On Monday, February 26, Professor Anthony Paul Farley delivered Albany Law School’s Inaugural James Campbell Matthews Black History Month Lecture, named for the law school’s first African-American graduate, Class of 1870, and the first black judge in New York State.

Farley is the James Campbell Matthews Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at Albany Law School. His lecture, entitled “Racism and the Future,” was followed commentary by professors Donna Young and Christian Sundquist. Professor Farley put forward numerous messages, saying that in the age of nuclear weapons, we need to eliminate racism not only to improve all our lives, but to ensure the human race survives.

Professor Farley’s scholarship includes constitutional law, criminal procedure, and human rights.  His theoretical work in critical race theory is at the crossroads of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and political economy. His work has appeared in chapter form in Bandung, Global History, and International Law (Eslava et al. eds., Cambridge University Press 2017); Hip Hop and the Law  (Bridgewater et al. eds., Carolina Academic Press 2015); After the Storm: Black Intellectuals Explore the Meaning of Hurricane Katrina (Troutt ed., The New Press 2007); Cultural Analysis, Cultural Studies & the Law (Sarat & Simon eds., Duke University Press 2003); Crossroads, Directions & a New Critical Race Theory (Valdes et al. eds., Temple University Press 2002); Black Men on Race, Gender & Sexuality (Carbado ed., NYU Press 1999); and Urgent Times: Policing and Rights in Inner-City Communities (Meares & Kahan eds., Beacon: 1999). His writings have appeared in numerous academic journals, including the Yale Journal of Law & Humanities, NYU Review of Law & Social Change, Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal, Michigan Journal of Race & Law, Law & Literature, UCLA's Chicano Latino Law Review, Berkeley Journal of African American Law & Policy, Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, and Columbia Journal of Race & Law.

He has presented recent work at Harvard, Yale, Howard, the University of Kentucky, the University of Minnesota, the University of California at Davis, York University (Toronto, Canada), the Association of American Law Schools Annual Meeting, and elsewhere. 

In January, Professor Farley participated on the panel “True Advancement of African-Americans: Are We Stuck in the ‘Sunken Place’ and What Can We Do?” at the Northeast Black Law Students Association’s 50th Annual Convention in Albany, N.Y. This past fall he served as a panelist on "The First Amendment and Free Speech Under Attack" at the New York State Writers Institute symposium Telling the Truth in a Post-Truth World at the University at Albany. He currently is co-organizing—along with professors Young, Peter Halewood and Sundquist—the annual Northeast People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference to be held at Albany Law School from May 31 to June 1. He will also serve as a panelist and lecturer during the conference.

Professor Farley was the James & Mary Lassiter Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law and the Andrew Jefferson Endowed Chair in Trial Advocacy at Texas Southern University's Thurgood Marshall School of Law in 2014-2015, the Haywood Burns Chair in Civil Rights at CUNY School of Law in 2006, and a tenured professor at Boston College Law School, where he taught for 16 years. Prior to entering academia, he was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Before serving as a federal prosecutor, he practiced law as a Corporate/Securities Associate with Shearman & Sterling in NYC.

Professor Farley was elected as a member of the American Law Institute in 2017. He previously served on the Executive Committee of the Minorities Section of the Association of American Law Schools and on the Board of Governors of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT). 

He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Virginia.