Professor Rodgers was the attorney for Native activist Hank Adams, a leader of the “Trail of Broken Treaties” demonstration in Washington, D.C. Adams was charged (together with journalist Les Whitten) with possessing stolen documents when he was returning files and papers removed from the Bureau of Indian Affairs during the takeover of the BIA building in 1972. Professor Rodgers represented the Puyallup Tribe in treaty fishing matters during the 1970s, appearing several times in state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court (Puyallup Tribe v. Department of Game, 433 U.S. 165 (1977). He worked for several years on the environmental phase of the U.S. v. Washington (Boldt case), 506 F. Supp. 187 (W.D. Wash. 1980). He also represented environmental groups in cases affecting the North Anna Nuclear Power Station (Va.), the Blue Plains Sewage Treatment Plant (Washington, D.C.), the DDT pesticides litigation, and air pollution from copper smelters.

Professor Rodgers has been on the law faculties of the Georgetown University Law Center (1973-79), the University of Hawai’i (1995), the University of Florida (1997), Arizona State University (1999), University of Miami (2000) and the University of Maine (2001). His book entitled The Si’lailo Way: Indians, Salmon and Law on the Columbia River (with co-authors Joseph C. Dupris and Kathleen S. Hill) will be published by Carolina Academic Press in 2005.