Professor Armstrong joined the Loyola University New Orleans, College of Law faculty in 2010. She is a leading national expert on prison and jail conditions and is certified by the U.S. Department of Justice as a Prison Rape Elimination Act auditor. Her research focuses on the constitutional dimensions of prisons and jails, specifically prison labor practices, the intersection of race and conditions of incarceration, and public oversight of detention facilities. She teaches in the related fields of constitutional law, criminal procedure, law and poverty, and race and the law. Prof. Armstrong also received a three-year Interdisciplinary Research Leader grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, shared with the Voice of the Experienced and LSU Center for Healthcare Value and Equity, to examine the effects of incarceration on health service use in Louisiana, currently a global and national leader in incarceration rates.
Andrea Armstrong was elected as the inaugural co-chair of Community Advisory Group for the New Orleans MacArthur Safety and Justice Challenge (2017-2019) and was a founding boardmember of the Promise of Justice Initiative, a non-profit organization focused on death penalty abolition and prison conditions. Professor Armstrong is a graduate of Yale Law School, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, where she completed her M.P.A. in International Relations, and New York University.
Prior to law school, Professor Armstrong’s research focused on international human rights and regional conflict dynamics. She has worked with the Center on International Cooperation at NYU, the International Center for Transitional Justice, as well as the United Nations Department of Political Affairs and the U.N. Commission on Human Security. She also taught policy modules on democratization at the Junior Summer Institute at Princeton University.
After graduating from law school, Professor Armstrong served as a clerk for the Honorable Helen G. Berrigan of the United States Eastern District of Louisiana. She also litigated prisoners’ rights issues, among others, as a Thomas Emerson fellow with David Rosen and Associates in New Haven, CT. She is admitted to practice in Connecticut (retired), New York (retired) and Louisiana state courts, as well as the U.S. District Court of Connecticut (retired), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (retired) and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.