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Meet the JOL Program's

Tribal Courts Judicial Fellow

Hon. J. Matthew Martin – [email protected]

Asheville, NC

The Honorable J. Matthew Martin is the first American Bar Association (ABA) Tribal Court Fellow. In 2013 Judge Martin retired from the Cherokee Court, the Tribal Court for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians after eleven years of service. He has written extensively on issues of traffic safety among the United States’ indigenous population and the jurisdiction of Tribal Courts. He is the author of “The Cherokee Supreme Court: 1823-1835" published  by Carolina Academic Press in 2020. Judge Martin has spoken nationally and internationally on issues ranging from federal Indian law to criminal law and the judicial process. For over 25 years, Judge Martin has been Board Certified as a Specialist in Federal and State Criminal Law by the North Carolina State Bar.  In the 1991 Term, at age 31, he argued Wade v. United States before the Supreme Court of the United States.  He received a BA with Honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a JD from the UNC School of Law.  He also holds a Ph.D. in Judicial Studies from the University of Nevada-Reno.  In 2014 the ABA’s National Conference of Specialized Court Judges awarded him the Franklin Flaschner Award, as the United States’ outstanding specialized court judge. 

Contact Judge Martin, Tribal Court Fellow