Biography

Professor Angi Porter joined Howard University School of Law in 2026. She teaches Africana Legal Studies, Higher Education Law, Property, and Torts. She is the recipient of the 2026 Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) Junior Great Teacher Award, the 2024 Association of American Law Schools Teacher of the Year Award, and the 2024 Washington College of Law Excellence in Teaching Award.

Prior to entering the academy, Professor Porter spent several years as a litigator in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where her practice centered on civil commercial litigation before federal and state courts and included work on health litigation, defamation, breach of contract, death penalty, asylum, and criminal misdemeanor cases. She then worked at the University of Minnesota, where she served on a team of attorneys investigating discrimination and sexual misconduct. Previously, she served as a judicial law clerk for the Honorable Michael J. Davis of the U.S. District Court of the District of Minnesota. 

Professor Porter’s scholarly work is in Africana Legal Studies. In this groundbreaking research, she explores continental and diasporic African governance systems and examines how those systems existed and persisted despite the imposition of (Western) Law achieved through enslavement, colonization, imperialism, and other forms of oppression.   

Professor Porter received her J.D. from Howard University School of Law, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Howard Law Journal. She earned her B.A. with high honors from Howard University, where she studied Communications and Africana Studies. 

Publications:

Torts in a Nutshell (8th ed.) (2026 West Academic) (co-authors Jamie Abrams, Edward J. Kionka). 

Black Letter Outline on Torts (6th ed.) (2025 West Academic) (co-authors Jamie Abrams, Edward J. Kionka).   

POISON! An Africana Legal Studies Investigation into Enslaved Africans and Their Deadly Roots, 43 Minn. J. Law & Ineq. 1 (2025).

Africana Legal Studies: A New Theoretical Approach to Law & Protocol, 27 Mich. J. Race & L. 2 (2022).

Comment, James Oakes’s Treatment of the First Confiscation Act in Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861 – 1865, 57 How. L.J. 137 (2013).

Comment, Pharaohs, Nubians, and Antiquities: International Law Suggests It’s Time for a Change in Egypt, 56 How. L.J. 541 (2013).