting, supporting and retaining Black women law professors)
* Life Member and Past President, Association of Black Princeton Alumni

Personal
Dean Inniss, a first-generation college and law school attendee, is a multigenerational native of Los Angeles, California on her maternal side, and is also descended from Tulsa massacre survivors. On her paternal side she descends from a great-great-grandfather who served at Appomattox in the US Civil War and who was an early Colorado inhabitant. Dean Inniss is an avid genealogist and deploys these skills for both scholarly and personal projects; on both her maternal and paternal sides she has traced her family back to 18th century Virginia.

Published Books

Social Movements and the Law, (with Bridget Crawford) (University of California Press, 2024).

The Princeton Fugitive Slave: The Trials of James Collins Johnson, (Fordham University Press, 2020). A scholarly review is available at Humanities and Social Sciences Online.

Articles

Abortion Law as Protection Narrative, 101 Oregon Law Review, 213 (Lead article, 2023).

Expanding the Boundaries of Knowledge About Slavery and Its Legacy, 94 Colorado Law Review 381 (Invited author, 2023).

Should I Stay or Should I Go?, 26 Green Bag 2D 19 (2023); republished on Taxprof Blog, "The Clash And The U.S. News Law School Rankings: Should I Stay Or Should I Go?".

It's About Bloody Time and Space, 41 Columbia Journal of Gender and Law (2021) (Invited author).

Buckner Inniss (with Skyler Arbuckle), Slavery and the Postbellum University, 74 SMU Law Review (2021).

Race, Space and Surveillance: A Response to #LivingWhileBlack: Blackness as Nuisance, by Taja-Nia Henderson and Jamila Jefferson-Jones, American University Law Review Forum 213 (2020) (Invited author).

(Un)Common Law and the Female Body, 61 Boston College Law Review Electronic Supplement (2020) (Invited author).

'While the Water is Stirring': Sojourner Truth as Proto-agonist in the Fight for (Black) Women's Rights, 100 Boston University Law Review 1637 (2020) (Invited author).

Book Chapters

The Past and Present of Slavery in the United States, in CRITICAL LEGAL PERSPECTIVES ON CONTEMPORARY SLAVERY: ON THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST (Adelle Blackett and Edward Van Daalen, eds., Brill, 2024).

Property Law Revolution, Devolution, and Feminist Legal Theory, in FEMINIST JUDGMENTS: REWRITTEN PROPERTY OPINIONS OF THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT (Eloisa C. Rodriguez-Dod and Elena Maria Marty-Nelson, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2021) (Invited guest essayist).

Roxanne Shante's 'Independent Woman': Making Space for Women in Hip Hop, in HIP HOP LAW AND POLICY (Gregory S. Parks and Frank Rudy Cooper, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2021) .

The Lucky Law Professor and the Eucatastrophic Moment, in PRESUMED INCOMPETENT II (Carmen Gonzalez, ed., University Press of Colorado, 2020) (Invited author).

Ships' Ballast as an Object of International Law, in INTERNATIONAL LAW'S OBJECTS: EMERGENCE, ENCOUNTER AND ERASURE THROUGH OBJECT AND IMAGE (Jessie Hohmann and Daniel Joyce, eds., Oxford University Press, 2019) (Invited author).

Cecelia Kell v. Canada, in FEMINIST JUDGMENTS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, (Hart Publishing, September 2019) (with Jessie Hohmann and Enzamaria Tramontana).