UCLA School of Law professor Angela R. Riley was elected on April 22 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, among the world’s preeminent learned societies of scholars, scientists, and artists.

Founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock and others, the academy “honors excellence and convenes leaders from every field of human endeavor to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and work together ‘to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.’”

Riley holds the Carole Goldberg Endowed Chair in Native American Law and directs the Native Nations Law and Policy Center and the joint degree program in law and American Indian studies. An advisor to the UCLA chancellor on Native American and Indigenous Affairs and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she focuses her research on Indigenous peoples’ rights and studies the ways in which the legal system can advance tribal sovereignty and self-determination. She has played an influential role in shaping debates over Native American mascots and cultural and intellectual property. Since 2010, she has served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and is an appellate judge on the courts of appeal for both the Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians and the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians. She also served as co-chair of the United Nations Indigenous Peoples’ Partnership Policy Board, whose mission is to implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Riley joined the UCLA Law faculty in 2010 and is a member of the American Law Institute and the American Philosophical Society. She earned her B.A. from the University of Oklahoma and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.

She joined three other UCLA leaders who were accepted into the academy in 2026: Eva Baker, a distinguished research professor in the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies; Elizabeth Ligon Bjork, an emerita psychology professor in the UCLA College; and Ursula Heise, a distinguished professor of English in the UCLA College and UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

They were among the 252 leaders in academia, the arts, science industry, journalism, philanthropy, policy, and research who were chosen for membership this year. Other notable inductees included authors Barbara Kingsolver and Colson Whitehead, entertainers Jodie Foster and Rita Moreno, and basketball coach Dawn Staley.

A version of this story was also published in the UCLA Newsroom.