Christy E. Lopez is a Professor from Practice at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C. She teaches courses on policing and criminal procedure and co-directs Georgetown’s Innovative Policing Program, including the Police for Tomorrow Fellowship project and the ABLE (Active Bystandership in Law Enforcement) Project.
From 2010 to 2017, Lopez served as a deputy chief in the Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. She led the division’s group conducting pattern-or-practice investigations of police departments and other law enforcement agencies, including litigating, negotiating, and implementing consent decrees. Lopez directly led the team that investigated the Ferguson Police Department and was a primary drafter of the Ferguson Report and negotiator of the Ferguson consent decree. Lopez also helped coordinate the department’s broader efforts to ensure constitutional policing. From 2003 to 2010, Lopez served as a federal court monitor of the Oakland, Calif., Police Department for Senior District Judge Thelton E. Henderson of the Northern District of California.
Lopez holds a juris doctor from the Yale Law School and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Riverside.