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Lolita Buckner Inniss is a distinguished academic leader, scholar, and public servant. She currently serves as the 17th dean of the �Թ��� 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 legal scholar with a distinguished national and international reputation. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute, an honor that reflects her standing among the nation’s most accomplished legal professionals and scholars. Her prolific body of work includes scores of articles and essays, as well as the acclaimed legal history book The Princeton Fugitive Slave: The Trials of James Collins Johnson��(Fordham �Թ��� Press, 2020).

The Princeton Fugitive Slave��has garnered significant recognition. It received the New Jersey Academic Alliance Book Award in 2022 and was an invited nominee for the prestigious Yale Gilder Lehrman Frederick Douglass Book Prize. The Association of �Թ��� Presses selected it as a Community Read, and it was reviewed by the New York Review of Books. The Center for Compassionate Leadership named the book one of five essential readings for leaders committed to addressing racism—alongside works by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michelle Alexander. It has been adopted as required reading at colleges and universities across the country and is widely regarded as a foundational text in the study of slavery and higher education.

Dean Inniss’s most recent scholarly work, Social Movements and the Law��(with Bridget Crawford, �Թ��� of California Press, 2024) is an edited volume that convenes leading scholars and public intellectuals to examine how contemporary social movements influence, contest, and reshape legal norms. The collection has already received high praise from experts in law, race, and gender studies and is poised to make a lasting impact in the field of socio-legal scholarship.

Dean Inniss also brings deep experience in legal education, having taught across the law school curriculum. She began her academic career in legal writing and transitioned to clinical teaching, specializing in immigration law and political asylum. For most of her teaching career she has focused on property law and the intersection of race and legal systems, with particular emphasis on comparative approaches to racism and the law.

Books

• Social Movements and the Law (with Bridget Crawford) (�Թ��� of California Press, 2024)
• The Princeton Fugitive Slave: The Trials of James Collins Johnson (Fordham �Թ��� 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, forthcoming 2024)
• Abortion Law as Protection Narrative, 101 Oregon Law Review 213 (lead article, 2023)
• Expanding the Boundaries of Knowledge �Թ��� 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 �Թ��� 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 �Թ��� Press)
• Slavery and the Postbellum �Թ���, 74 SMU Law Review (2021)
• It's �Թ��� 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 �Թ��� Law Review Forum 213 (Invited author, 2020)
• While the Water is Stirring': Sojourner Truth as Proto-agonist in the Fight for (Black) Women's Rights, 100 Boston �Թ��� Law Review 1637 (Invited author, 2020)

Education

Dean Inniss earned her A.B. from Princeton �Թ���, 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 �Թ��� 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.
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Previous Employment Highlights

Before joining the �Թ��� 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 �Թ��� 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 �Թ��� 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 �Թ���–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
• Founding Board Member, Lutie Legacy Society (a national organization dedicated to recruiting, supporting and retaining Black women law professors)
• 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
• Life Member and Past President, Association of Black Princeton Alumni
• Founding Board Member, Princeton Charter School
• Member, Executive Committee, Princeton �Թ��� Alumni Council

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.