Amber Baylor

Amber Baylor is the founding director of the Criminal Defense Clinic, which focuses on defense representation in local criminal charges. Her work centers on local criminal regulation and its impacts on communities targeted by intensive policing. Her scholarship continues on this theme, including “Unexceptional Protest,” “Criminalized Students, Reparations, and the Limits of Prospective Reform,” and “Design Justice in Municipal Criminal Regulation.”

Baylor also has written about historic advocacy by women in prison, women and pretrial detention, and the impact of trauma from pretrial detention. Baylor’s scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as the Washington University Law Review, New Mexico Law Review, and Michigan Journal of Gender and Law on topics that include pedagogy for representation of community-based organizations; enforcement and regulation of municipal low-level crimes in communities of color; and use of low-level criminal charges in student discipline. 

Before joining the Law School in 2021, Baylor was the founder and director of the Criminal Defense Clinic at Texas A&M School of Law. The clinic provides defense in Texas municipal criminal courts and works with clients and advocates as counsel on federal clemency and compassionate release campaigns.

Baylor has been a visiting assistant professor in the Veterans Law Clinic at Widener University Delaware Law School and a clinical teaching fellow and supervising attorney at Georgetown Law’s Community Justice Project clinic. Baylor is a former fellow of The International Legal Foundation, where she worked with public defenders in Palestine. Prior to teaching, Baylor was a staff attorney with Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem and a trial attorney for Federal Defenders of San Diego, Inc.