Dorothy Roberts is the Kirkland & Ellis Professor at Northwestern University School of Law, with joint appointments in the Departments of African American Studies and Sociology (by courtesy), and a faculty fellow for the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. She has written and lectured extensively on the interplay of gender, race, and class in legal issues concerning reproduction and child welfare.

She is the author of the award-winning Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare and Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, as well as more than sixty articles and essays in books and scholarly journals, including Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, and Stanford Law Review. She serves as a member of the board of directors of the Black Women's Health Imperative and the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. She also serves on a panel of five experts that is overseeing foster care reform in Washington State. Her current research examines the concentrated involvement of child welfare agencies in African-American neighborhoods.