Jyoti Nanda

Jyoti Nanda is a nationally recognized expert in youth justice and an interdisciplinary scholar whose work lies at the intersection of criminal law, juvenile justice, and social inequality. Her research examines how legal actors, doctrines, and institutions have contributed to, or failed to prevent, the growth of the carceral state, particularly as it affects marginalized youth.

Nanda's scholarship is grounded in a deep commitment to racial and social justice, informed by her background in ethnic studies, her civil rights practice, and decades of work as a youth advocate. She explores how systems of power shaped by race, age, gender, dis/ability, sexual orientation, gender identity, and immigration status interact with criminal legal processes. Her 2012 article, Blind Discretion: Girls of Color in the Delinquency System, became the foundation for a widely cited national report on the adultification of girls of color. Her most recent article critiques juvenile probation as a deceptive mechanism that funnels youth deeper into the criminal legal system.

Nanda has published in leading legal journals, including the UCLA Law Review, Columbia Journal of Race and Law, Nevada Law Journal, Lewis & Clark Law Review, and Disability Law Journal. She is also a co-editor of Children and the Law (8th ed.), the nation's leading youth law textbook, used in law schools across the country.

Her scholarship has earned numerous honors. She was recently named one of only four 2025–2026 Bellow Scholars, a national distinction for law faculty whose empirical research promotes access to justice. She also received a Rights4Children Winter Research Grant for her proposal, Incarcerated Pregnant Girls; in awarding the grant, Rights4Children praised the project for bringing children's constitutional rights "from the margins to the center of justice." Nanda received Southwestern Law School's 2024–2025 Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Foundation Award and, in 2022, Golden Gate University School of Law's Justice Jesse W. Carter Faculty Scholarship Award.

Nanda currently leads two major projects. In 2024, she received a $1.35 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to develop the Youth Justice Navigator, a web-based platform that equips system-impacted youth and their families with tools to navigate the juvenile court system. She is also Principal Investigator, with Dr. Maritza Salazar and the African American Policy Forum, on a comprehensive case file review of more than 200 detained pregnant and parenting girls, research aimed at ending the incarceration of girls in Los Angeles County and beyond.

Her impact extends well beyond the academy. Her work has been featured in national print, television, and radio media. In 2023, she was named a Salzburg Global Fellow and was invited to teach at Université Paris Nanterre as a visiting faculty member. She has also served as a youth justice scholar at international convenings on youth violence and safety in the Netherlands and Austria, and she is the nominated Reporter for the American Bar Association's forthcoming Youth Justice National Standards.

Before joining Southwestern Law School, Nanda taught for five years at Golden Gate University School of Law. Before that, she spent sixteen years at UCLA School of Law, where she helped build the Critical Race Studies and Public Interest Law programs, co-taught with Distinguished Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, and founded the Youth & Justice Clinic, which trained law and social work students to advocate for the unmet educational needs of children in juvenile proceedings.

She began her career as a Skadden Fellow at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), litigating civil rights cases nationally. An educator, legal scholar, and community activist, Nanda brings her lived experience to her work. She was born in Nairobi and is the proud daughter of refugees and immigrants from Pakistan, India, and Kenya.