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Law School Faculty, Administration, and Services
Kathleen (Cookie) Ridolfi
Professor of Law
Director, Northern California Innocence Project
Kathleen (Cookie) Ridolfi directs the Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP) at Santa Clara University. She has served on the State Senate’s California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice mandated to examine the causes of wrongful conviction and make recommendations and proposals to ensure that the administration of justice in California is just, fair and accurate. Professor Ridolfi teaches Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure. With David Popalisky, dance department, Ridolfi co-created and directed, Barred from Life, a performance work that explores the human consequence of wrongful conviction. See www.scu.edu/bfl .
In 2004, Ridolfi co-founded and now serves on the board of the International Innocence Network, a collaboration of more than 40 innocence projects assisting prisoners with claims of wrongful conviction.
Ridolfi is an experienced and highly regarded trial lawyer. She was a leader in developing expert testimony in battered women’s cases and a pioneer in the application of social science to jury selection. Ridolfi was a pro-se defendant in the politically charged case of the “Camden 28”, prosecuted in federal court for actions taken to oppose the Vietnam War in 1971. In May 1973, she was acquitted following a four-month jury trial. For information about her case, access http://www.camden28.org .
Ridolfi lives in San Jose, Calif. with her partner, Linda Starr and their two children, Zoe and Dashiell Ridolfi-Starr.
Margaret M. Russell
Professor of Law
Margaret Russell’s teaching focuses on constitutional law, civil procedure, civil rights, and civil liberties. She is the author of numerous articles in the areas of civil rights, civil liberties, and the interaction of law and media culture. As a constitutional law professor, she is consulted frequently as a media spokesperson and legal expert.
At Santa Clara University, she is affiliated with the Center for Social Justice & Public Service, the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, and the Center for Multicultural Learning. She has been honored by the Asian Pacific Law Students Association and the Black Law Students Association for her contributions to student life at Santa Clara. She is a past co-director of the Santa Clara University summer law program in Tokyo, Japan. In 1991, she traveled to South Africa with a delegation of legal scholars to provide consultation on constitution-drafting for the post-apartheid transition.
Russell’s professional contributions also include service on several boards. Currently, she is a trustee of the Oakland Museum of California, a board member of the Equal Justice Society, a member of the Legal Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (ACLU-NC), and a member of the affiliate diversity working group of the National ACLU. For sixteen years, she served on the board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and served for three years as chairperson. For ten years, she served on the board of directors of the National ACLU and was one of the board’s vice-presidents. Before entering law teaching, Professor Russell’s experience in public service included: a fellowship at the public interest firm Public Advocates, Inc.; employment at Stanford Law School as the director of Public Interest Programs and acting assistant dean of student affairs; and a judicial clerkship with the Honorable James E. Doyle of the U.S. District Court in Madison, Wisconsin. As a law student, she was one of the founders of the East Palo Alto Community Law Project (EPACLP), a low-income community law clinic that operated for twenty years. She also served as chair of the EPACLP board.
Russell received an A.B. degree cum laude from Princeton University, and both a J.D. degree and a JSM. degree from Stanford Law School.
Catherine J.K. Sandoval
Assistant Professor of Law
Catherine J.K. Sandoval teaches Contracts, Communications Law, and Antitrust. She has extensive experience in government and the private sector. For three years prior to joining the Santa Clara University law school faculty, she served as a senior manager of the State of California’s Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, and was appointed the Agency’s Undersecretary in 2003. In that capacity, she provided policy oversight for 47,000 employees and a $12 billion budget.
From 1999-2001, Sandoval was the vice-president and general counsel for Z-Spanish Media Corporation, providing legal advice on media mergers and acquisitions including the company’s merger with Entravision Communications Corporation. She also advised the company on regulatory matters at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Department of Justice. Between 1995-1999, Sandoval was the Director of the Federal Communications Commission’s Office of Communications Business Opportunities. In 1994 she served in the FCC’s Office of International Communications, where she was vice-president of the U.S. Delegation to the World Telecommunications Development Conference.
At the Law Offices of Munger, Tolles & Olson, Sandoval was an associate, focusing on business litigation including securities, contract, and labor matters. She clerked for Judge Dorothy W. Nelson on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals from 1990-1991. In 1990, she graduated from Stanford Law School, where she was a member of the Stanford Law Review and was co-chairperson of the Latino Law Students’ Association. She is a Rhodes Scholar, elected from California, and was the first Latina to win a Rhodes Scholarship. She received an M.Litt. in Politics from Oxford where she studied at St. Antony’s College. In 1984, Sandoval graduated magna cum laude from Yale University, where she received a research fellowship to serve as a “Scholar of the House” during her senior year. She was the president of the Mexican-American Students’ Association at Yale.
Sandoval hails from Los Angeles and was the first person in her family to earn a bachelor’s degree.
Alan W. Scheflin
Professor of Law
Alan W. Scheflin holds a B.A. with high honors from the University of Virginia (1963), a J.D. with honors from the George Washington University Law School (1966), an LL.M. from the Harvard Law School (1967), and an M.A. in counseling psychology from Santa Clara University (1987). He has taught in the law school and the philosophy department at Georgetown University, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Southern California Law School.
Scheflin has authored more than three dozen articles, book chapters, and book reviews on psychological, psychiatric, and other legal issues. His co-authored second book, The Mind Manipulators (1978), was published in several countries. Trance on Trial (1989), his co-authored third book, received the American Psychiatric Association’s 1991 Manfred S. Guttmacher Award as the Year’s most outstanding publication on forensic psychiatry. His co-authored fourth book, Clinical Hypnosis and Memory: Guidelines for Clinicians and for Forensic Hypnosis (1995), received the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis Arthur Shapiro Award for “Book of the Year” for 1995. Scheflin’s fifth co-authored book, Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law (1998) was the recipient of the American Psychiatric Association’s 1999 Manfred S. Guttmacher Award and also the International Society for the Study of Dissociation’s 1998 Distinguished Merit Award. Law and Mental Disorder, his sixth co-authored book, was published in November 1998.
Scheflin has testified before legislatures and has been judicially recognized in federal and state courts as an expert on mind and behavior control, suggestion and suggestibility, memory, and hypnosis. He has delivered invited addresses to all of the major professional hypnosis organizations in the United States and in several other countries. He has also addressed the American Psychiatric Association, the American Orthopsychiatric Association, and the American Psychological Association, as well as other professional mental health and legal organizations. Scheflin has also appeared as an expert in court on issues involving the professional responsibility of lawyers.
Scheflin is the forensic editor of the Journal of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, an advisory editor of the Cultic Studies Journal, and a guest co-editor of the Journal of Psychiatry & Law (Summer Issue, 1996).
In 1993, Scheflin received the Irving I. Sector Award in honor of his service to the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. In 1998, the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis bestowed its Award of Merit to honor Scheflin’s “Exceptional Contributions in Forensic Hypnosis” and its Presidential Award for “Significant Contributions to the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis in Support of the Leadership and Membership.”
Kandis Scott
Professor of Law
Kandis Scott : B.A. from Cornell University, 1963, LLB, Stanford Law School. 1966. Scott practiced law in New York City before retuning to California to work in legal services for the poor and the elderly. She also organized volunteer attorneys in San Francisco to do pro bono cases.
When she joined the Santa Clara University law faculty, Scott continued her involvement with representation of the poor by teaching in the Law Clinic. She has been active in clinical legal education issues nationally through the American Bar Association and the Association of American Law Schools, where she was chair of the Section of Clinical Legal Education, and as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Education. She also teaches Evidence, lawyering skills courses, and seminars in international comparative law.
Scott has been a visiting professor at City University of New York-Queens College Law School. She served as an English teacher in the Peace Corps in Romania 1994 to 1996. Scott later worked on elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1999-2000 she researched Romanian lawyering with funding from IREX and Fulbright-Hayes. In 2007-2008 she declined a Fulbright Scholarship to teach at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies. She lives at Stanford. Among her interests are gardening, square dancing, reading novels, and travel.
David L. Sloss
Professor of Law
Academic Director, Center for Global Law and Policy
David Sloss is a widely recognized international scholar. His research focuses on the interface between domestic constitutional and public international law, including the constitutional law governing the conduct of U.S. foreign relations. Sloss earned his bachelor’s degree from Hampshire College, a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and a J.D. from Stanford University.
From 1984-1991, Sloss served as a foreign affairs analyst with the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, where he drafted and negotiated treaty text for three major East-West arms control treaties. From 1992-93, he served as director of the agency’s Nuclear Safeguards and Technology Division, managing the office that was responsible for formulating and implementing U.S. policy to curb the spread of nuclear weapons. While earning his law degree at Stanford, he served as a consultant to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 1994-96. After clerking for Senior Judge Joseph T. Sneed, U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, San Francisco, Sloss worked as a litigation associate at Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto, where he assisted software clients in their bid to persuade the U.S. Justice Department to file an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft.
In 1999, Sloss joined the faculty at Saint Louis University School of Law, where he was a member of the School’s Center for International and Comparative Law, teaching civil procedure, criminal law, international human rights, and U.S. foreign relations law. He also served as the faculty adviser for the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Team.
E. Gary Spitko
Professor of Law
E. Gary Spitko earned his A.B., with distinction in all subjects, from Cornell University and earned his J.D., with high honors, from the Duke University School of Law, where he was elected a member of Order of the Coif. While a law student at Duke, Spitko served as an editor of the Duke Law Journal and as the executive editor of the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Forum. Following law school, Spitko served as a law clerk for the Honorable Gerald Bard Tjoflat, who was then Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He practiced law for several years as an associate at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., and at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker in Atlanta, Georgia.
Spitko began his career in law teaching in 1997 as an assistant professor at the Indiana University School of Law, becoming an associate professor there in 2000. He joined the faculty at the Santa Clara University School of Law as a tenured associate professor in 2002, becoming a full professor in 2005. Spitko also has taught as a visiting professor at the Ohio State University College of Law. He has published extensively in the areas of inheritance law, dispute resolution, and family law. He teaches courses in Wills and Trusts, Alternative Dispute Resolution, and Employment Law.
Edward Steinman
Professor of Law
Edward Steinman was born in Chicago in 1944. He did his undergraduate work at Northwestern University, where he majored in journalism and graduated with honors. He received his law degree in 1968 from Stanford University, where he was an editor of the Stanford Law Review. He then served as a law clerk to U.S. District Court Judge Robert F. Peckham in San Francisco and worked three years as a civil rights and poverty law attorney in San Francisco. He joined the Santa Clara University law faculty in 1972 and teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Constitutional Law, and Law and Education.
Steinman has continued his work as a civil rights attorney. He has argued numerous times before the U.S. Supreme Court and was successful in three of these cases, including a landmark decision providing special education rights for millions of non-English-speaking and limited-English-speaking children. He is also actively involved with the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, with California Food Policy Advocates, and — as both a lawyer and a community resident — in the operation of programs for the homeless and hungry in San Francisco.
Steinman lives in San Francisco with his wife, Wondie, an attorney, and their children, Alexandra and Matthew.