Meet the Judges
SUPREME COURT JUDGES
chief judge Robert Mills
Supreme Court Judge Robert Mills Supreme Court Judge Robert Mills is a graduate of Boston College Law School. He is a member of the Massachusetts and Pennsylvania bar associations. Judge Mills is an enrolled member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.
Judge Matthew L.M. Fletcher
Matthew L. M. Fletcher is a professor of law at Michigan State University College of Law and director of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center. He sits as the Chief Justice of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians Supreme Court and also sits as an appellate judge for the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians, The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, the Hoopa Valley Tribe, the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi Indians, and the Santee Sioux Tribe of Nebraska. He is a member of the Grand Traverse Band, located in Peshawbestown, Michigan.
He is the reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law of American Indians. Prof. Fletcher coauthored the sixth edition of Cases and Materials on Federal Indian Law. He is under contract with West Publishing to write a hornbook on federal Indian law and with the American Bar Association to write a tribal law practice guide. He also authored American Indian Tribal Law, the first casebook for law students on tribal law; The Return of the Eagle: The Legal History of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians; and American Indian Education: Counter narratives in Racism, Struggle, and the Law. He co-edited the Indian Civil Rights Act; and Facing the Future: The Indian Child Welfare Act. Prof. Fletcher’s scholarship has been cited two times by the U. S. Supreme Court. Prof. Fletcher is the primary editor and author of the leading law blog on American Indian law and policy.
Prof. Fletcher graduated from the University of Michigan in 1994 and the University of Michigan Law School in 1997. He has worked as a staff attorney for four Indian Tribes.
JUDGE TODD R. MATHA
Judge Matha otherwise serves as a licensed judge for the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community (Scottsdale, AZ) where, for the past five years, he has primarily presided over the commercial tort and criminal caseload. He simultaneously occupies the elected position of Chief Justice on the Ho-Chunk Nation Supreme Court (Black River Falls, WI). Judge Matha ascended to this role following five consecutive terms within the Ho-Chunk Judiciary beginning in 1999. Prior to relocating to the southwest, Judge Matha acted as Solicitor General of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe (Onamia, MN). As chief legal counsel for eight years, he advised both executive and legislative branches of tribal government; litigated in federal, state, and tribal courts; supervised eleven attorneys; and oversaw a Police Department of twenty-three officers. During his in-house tenure, Judge Matha taught federal Indian law at the University of Minnesota Law School (Minneapolis, MN) in an adjunct capacity. He has also authored two law review articles within this subject area. Additionally, Judge Matha continues to adjudicate multiple cases in a pro tempore capacity for tribes throughout Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Judge Matha is an enrolled member of the Ho-Chunk Nation. He resides in Anthem, AZ with his wife and three daughters.
University of Minnesota Law School, J.D. (1996)
Dickinson College, B.A. - History & Religion (1991)
State Licensure: Arizona, Minnesota, and Wisconsin
DISTRICT COURT JUDGES
Judge Amanda White Eagle
Judge Amanda L. White Eagle is the Great Lakes Indigenous Law Center Director and Assistant Teaching Professor at University of Wisconsin Law School. Before joining UW Law School, White Eagle was the NYU-Yale American Indian Sovereignty Project Clinical Fellow.
With nearly 20 years of tribal law experience, she has provided advice and counsel to the Ho-Chunk Nation government. She previously served as a judicial officer (an interim chief judge and associate judge), as well as the tribe’s Attorney General and Executive Director for the Ho-Chunk Nation Department of Justice. Additionally, she serves as a tribal court judge or justice to tribal governments throughout the United States, including the Prairie Island Indian Community Court of Appeals, Santee Sioux Nation Judiciary and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.
She received her A.L.M. from Harvard University, Extension Studies in Government, J.D. from University of Wisconsin Law School and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with liberal arts degrees (a B.A. in Anthropology and French and a Certificate in American Indian Studies). Judge White Eagle is an enrolled member of the Ho-Chunk Nation.
Judge Jan morris
Honorable Jan W. Morris (Ret.) is Director of the National Tribal Judicial Center at the National Judicial College based in Reno, Nevada. He worked exclusively in tribal courts for over 30 years in criminal, civil, and juvenile tribal law. In addition to his prosecution and defense work, as well as court administration, Judge Morris served for over 20 years as a chief judge, appellate judge and pro tem judge for several tribes including the Gila River Indian Community, Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, Hualapai Nation, Yavapai-Apache Nation, Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, and the Ak-Chin Indian Community, among others. Since 1996, he has taught advocacy skills as well as substantive and procedural tribal law specializing in areas involving judicial skills, court clerk skills, trial advocacy skills (prosecution and defense), as well as court management and court administration. Judge Morris joined the faculty of the National Tribal Judicial Center in 2003, and in 2020 received the designation of Distinguished Faculty. Judge Morris also currently serves as an Appellate Justice for the Las Vegas Paiute Tribal Court of Appeals. He is an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
