About Paul
Paul Bender studied physics as an undergraduate and then turned to law. He earned an A.B. in Physics from Harvard University in 1954 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1957. He was named a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellow the same year, an early recognition that preceded a career bridging scholarship and adjudication.
Early in his professional life Bender served in two distinguished clerkships. He clerked for Judge Learned Hand on the Second Circuit in 1958 and then for Justice Felix Frankfurter at the United States Supreme Court in 1959. Those years gave him close exposure to appellate decision-making and to the practical questions that shape constitutional doctrine.
Bender moved into law teaching in the mid-1960s. He joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1966 and built a reputation as a teacher of constitutional law and Supreme Court history. In 1989 he took a position at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, where he continued classroom work and public programs.
Alongside academic duties he has held a variety of advisory and adjudicative posts. Since 1998 he has served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, and since 2005 he has been Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals of the San Carlos Apache Tribe. He has advised the Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona since 1989 and has been involved in law-related education programs for the Arizona State Bar Foundation since 1990. His connections extend beyond the United States; he has been on the advisory board of the Centre for Constitutional Studies in Alberta since 1985 and holds membership in the Canadian Human Rights Foundation since 1986.
For several decades Bender has also been active in continuing legal education. Beginning in 1996 he has lectured for Arizona State Bar CLE programs on the U.S. Supreme Court and constitutional law. He typically frames contemporary disputes by tracing doctrinal developments back to key opinions and institutional practices. His work in tribal courts engages different procedural and substantive rules, and that comparative perspective often appears in his teaching.
Bender’s career combines appellate experience, classroom work, tribal court service and public legal education. He continues to teach at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, serves on tribal courts, and presents CLE programs; his current practice covers constitutional law, U.S. Supreme Court history, and tribal court adjudication.
