Lawyer, Professor Emeritus, Scholar
Author of
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With a law degree from Yale in hand in 1968, Peter d’Errico began work as a staff attorney with Dinebeiina Nahiilna Be Agaditahe Navajo Legal Services in Shiprock, Arizona, representing indigenous People’s interests in the US courts. Stemming from his frustrations with a stilted legal system, however, he evolved into an “anti-lawyer,” and in 1970 returned to academia. Joining the faculty at UMass Amherst, d’Errico focused his research and writing on the legal issues affecting indigenous Peoples, and he regularly taught courses on indigenous People’s law and the role of the law in imposing state systems on non-state societies. His impact was instrumental in establishing the Department of Legal Studies. Both before and after his retirment in 2002, d’Errico also remained active as a practitioner in indigenous People’s law.
The d’Errico collection contains a significant record of d’Errico’s high profile legal work in indigenous People’s law, including his work with Western Shoshone land rights and on the case Randall Trapp, et al. v. Commissioner DuBois, et al. In Trapp, a long-running, but ultimately successful First Amendment case, he and Robert Doyle represented prisoners in the Massachusetts Department of Corrections seeking to establish a sweat lodge.
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Peter d’Errico is a professor emeritus at University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a lawyer for indigenous People’s rights. Born in West Virginia, d’Errico received his BA in Philosophy from Bates College before attending Yale Law School, graduating in 1968. A move west to work as a lawyer in the Shiprock, Arizona, office of Dinebeiina Nahiilna Be Agaditahe, Inc., the Navajo Nation Legal Services program, would change his career, and life, forever. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society War on Poverty legislation provided legal services and lawyers in civil cases, and d’Errico was drawn to the work immediately. His experience in Shiprock provided not only an introduction to indigenous People’s legal issues, but also a change in his worldview and understanding of the law and politics, coming to see his own work and usefulness from the point of view of another culture. While there, d’Errico worked on developing a juvenile code of procedure that would integrate Navajo clan practices and United States due process standards, and on a class action lawsuit against used car dealers who exploited Navajo customers. However, despite some successes, d’Errico also felt more like a character playing a role within the Anglo legal system than a useful advocate for his clients, people from a community for which those laws and procedures were not only confusing and other, but imposed via an oppressive power structure.
Remaining in the legal field, d’Ericco became what he referred to as an “anti-law lawyer,” grounding his work and teaching in his understanding of the history of the law as an imposition of the state on non-state communities. He began teaching legal studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with a focus on indigenous People’s law, including his annual class “Legalization of American Indians,” and was influential in the development of the Legal Studies department. D’Errico also continued to work as a lawyer, and consulted on a number of cases relating to indigenous People’s rights. This included work with the Western Shoshone National Council concerning indigenous land rights; a legal dispute between Mashpee Wampanoags and several Cape Cod townships over fishing and shell fishing rights; and Randall Trapp et al. v. Commissioner Dubois et al., a decade long legal battle involving the religious freedom and first amendment rights of incarcerated indigenous People. D’errico retired from UMass in 2002, but continues to write on legal, cultural, and personal matters, and participates in local government in his hometown of Leverett, MA.
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