Angela J. Davis, Distinguished Professor of Law Emerita at American University Washington College of Law, is an expert in criminal law and procedure with a specific focus on prosecutorial power and racism in the criminal justice system. Davis previously served as director of the D.C. Public Defender Service, where she began as a staff attorney representing indigent juveniles and adults. She also served as executive director of the National Rainbow Coalition and is a former law clerk of the late Honorable Theodore R. Newman, the former Chief Judge of the D.C. Court of Appeals. Davis is the author of Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor (Oxford University Press 2007). She is also the editor of Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution and Imprisonment (Penguin Random House 2017) and co-editor of the 2nd Edition of Criminal Law (Sage Publications 2025) (with Professor Katheryn Russell-Brown), Trial Stories(Foundation Press 2007) (with Professor Michael E. Tigar) and the 9th edition of Basic Criminal Procedure (Thomson West, 2024) (with Professors Stephen Saltzburg and Daniel Capra). Davis's other scholarly publications include articles in the Michigan, Iowa, Fordham, and Hofstra Law Reviews. Davis won the Pauline Ruyle Moore award for Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor in 2009 and for her Fordham Law Review article, Prosecution and Race: The Power and Privilege of Discretion in 2000. Davis was awarded a Soros Senior Justice Fellowship in 2003. She won the American University Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award in 2015, the American University Faculty Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Research, Creative Activity, and Other Professional Contributions in 2009 and the American University Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching in a Full-Time Appointment in 2002. Davis was the 2018 recipient of the D.C. Bar Thurgood Marshall Award and the 2016 recipient of the ABA Raeder-Taslitz Award.