Aliza Organick
Professor of Law and Interim Co-director of the Law Clinic

Aliza Organick, a citizen of the Dine Nation, born to the Tsenijikini Clan (Cliff Dweller Clan), joined the Washburn University School of Law faculty in 2004, bringing an expertise in clinical legal education, tribal court practice, and criminal defense in Indian Country. Her career at Washburn began with the creation of the Tribal and State Court Practice clinic section with its focus on representing Native American clients in Kansas tribal courts.

Prior to joining the Washburn Law faculty, she was a Visiting Professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law where she taught in the Southwest Indian Law Clinic serving Native American clients in New Mexico and Arizona. Professor Organick is also a former Assistant Public Defender for the State of New Mexico where she represented both adults and juveniles. While at the Public Defender Office she also worked in the Mental Health Unit providing training to attorneys across the state on issues specific to mental health and the juvenile client.

Professor Organick earned her J.D. from the University of New Mexico in 1996. Immediately following her graduation from law school, she co-founded and directed the Miners' Legal Resource Center (MLRC), a grant funded public interest law initiative. MLRC provided basic access to legal advocacy and diagnostic health care services for coal and uranium miners in the Four Corners region of the southwest United States, including the Navajo Reservation. For her work on that project from 1996-1998, she received post graduate fellowships from the Berkeley Law Foundation at the University of California, the Initiative for Public Interest Law at Yale University, and the Echoing Green Public Service Foundation Fellowship.

In addition to teaching in the clinical program at Washburn, Professor Organick teaches several seminar courses she has created including Tribal Court Practice Seminar, International Law of Indigenous Peoples, and Comparative Law: Method and Theory. In 2006, she taught Comparative Legal Systems in Washburn's Summer Study Abroad Program formerly held in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Professor Organick is the co-founder and co-organizer of the Indian Law Clinics and Externship Symposium which takes place annually in Indian Country. The goal of this symposium is to create a pedagogy and methodology for training law students to practice law among Native people in Indigenous communities. She has organized and presented at numerous continuing legal education programs, including those that focus on developing expertise in the practice of law in tribal court settings. Professor Organick has also been an invited presenter on the Indigenous Stream at the Society of Legal Scholars Annual conference at De Montfort University in Leicester, United Kingdom in 2009. In 2011, she was a plenary speaker at the Australian National Conference on Clinical and Experiential Learning at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Professor Organick is a past Chair of the American Association of Law School's section on Indian Nations and Indigenous Peoples and currently serves on the Executive Committee of that Section. In 2011, she became a board member of the National Native American Bar Association. She is admitted to practice in New Mexico, Kansas, the Federal District Court for the District of New Mexico, and the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation District Court, Kickapoo Nation of Kansas Tribal Court, and Iowa Nation Tribal Court.

Professor Organick's scholarship includes articles and other publications on Indigenous Peoples' rights and Tribal Court Practice.