Alexis J. Hoag-Fordjour

Biography

Alexis Hoag-Fordjour joined the faculty in 2021. She teaches and writes in criminal law and procedure, evidence, and abolition, and co-directs the Center for Criminal Justice. Professor Hoag-Fordjour's scholarship focuses on criminal procedure, particularly the right to counsel, and how race and ethnicity have impacted the jurisprudence. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming in the New York University Law Review (twice), Michigan Law Review, Boston University Law Review, Fordham Law Review, U.C. Davis Law Review, Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, and other publications.

The Constitutional Accountability Center selected Professor Hoag-Fordjour as the inaugural scholar-in-residence where she will spend the 2024-2025 school year. She serves on the boards of the  Death Penalty Information Center and the Eighth Amendment Project, and is a member of the Reform Leadership Council at Vera Institute of Justice. A legal contributor for CNN, Professor Hoag-Fordjour frequently provides on-air analysis for MSNBC, Al-Jazeera, NPR, CBS, and other media outlets. In 2021, she was elected to membership in the American Law Institute.

Prior to joining the Law School, Professor Hoag-Fordjour served as the inaugural practitioner-in-residence at the Eric H. Holder Jr. Initiative for Civil & Political Rights at Columbia University, and as a lecturer at Columbia Law School. She spent more than a decade as a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer, primarily representing capitally convicted clients in federal post-conviction proceedings, with the  NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and the Office of the Federal Public Defender in Nashville, Tennessee. Professor Hoag-Fordjour graduated from Yale University and NYU School of Law, where she was a Derrick Bell Public Interest Scholar. She served as a law clerk for the late Judge John T. Nixon of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee.