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Law School Faculty, Administration, and Services
Jiri Toman
Professor of Law
Jiri Toman was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1938. He studied in Prague (JUDr) and Geneva (Ph.D. in political science), and taught at the School of Economics and School of Law at Charles University in Prague. From 1969 until June 1998, he was director of the Henry Dunant Institute in Geneva, the research and training center of the International Red Cross. He also taught at the University of Geneva and was a visiting professor at Santa Clara University, George Washington University, and Université de Franche-Compté in Besançon. He lectured at the Universities of Birmingham, Cambridge, London, Oxford, Pisa, Uppsala, Virginia, Waseda and Yale; organized regional seminars on international law and criminal law in Africa and Latin America; and was consultant to several international and regional organizations (UNESCO, UNDRO, UNCTAD, and the United Nations Center for Human Rights, Council of Europe).
Toman is a member of the editorial boards of several journals and is a member of several international associations. Since 1994, he has been a foreign member (academician) of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. He has published several studies, books, and articles in the fields of international law, human rights, humanitarian law, economic law, disaster relief law, and criminal law. The most important are The Laws of Armed Conflicts, The Protection of Cultural Property, The Spirit of Uppsala, and International Dimensions of Humanitarian Law. Toman is fluent in French, English, Russian, Czech, and Slovak, and has knowledge of some other European languages.
Gerald F. Uelmen
Professor of Law
Gerald F. Uelmen was born in Greendale, Wisconsin, in 1940 and came to California with his family at the age of 14. After graduating from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles with a B.A. in political science, he attended Georgetown University Law Center, where he earned his J.D. in 1965. As a Prettyman Fellow at Georgetown, he did indigent criminal defense work while earning an LL.M. degree. He returned to California to serve in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, prosecuting organized crime cases. In 1970, he joined the faculty of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, where he taught Criminal Law and Procedure, Evidence, Trial Advocacy, Legal Ethics, and Counseling and Negotiation, and authored a casebook on drug abuse law. He also served as associate dean for two years and maintained an active part-time criminal defense practice, participating in the defense of Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers trial and successfully challenging the murder conviction of Gordon Castillo Hall.
Uelmen served as dean at Santa Clara University School of Law from 1986 to 1994. In 1994-95, he served on the defense team for the trial of People v. O.J. Simpson. His account of the trial was published as Lessons From the Trial in 1996, and his collection of evidence problems from both the civil and criminal trials was published as The O.J. Files: Evidentiary Issues in a Tactical Context in 1997. The co-author of two collections of legal humor, he has written numerous articles concerning the California Supreme Court, the death penalty, legal ethics, drug abuse, and related topics. In 2005, he published The Wizard’s Guide to California Evidence.
Uelmen has served as president of California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, California Academy of Appellate Lawyers, and Santa Clara County Bar Association Law Foundation. In 1984, he won the ABA Ross Essay Prize. In 1996, he authored a one-actor play on the life of William Jennings Bryan, which has been produced in Omaha, Chicago, and Santa Clara. Serving as pro bono counsel for patients asserting the right to use medicinal marijuana, Uelmen argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and California Supreme Court. In 2006, he was appointed Executive Director for the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, created by the California State Senate to examine the causes of wrongful convictions and propose reforms of California’s criminal justice system.
Uelmen is married to Martha A. Uelmen, who practices family law in Cupertino. They have three grown children. He is a history buff, an avid collector of political campaign buttons and pop-up books, and sings Gilbert and Sullivan arias in the shower. At the slightest provocation, he will play his accordion.
Beth Van Schaack
Associate Professor of Law
Beth Van Schaack teaches civil procedure, human rights, transitional justice, and international law. She joined the Santa Clara University law faculty from private practice with Morrison & Forester LLP, where she practiced in the area of commercial law, international law and human rights. She was trial counsel for Romagoza v. Garcia, a human rights case that resulted in a plaintiffs’ award of $54.6 million, and on the defense team for John Walker Lindh.
Prior to entering private practice, Van Schaack was involved in human rights litigation both with The Center for Justice & Accountability, a non-profit law firm in San Francisco dedicated to the representation of victims of torture and other grave human rights abuses, and with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia.
She is a graduate of Stanford University and Yale Law School. She lives in Mountain View with her husband and two children, Miles and Brooke.
Stephanie M. Wildman
Professor of Law
Director of the Center for Social Justice and Public Service
Stephanie M. Wildman received the 2007 Great Teacher Award from the Society of American Law Teachers, the largest national organization of law school faculty. She was the founding director of the Center for Social Justice at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall). She taught for 25 years at the University of San Francisco School of Law. She received her A.B. (1970) and her J.D. (1973) from Stanford University. She clerked for Judge Charles M. Merrill of the United States Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit and worked as a staff attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance. In 1983 she was elected to membership in the American Law Institute. She has been a visiting professor at University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Davis, School of Law, Hastings College of the Law, Santa Clara University School of Law, and Stanford Law School.
Wildman’s book, Privilege Revealed: How Invisible Preference Undermines America, (with contributions by Margalynne Armstrong, Adrienne D. Davis, & Trina Grillo) won the 1997 Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Meyers Center for Human Rights. Her books, Race and Races: Cases and Resources for a Diverse America 2d (with Richard Delgado, Angela A. Harris, and Juan F. Perea) (2007) and Social Justice: Professionals Communities and Law (with Martha R. Mahoney and John O. Calmore) (2003) are popular Thomson-West textbooks. She also coauthored a new torts text: Mastering Tort Law: Cases, Perspectives, and Problems (with Nicolas P. Terry, Frank L. Maraist, Frank McClellan, Thomas C. Galligan, Jr., Phoebe A. Haddon, and Michael Rustad) (2007). She is past co-president of the Society of American Law Teachers and a past member of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Executive Committee.
Wildman teaches Law and Social Justice, Gender and Law, and Torts. Her scholarship emphasizes systems of privilege, gender, race, and classroom dynamics.
Eric Wright
Professor of Law
Eric Wright was born in Eugene, Oregon, in 1942. He majored in economics at Stanford University where he graduated in 1964. In 1967, he received his J.D. from Stanford Law School, where he was Order of the Coif and an editor of the Stanford Law Review.
After graduation, Wright clerked for Judge M. Oliver Koelsch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He was a Fulbright Fellow at the London School of Economics, where he did a study of the English Legal Aid and Advice Scheme, and a Reginald Heber Smith Fellow at San Mateo County Legal Aid, where he specialized in consumer problems.
Wright joined the faculty of Santa Clara University in 1971, teaching Torts, Consumer Law, Poverty Law, Statutory Analysis, and Conflicts of Law. He also has been a visiting professor at Stanford Law School on a number of occasions teaching Torts, Statutory Analysis, Consumer Protection, and Poverty Law. In addition, he has regularly organized and taught in a special summer program at Oxford, Comparative English and American Legal Systems, for undergraduate students from Stanford University.
Wright does extensive pro bono work on behalf of low-income clients for the East Palo Alto Community Law Project, Consumers Union, and Mid-Peninsula Citizens for Fair Housing. He is on the advisory board of the Consumers Union and has long been active on state bar committees on consumer advocacy and consumer financial services. He has also done extensive lecturing and writing on consumer law for the California Continuing Education of the Bar.
Wright is married to Santa Clara Law Professor Nancy Wright. He has an adult daughter, Amy, and four adult stepdaughters. He enjoys running, tennis, movies, plays, and politics.
Nancy Wright
Associate Professor of Law
Nancy Wright was born in Los Angeles in 1943. She received her B.A. in psychology in 1964 from University of California, Berkeley. Following graduation, she spent six years working as a juvenile probation officer dealing primarily with dependent and delinquent youngsters in foster-home placements. She obtained her J.D., cum laude, from the Santa Clara University School of Law in 1980. She spent the next three years as a teaching fellow and lecturer-in-law at Stanford Law School, teaching Public Interest Representation and Moot Court, and coordinating Stanford’s externship program.
For the next five years, Wright was placement director at Santa Clara University School of Law. In 1990, she became director of the first-year Legal Analysis, Research and Writing Program. She also taught Appellate Advocacy and Moot Court, Moot Court Board, and a seminar in legal analysis, research, and writing. She now regularly teaches Torts, Public Interest Practice, and Children and the Law. She has co-directed Santa Clara’s summer programs in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Oxford, Geneva/Strasbourg, and Sydney. In addition, she has served as co-project director of the Katharine and George Alexander Community Law Center.
Wright is currently Board Chair of Fresh Lifelines for Youth (FLY), and organization dealing with at-risk teenagers and young adults. She is also on the Board if the James A. Doolittle Foundation, which provides grants for ballet, theater, and other artistic endeavors.
Wright is married to Santa Clara Law Professor Eric Wright. She has four adult daughters and a stepdaughter. In her spare time, she enjoys water skiing, tennis, photography, movies, and plays.
David G. Yosifon
Assistant Professor of Law
Professor Yosifon teaches courses in the areas of business law, legal ethics, and legal theory. His scholarship is focused on the application of social psychology, and allied social sciences, to law and legal theory. His recent work advances this approach to legal theory through a critique of the role that conventional conceptions of human agency play in contemporary corporate governance law.
Yosifon was born and raised in New Jersey. He received his undergraduate degree in history and philosophy from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, in 1995 (summa cum laude). After Rutgers he attended graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where in 1997 he received a Masters Degree in American Social History. He received his J.D. from Harvard University in 2002 (magna cum laude). Before joining the faculty at Santa Clara University, Yosifon served as a visiting assistant professor at Rutgers Law School-Camden, and as a visiting associate professor at New York Law School. He served as a law clerk to the Honorable Patti B. Saris of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and as a litigation associate at the Boston firm of Ropes & Gray, LLP.
When not teaching and writing, Yosifon enjoys practicing yoga and watching baseball.