Sally M. Rider is the Director of the William H. Rehnquist Center on the Constitutional Structures of Government at the University of Arizona College of Law. Prior to becoming director of the Rehnquist Center, Ms. Rider served as Administrative Assistant to the Chief Justice of the United States from August 2000 to September 2006. In that position, she served as the Court's chief of staff and assisted the Chief Justice in his overall management of the Court and with his other responsibilities as head of the Third Branch of government. She also served as Executive Director of the Supreme Court Fellows Program and on the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act Study Committee, a committee appointed by the Chief Justice to evaluate how the federal judicial system deals with judicial misbehavior and disability. She is currently an Ex Officio Member of the University of Arizona’s National Institute for Civil Discourse.

From 1986 to 1987 Ms. Rider served as staff counsel to the United States House of Representatives Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. From 1987 to 1990 she was a trial attorney in the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. She was an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Columbia from 1990 to 1995 and from 1995 to 1998 she was an Attorney Adviser and then Deputy Assistant Legal Adviser at the Department of State. From 1998 to 2000, Ms. Rider was Deputy Chief of the Civil Division in the Office of the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. She received a bachelors degree from the University of Arizona, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, with high distinction, in 1980, and received her law degree with high distinction in 1986 from the University of Arizona College of Law.