Nell Jessup Newton

Joseph A. Matson Dean
Professor of Law

Office Number: 2100 Eck Hall of Law
Telephone: 574.631.6789
Email: Nell Newton
Staff Assistant: Julie Shook

Nell Jessup Newton became Notre Dame Law School’s tenth dean on July 1, 2009. Newton came to Notre Dame from UC Hastings College of Law, where she was the Chancellor & Dean and William B. Lockhart Professor of Law. Previously, she served as dean of the law schools of the University of Connecticut and the University of Denver. Dean Newton taught Contracts, Property, Constitutional Law, and American Indian Law at Catholic University Law School (1976-1992) and then at American University Law School (1992-1998). From 1990 to 1997 Dean Newton also taught at the Pre-Law Summer Institute for Native American Students (PLSI) at the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Newton is a leading scholar of American Indian law, especially as that field intersects with federal constitutional and property law, writing frequently cited law review articles on tribal property rights and rights to self-government. She was the co-author of the third edition of one of the leading textbooks on Indian Law, Cases & Materials on American Indian Law, and is the editor-in-chief of Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law, the only treatise on the subject. Her many law review articles have been reprinted in scholarly books on Indian law, race law, the law of reparations, and legal philosophy.

Newton earned her bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley in humanities with an emphasis on ancient Greek, and her law degree from UC Hastings, where she was elected to the Thurston Society and the Order of the Coif and served as managing editor of the Hastings Law Journal. She is active in scholarly and educational organizations, such as the American Association of Law Schools, the American Bar Association, and the Law School Admissions Council. She is a director of the National Association of Law Placement Foundation and is a life fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the Connecticut Bar Foundation. She also served as an associate justice of the Yurok Tribal Supreme Court in 2008-2009.

About The Matson Chair

The Joseph A. Matson Chair in Law, established in 1988, is a gift from the estate of Sylvia F. Matson of Bolivar, New York, to endow the deanship of the Law School. Mrs. Matson, who died in 1985 at the age of 99, was the widow of Albert Matson, a Bolivar attorney with business interests in oil and gas. The chair honors the memory of the Matsons’ son, a 1942 graduate of the University who died in 1944 in an Air Force flight-training accident.