This August, four new faculty members -- Sarah Adams-Schoen, Angela Addae, Howard Arnett and Latisha Nixon-Jones -- will join Oregon Law. Their diverse expertise ranges from climate resilience, urban redevelopment, and civil rights, to business, American Indian law and disaster law. This faculty cohort is the largest hired in almost a decade and demonstrates Oregon Law’s commitment to bringing the best teachers and scholars to the institution.

“It gives me great pleasure to welcome our newest faculty members,” said Marcilynn A. Burke, Dean and Dave Frohnmayer Chair in Leadership and Law. “These faculty members will enrich our great work of educating the next generation of lawyers, developing path-breaking scholarship and driving change in our society.”

Sarah Adams-Schoen comes to Oregon Law from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law. She is a leading expert on climate resilience in the coastal and inland flood plains and wildland-urban interface.

As part of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center, she brings to her teaching a love of the theory and practice of law, grounded in more than a decade of law practice experience.

Adams-Schoen has been called on by state and national bar committees, private foundations, and government agencies, to provide guidance related to coastal resilience. She was a principal investigator (PI) on a New York Sea Grant to increase coastal resilience and the PI on a grant to draft an annotated model zoning code to facilitate small- and medium-scale wind energy development.

Adams-Schoen is admitted to practice in Oregon and the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. Prior to embarking on her legal career, Adams-Schoen received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and a master’s degree in economics at the London School of Economics. She earned her JD from Lewis and Clark Law School.

Prior to joining Oregon Law, Angela Addae was a litigation attorney with Schwabe, Williamson and Wyatt in Portland, Oregon. She litigated for businesses, both large and small, in federal court.   

As an assistant professor, Addae brings a wealth of scholarship and research on how municipal redevelopment policies affect neighborhood institutions in urban settings. This year she will teach in the areas of Civil Rights Law, Social Enterprise Law, and Race and the Law.  

Addae is admitted to practice in Oregon state courts, the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.  Before practicing law, Addae was the recipient of a number of research grants and selected for several fellowships.  She also taught courses in sociology at the University of Arizona.

She earned her JD from the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law and her doctorate from the University of Arizona School of Sociology. She is also an alumna of Fisk University, where she received her BA in Sociology.

Howard Arnett is a distinguished alum of Oregon Law. Having received his JD in 1977, he now assumes the position of Professor of Practice.  He will teach American Indian Law, Contemporary Issues in American Indian Law, and Comparative Law of Indigenous Peoples. He has been a pro tem instructor at the law school for ten years and has devoted countless hours outside of the classroom to coach and mentor our students and graduates.

A partner at Karnopp Petersen LLP in Bend, Oregon, he has concentrated his practice in the area of Federal Indian law, especially with the representation of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon and other tribes on matters involving treaty rights, tribal sovereignty, tribal law development, government-to-government relations, water rights, and gaming. 

Arnett is admitted to practice in: the state and federal district courts of Oregon and Arizona, Court of Federal Claims, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, United States Supreme Court, and the Navajo Nation Supreme Court.

Arnett earned his M.Sc., with distinction, from the London School of Economics. He received his BA, with distinction, from Stanford University.

Latisha Nixon-Jones joins Oregon Law from the Disaster Law Clinic at Southern University Law Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Professor Nixon-Jones is emerging as one of the top voices in the developing disaster law field.  In August she will teach in Oregon Law’s highly ranked Legal Research and Writing program.

In addition to Disaster Law, Professor Nixon-Jones’ expertise is in Legal Writing Pedagogy, Entrepreneurial Law, Wills and Estates Law, Alternative Dispute Resolution, Social Security Law and Insurance Law. 

Upon graduation from law school, Nixon-Jones founded her own practice through the Louisiana State Bar Association’s incubator program. The goal of her firm was to bridge the gap for justice for small business in low income families through the use of technology and unbundled services. She also was an Equal Justice Works Fellow, working on the creation and expansion of the Disaster Legal Clinic at Southern University.

Nixon-Jones is licensed to practice in Louisiana. She earned her JD, cum laude, from Southern University Law Center and received her BSM in Management and Finance from Tulane University.