Anna Roberts

Biography

Roberts is a scholar of criminal procedure and evidence, with articles published in journals that include the University of Chicago Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, Boston University Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, and U.C. Davis Law Review. She has had a book chapter published by the Oxford University Press and another is forthcoming with the Cambridge University Press.

Roberts’s scholarship focuses on aspects of trial procedure—peremptory challenges, prior conviction impeachment, jury disqualification, and jury decision-making—with a particular interest in the assumptions and stereotypes that fuel, and are fueled by, the criminal system. Recent work has investigated the impact of, and contributors to, criminal legal language. Four of Professor Roberts's articles have been selected by the Academic Advisory Board of the Getting Scholarship into Court Project for inclusion on its "must read" list. Her scholarship is excerpted in evidence casebooks written by Fisher and by Sklansky and Roth and is cited in numerous opinions and briefs. Professor Roberts teaches Evidence, Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, and Contemporary Issues in Criminal Law and Procedure. She was awarded the Dean’s Outstanding Teaching Award in 2019, the Dean’s Outstanding Scholarship Award in 2020, and the Dean’s Outstanding Service Award in 2021.  She was appointed a Dean’s Research Scholar in 2025.

Professor Roberts has analyzed evidentiary and criminal justice issues for a variety of audiences. Her work on prior conviction impeachment was featured on evidence podcast "Excited Utterance," and she has testified about jury exclusion on the basis of criminal records at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Roberts is a member of the Executive Committee of the AALS’s Evidence Section and is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Coalition for Prior Conviction Impeachment Reform. As part of her work on prior conviction impeachment she has testified in front of an Oregon legislative committee and has provided input to the Federal Advisory Committee on the Evidence Rules.

Professor Roberts holds a B.A. and an M.A. from the University of Cambridge, where she graduated first in her class in Classics, earning a Starred First with Distinction. She graduated magna cum laude from NYU School of Law, where she was a Dean's Scholar, a Florence Allen Scholar, and a Member of the Order of the Coif.

Professor Roberts began her academic career teaching in NYU School of Law’s Lawyering Program, and then at Seattle University School of Law and St John’s University School of Law. Her practice experience includes several years as a public defender with the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem. Before that, she clerked for The Honorable Constance Baker Motley, in the Southern District of New York.

Professor Roberts lives in Brooklyn with her wife, their eleven-year-old, and three dogs.