Profile

Vanessa Racehorse is a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and a descendant of the Cherokee Nation and Shoshone-Paiute Tribes. She is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law, where she teaches in the Law and Indigenous Peoples Program. Her scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, the Colorado Environmental Law Journal, and the ABA’s Natural Resources & Environment magazine.

Racehorse has previously taught as the Supervising Attorney of UNM’s Southwest Indian Law Clinic and as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law. She has also served as a Deputy Attorney General for the Colorado River Indian Tribes and was an Associate Attorney at Sonosky, Chambers, Sachse, Endreson & Perry, LLP, a top-ranked national law firm dedicated to representing Native American interests.

She has an LL.M in International Criminal Law from the University of Amsterdam and a JD from Columbia Law School, where she was a recipient of the Parker School Recognition of Achievement in International and Comparative Law, President of the Columbia Native American Law Students Association and the Bluebook Editor for the Columbia Law Review.