Office: Wolf Law Building, 468
Education
JD, Harvard Law School
BA, Dartmouth College
Kristen Carpenter is the Council Tree Professor of Law and Director of the American Indian Law Program at the University of Colorado Law School. Professor Carpenter was appointed to the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as its member from North America from 2017-2021. She currently serves as a Justice of the Shawnee Tribe Supreme Court and co-lead of The Implementation Project, with colleagues at the Native American Rights Fund. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School.
At Colorado Law, Professor Carpenter teaches and writes in the areas of Property, Cultural Property, American Indian Law, Human Rights, and Indigenous Peoples in International Law. She has published several books and legal treatises on these topics, and her articles appear in leading law reviews. Professor Carpenter has been awarded the Provost's Award for Faculty Achievement and the Outstanding New Faculty Award. She has served as Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Associate Dean for Research. She was a founding member of the campus-wide Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies at CU-Boulder. In 2016 she was the Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
Before entering academia, Carpenter clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit and was an attorney at Hill & Barlow, P.C., in Boston. She gained experience in Indian law as a clerk for the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and at the law firms of Fredericks, Pelcyger, Hester & White and Sonosky, Chambers, Sachse, Miller & Munson. Professor Carpenter is an elected member of the American Law Institute and served for many years on the Federal Bar Association's Indian Law Section Board.