About

Natsu Taylor Saito joined the College of Law faculty in 1994. She teaches public international law and international human rights; seminars in race and the law, federal Indian law, and indigenous rights; and professional responsibility. She has served as advisor to the Asian American Law Student Association, the Latinx and Caribbean Law Student Association, the Immigration Law Society, and the student chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. Saito’s scholarship focuses on the legal history of race in the United States, the plenary power doctrine as applied to immigrants, American Indians, and U.S. territorial possessions, and the human rights implications of U.S. governmental policies, particularly with regard to the suppression of political dissent. She is writing a book on settler colonialism and race in America.

Saito graduated from Swarthmore College in 1977 and received a master’s of education from Georgia State University in 1982. She worked as a community organizer for the South DeKalb Community Center from 1977-1980, then taught social studies at Horizons School and English as a Second Language for the Adult Education Department of the Atlanta Board of Education.

After receiving her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1987, Saito worked for Arnall, Golden & Gregory, Troutman Sanders, and Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy, and taught as an adjunct at Emory University School of Law prior to joining the Georgia State Law faculty. She is a member of the Georgia Bar and has served on the Committee on the Involvement of Women & Minorities in the Profession and the Georgia Supreme Court’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic Bias in the Courts.

In 1993, Saito helped found the Georgia Chapter of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, and has served on the Boards of the Conference of Asian Pacific American Law Professors, the Paideia School, the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, as well as the Board of Governors of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT). She remains active on SALT’s Academic Freedom Committee and in the Georgia Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. Saito has served as co-director of the Human Rights Research Fund, as an expert consultant to the UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, and as a scholarly advisor to the National Japanese American Historical Society.

Works by Professor Saito