Her mother, Elizabeth Ann Randel Scales, had also been a professor and was very active in the Red Cross and in arranging events at these universities.

She also worked on the University of Colorado football gang rape case; the effort to bring a women's marathon to the Olympics; and R. v. Butler, a pornography case in which Canada's Supreme Court redefined obscenity based on the standard of harm it inflicts, particularly to women.

[2] Scales, a supporter of postmodernism and Critical legal studies, argued that objective reality was a myth constructed by the patriarchy.

[3] Ann Scales was a former rodeo rider and was in part descended from Cherokee Native Americans.

She died on June 24, 2012, in a hospice in Denver, Colorado, as a result of massive brain trauma after a fall down the stairs in her home earlier in the month.