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Law School Faculty, Administration, and Services

Full-Time and Visiting Faculty

Donald J. Polden

Dean and Professor of Law

Donald J. Polden is a graduate of the George Washington University and Indiana University (Indianapolis) Law School. From 1993 to 2003, he served as dean and professor of law at the University of Memphis, where he taught courses in corporate law, antitrust law, federal securities regulation, and employment law. He has practiced law, principally in the areas of federal antitrust law and employment law, in the federal and state courts. Polden has participated in antitrust cases in the Fifth, Seventh, Eighth, and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeals and the U. S. Supreme Court, and he has argued cases involving claims of price-fixing, monopolization, and attempts to monopolize before the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. He is co-author (with U.S. District Court Judge Mark Bennett) of Employment Relationships: Law and Practice, published by Aspen Publishers. He is also the author of several law review articles on topics of federal antitrust and securities law, employment law, and legal education. His 1989 article on standing to sue in private antitrust litigation was cited by the U. S. Supreme Court. Polden was elected to membership in the American Law Institute in 1993, is a Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and was elected as a Fellow in the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers. In 2006, he was asked to serve on the Standards Review Committee of the American Bar Association’s Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar and the Association of American Law Schools.

Mary B. Emery

Associate Dean, Professor of Law, and Director, Heafey Law Library

Mary Emery was raised in San Jose, California, where she was born in 1937. She received her B.A. in political science and economics from San Jose State University in 1960. In 1963, she received a J.D. from Santa Clara University in the first law school class that graduated women. While a student, she served as a staff member of the Santa Clara Lawyer, the School of Law’s first law review.

Emery joined the faculty in 1963 and has taught business organizations; trusts and estates; and legal analysis, research, and writing. She was of counsel with Chargin & Parker, a general practice firm in San Jose, for eight years. Since 1985, she has served as associate dean for library and administration. In 1972, she received a special recognition award from the Student Bar Association, in 1989 was named Owens Lawyer of the Year, and in 1994 received the Community Service Award from Women in Law.

Emery has been involved in many community organizations and activities. She has served on the Santa Clara County Board of Parole Commissioners for six years, was foreman of the Santa Clara County Grand Jury in 1982, has been a member of the board of directors of the Legal Aid Society for 20 years, and is a member of the provincial development board for the Sisters of Notre Dame, the board of directors of a youth shelter, and the Board of Directors of United Way.

Emery lives in San Jose with her dog, Duffy, a lively golden retriever. Her interests include gardening; reading, with a preference for mysteries; stamp collecting; and observing wildlife and politics (often considered descriptions of one activity).

Cynthia A. Mertens

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Professor of Law

Cynthia Mertens was born and raised in Palo Alto. She received her B.A. in psychology from Stanford University in 1969, and her J.D. in 1972 from the University of California, Hastings College of Law. She practiced with California Rural Legal Assistance before joining the Santa Clara University law faculty in 1975. She teaches Property, Real Estate Finance, Real Estate Broker Law, and various courses in advanced real estate transactions. She directed Santa Clara’s summer program in Hong Kong in 1982, and the program in Geneva/Strasbourg in 1995, 1997, and 1999. In 2006 she directed the Strasbourg portion of that program, and in 2007 she co-directed the Costa Rica summer program. She was a visiting professor at Stanford Law School in 1987-88. In 1988, she received the Santa Clara University Faculty Special Recognition Award, and in 1997, she received the law school’s Innovative Teaching Award with Professor Gary Neustadter. She was recognized as one of two “Bay Area Women of Distinction” by the SCU Women and Law group in January 2004. In 2005, Mertens received the President’s Faculty Recognition Award from Father Paul Locatelli. From 2001-2005, she was the Executive Director of the law school’s civil clinical program, the Katharine & George Alexander Community Law Center. In January 2004 and 2006, she led SCU’s law student immersion trip to El Salvador to study the justice system and human rights.

Mertens frequently appears as an expert witness in real property litigation matters and occasionally serves as a private arbitrator and mediator. She is on the advisory board of Child Advocates, Inc. She lives in San Jose, Calif. with her husband, Jim Rowan. Their three children are grown. Her outside activities include reading, theater, dancing, hiking, traveling, and exercise.

Angelo N. Ancheta

Assistant Professor of Law
Director, Katharine & George Alexander Community Law Center

Angelo Ancheta was born and raised in San Francisco. He received his undergraduate degree in political science from UCLA in 1983 and received his J.D. in 1986 from the UCLA School of Law, where he was chief managing editor of the UCLA Law Review. He also has a master’s degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Before joining the faculty at Santa Clara University, Ancheta was a lecturer at Harvard Law School and an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law. He has also taught at the UCLA School of Law. From 2000 to 2005, he was the legal director of The Civil Rights Project, a Harvard-based research center focusing on racial discrimination and civil rights policy. Prior to teaching, he was a legal services attorney and nonprofit executive director in both Northern and Southern California, specializing in immigration, voting rights, and constitutional law.

Ancheta teaches Constitutional Law II, Law and the Political Process, and civil clinical classes, and as director of the Katharine & George Alexander Community Law Center, supervises the law school’s civil clinical programs. He is the author of the books Race, Rights, and the Asian American Experience (2d ed. 2006) and Scientific Evidence and Equal Protection of the Law (2006).

Margalynne J. Armstrong

Associate Professor of Law

Margalynne Armstrong was born and raised in Chicago. She obtained her undergraduate degree from Earlham College, majoring in English. She received her J.D. in 1981 from the University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall), where she served as associate editor of the Ecology Law Quarterly. She is admitted to the California and Illinois Bars.

Prior to teaching at Santa Clara University, Armstrong practiced public employment law, was a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Alameda County, and directed the Academic Support Program at Boalt Hall. She teaches Property, Constitutional Law (I and II), Race and the Law, and Real Estate Transactions. Armstrong writes in the areas of housing, racial discrimination, comparative, and constitutional law.

Armstrong is a founding member of the Equal Justice Society. She has served on the Board of Trustees of the Society of American Law Teachers and on the board of directors of several community organizations.

Patricia Cain

Inez Mabie Distinguished Professor of Law

Patricia Cain is the Inez Mabie Distinguished Professor of Law at Santa Clara Law. She previously served as Vice Provost and Aliber Family Chair in Law at the University of Iowa.

She was a member of the faculty the University of Texas for 17 years before moving to the University of Iowa School of Law in 1991. She also held the H.O. Head Centennial Professor in Real Property Law at the University of Texas (1990-91). A member of the American Law Institute and prior board member of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, she is a former co-president (with Jean Love) of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT). She is currently serving as Treasurer of SALT.

She has published more than 50 law review articles in journals such the Iowa Law Review, the Southern California Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Wisconsin Law Review and the Journal of Legal Education. She also has published several book chapters, treatises, and casebooks including Tax Planning for Unmarried Couples (Prentice Hall 1980); Property Law: Outlines (Casenotes 1997, 1999) (with Sheldon Kurtz); Rainbow Rights: The Role of Lawyers and Courts In the Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights Movement (Westview Press 2000); and Sexuality Law (with Arthur S. Leonard) (Carolina Academic Press 2005).

She received her A.B. degree from Vassar College and her J.D. degree from the University of Georgia.

Colleen Chien

Assistant Professor of Law

Colleen Chien joined the Santa Clara University Law School faculty as an Assistant Professor of Law in the fall of 2007.  Prior to her appointment, she was an associate, then Special Counsel, at Fenwick & West LLP in San Francisco, California, and a Fellow at the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford Law School. She also served as an adviser to the School of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and worked as a spacecraft engineer at NASA/Jet Propulsion Lab.  She worked as an investigative journalist at the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism as a Fulbright Scholar in 1997.

Professor Chien's research focuses on patent law and international intellectual property law, with an emphasis on empirical research.  Current publications include “Patently Protectionist? An Empirical Analysis of Patent Cases at the International Trade Commission” (forthcoming 50 William & Mary Law Review ___ (2008)) and "HIV/AIDS Drugs for Sub-Saharan Africa: How Do Brand and Generic Supply Compare?" (plosONE, 2007; 2 (3):e278)); previously, she has published in the Hastings Law Journal, the Berkeley Technology Law Journal, and Nature Biotechnology on various national and international patent law topics.

She received an A.B. and a B.S. in Engineering from Stanford University with Honors and Distinction and her J.D. from UC Berkeley (Boalt Hall) School of Law.

Stephen F. Diamond

Associate Professor of Law

Stephen Diamond joined the Santa Clara University law faculty after five years in private practice. He spent one year as an associate in the New York City office of Latham & Watkins and four years as an associate in the Palo Alto office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. In practice he represented a wide range of investment banks, public and private companies and private equity funds in public and private securities offerings, mergers and acquisitions and intellectual property transactions.  While in New York, he also represented political refugees from China as part of a three-year long successful effort to secure asylum in the United States.

Professor Diamond teaches courses in corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, securities regulation, international business transactions, and a seminar on globalization and the rule of law. His research centers on the institutions and structures that make up the global financial markets. He also has a strong background in the labor movement and looks at the impact of globalization and technological change on workers. His most recent article is “Ringing the Bell on the NYSE,” co-authored with Stanford economist Jennifer Kuan, looks at the IPO of the New York Stock Exchange.  Another recent article examined the bankruptcy at Delphi, the giant auto parts company.  He is co-editor with Lance Compa of Cornell of International Trade, Human Rights and Labor Rights: Law and Policy Perspectives, a leading text in the field of international economic law and labor rights published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Professor Diamond is a graduate of Yale Law School.  He earned his Ph.D. and M.Phil. in Political Science at the University of London (Birkbeck College) and his B.A. in Development Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. He was a visiting assistant professor of law at Cornell Law School from 2003-2004. He has been a visiting scholar at Harvard, Stanford, and University of California, San Diego. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in International Peace and Security. He currently serves on the board of directors of OPTi, Inc., a small publicly traded core logic semiconductor design company. He also advises institutional investors, unions, and start-up companies on a range of legal and financial issues.