Santa Clara University

Law Briefs

 

New Chairs and Faculty at Santa Clara Law

This fall, Santa Clara Law announced the appointment of three new chairs and four new faculty members. "We are pleased and proud to welcome these new members of the Santa Clara Law faculty. These passionate legal scholars will make significant contributions to our ongoing efforts to educate future lawyers who lead," said Dean Donald Polden.

New Chairs

PATRICIA A. CAIN is the Inez Mabie Distinguished Professor of Law. She previously served as Vice Provost and Aliber Family Chair in Law at the University of Iowa, and as a member of the University of Texas faculty. She is the author of Tax Planning for Unmarried Couples; Property Law: Outlines (with Sheldon Kurtz); Rainbow Rights: The Role of Lawyers and Courts In the Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights Movement; and Sexuality Law (with Arthur S. Leonard).

ALLEN S. HAMMOND IV is the Phil and Bobbie Sanfilippo Chair at Santa Clara University. A professor at Santa Clara Law since 1998, he serves as director of the Broadband Institute of California, president of the Alliance for Public Technology, director of the Law and Public Policy Program at the Center for Science, Technology and Society at Santa Clara University, and board member and past chair of the SBC Telecommunications Consumer Advisory Panel. He is the editor, with Barbara S. Cherry and Stephen S. Wildman, of Making Universal Service Policy: Enhancing the Process Through Multidisciplinary Evaluation.

Kevin Quinn, S.J., Pratheepan Gulasekaram, Jean C. Love, Allen S. Hammond IV, Patricia A. Cain, and Colleen Chien.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JEAN C. LOVE is the John A. and Elizabeth H. Sutro Professor. She previously served as the Martha-Ellen Tye Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Iowa (1991-2007) and as Professor of Law at U.C. Davis (1972-91). She has co-authored several legal casebooks, including Equitable Remedies, Restitution and Damages, and An Introduction to the Anglo-American Legal System.

New Faculty

W. DAVID BALL is a Teaching Scholar at the Center for Social Justice and Public Interest. A Rhodes Scholar, he has co-founded and served as president of Muslims Against Terrorism, an organization that promoted inter-and intra-faith dialogue in New York City following 9/11.

COLLEEN CHIEN is an Assistant Professor. She is also affiliated with Fenwick & West, where she is Special Counsel. Previously she was an associate at Fenwick & West, and a Fellow at the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford Law School.

PRATHEEPAN GULASEKARAM is an Assistant Professor. He previously served as Acting Assistant Professor at New York University School of Law and Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola University New Orleans Law School.

KEVIN P. QUINN, S.J., is a Professor. He also serves as the executive director of Santa Clara University’s Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education (www.scu/edu/ignatiancenter), which he joined in 2006. He previously served as Professor of Law and Faculty Affiliate at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University.

 

Third-year student marathoner vies for spot on U.S. Olympic team

J.T. Service, a third-year student at Santa Clara Law, will take a quick break from his legal studies in early November, and go to New York City. But rather than job-hunting, he will try to qualify for the U.S. Olympic marathon team in trials there.

To qualify for the trials, distance runners must complete a 26.2 mile race in less than two hours and 22 minutes. Service qualified in June in Duluth, Minn., when he finished Grandma’s Marathon in 2 hours, 21 minutes and 31 seconds.

He now faces approximately 100 other competitors who will vie for one of three spots on the U.S. Olympic team during a marathon in New York City. Some of his fellow competitors have race times that are 10 minutes faster, but Service notes that those faster times were achieved in near-

perfect conditions. He thinks the hilly course that circles New York’s Central Park several times will slow down some of his competition. "I’m shooting for the top 20 or top 15," he says. "I’m pretty happy just to be there."

Service has been running marathons only since June 2006, but he has years of experience as a runner. The San Jose native, who ran at Archbishop Mitty High School, also ran as an undergraduate at U.C. Santa Barbara. His father, Tom, is track coach at Santa Clara University, and J.T. volunteers as an assistant to that team as well.

Service says he does a short early morning run of five or six miles before classes, and then a longer 10 to 12 mile run in the late afternoon. He can also be found using SCU’s pool for cross-training and deepwater aqua running. On weekends, he often runs longer races with other marathon runners.

"Everyone in law school needs to take breaks," he says. "The difference is that I run during my breaks."

J.T. Service

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Swift Justice" fundraiser

Service has turned his running passion into a fundraiser called "Swift Justice" for the law school’s Katharine and George Alexander Community Law Center. Service was a student in the center’s workers’ rights program, and hopes to use his interest in employment law to eventually work in sports management. When he ran the Los Angeles Marathon in March, he raised nearly $2,000 for the Center.

Over the summer, he worked to expand that fundraising program. "I received and continue to receive tremendous charitable support from friends, family and the whole Santa Clara Law community. People have donated both time and money to a great cause in the name of Swift Justice," he says. "I believe in this cause and I encourage everyone to take up the task for themselves and their community.

 

 

Serving International Justice

Monica Toole, a third-year Santa Clara Law student, recently returned from Tanzania where she was an intern in Chambers for the U.N.’s International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. While there, she went on safari and met with local Maasai people, as shown here.

Monica Toole

She says her experience has been life-changing. "Seeing my work realized in the decisions of the Tribunal allows me to understand the power that I have in helping to serve justice in the world," says Toole, who has also studied international humanitarian law at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia; international organizations in Geneva, Switzerland; and human rights law at the International Institute for Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. "It reaffirms my belief that each one of us is important and able to move mountains."

 

 

NCIP exoneration update

In April, a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge overturned the conviction of Ken Foley, who served almost 12 years after being wrongly convicted of a 1995 armed burglary.

From the beginning, Foley maintained his innocence, insisting that the victim mistakenly identified him. At Foley’s trial, Luke Gaumond, the person who actually committed the burglary, and his female co-defendant both testified that Gaumond was the actual burglar and that Foley had indeed been misidentified. But the prosecution attacked the credibility of Gaumond and the co-defendant, and Foley was convicted. Since that time, Gaumond maintained contact with Foley’s trial counsel, Steve Nakano, to try to help Foley. Nakano approached the district attorney’s office to reinvestigate the case, and that office determined that Foley should be resentenced.

Santa Clara Law student and NCIP intern Sadie Wathen, Kenneth Foley, and NCIP Legal Director Linda Starr.

Northern California Innocence Project Legal Director, Linda Starr, with able assistance from Santa Clara Law student and NCIP intern, Sadie Wathen, further reinvestigated the case and filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus on Foley’s behalf. "We argued that Foley’s entire conviction should be reversed, and we presented newly discovered evidence of Foley’s innocence as well as evidence that the prosecution had failed to turn over exculpatory information and that trial counsel had not fully investigated," says Starr.

In a document filed with the court, the district attorney agreed that Foley’s petition for writ of habeas corpus should be granted, saying they agreed that "a strong showing of actual innocence had been made." Foley was released on April 5.

 

Alexanders endow new law prize

Katharine and George Alexander have donated $1 million to the School of Law to establish a law prize that will be awarded annually.

Both Alexanders had long careers in law: Katharine as a public defender for 25 years, and her husband, George, as a law school professor at SCU for 34 years, and dean of the law school for 15 years. The first prize will be given on March 8, which is George Alexander’s birthday.

The award will recognize a person who has used his or her skill, knowledge, and abilities in the field of law to correct an injustice in a significant manner. The prize is not only to give the public a higher regard for the legal profession but also to be an inspiration within the legal profession and to serve as recognition of the good work that many lawyers do, either in the United States or in another country.

Katharine and George Alexander continued their generosity toward Santa Clara Law with a new endowed prize.

The exact amount of the award to be given each year has not yet been determined, but it will be given in perpetuity. The recipient may be invited to participate in lectures and classes and serve as a teacher, mentor, and scholar at Santa Clara Law. The recipient may also elect to mentor a specific law student at SCU who has demonstrated his or her commitment to emulate the activities of the prize recipient.

In May 2004, the Alexanders made another large gift to the law school—an $800,000 gift to the Community Law Center—which was renamed in their honor as the Katharine and George Alexander Community Law Center. The law center, which is located in San Jose, provides free legal services to low-income individuals and offers students the opportunity to gain hands-on legal experience while providing an important service to the local community.

 

 

 

 

Spring speakers at Santa Clara Law

A number of distinguished speakers visited the School of Law during the Spring semester.

Lindbergh Porter, a partner at Littler, and former president of the Bar Association of San Francisco, led a discussion on Feb. 5 on unconscious bias in the legal profession. Mr. Porter, an employment lawyer, was named a 2006 "Super Lawyer" by Law & Politics Publishers, and is a recipient of the Charles Houston Bar Community Service Award and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Community Award.

James Brosnahan, a San Francisco trial attorney, spoke on "how to pick a jury" on Feb. 15. Brosnahan wrote the Trial Handbook for California Lawyers published by Bancroft-Whitney. He was inducted into the State Bar of California’s Trial Lawyers Hall of Fame in 1996; awarded the Samuel E. Gates Award by the American College of Trial Lawyers in 2000; named Trial Lawyer of the Year by the American Board of Trial Advocates in 2001; and named Legend of the Law by the Lawyer’s Club of San Francisco in 2002. He has also served as president of the Bar Association of San Francisco.

Hon. Edward Damich

John Van De Kamp, former California Attorney General, and chair of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, spoke on the commission’s origins and work on March 14. The commission was created by the California Senate to examine the causes of wrongful convictions, and to make recommendations to insure that the administration of criminal justice is fair, just, and accurate. Three members of the commission are from the Santa Clara Law community: Professor Jerry Uelmen is its executive director; Professor Cookie Ridolfi is a commission member; and Chris Boscia, a part-time law student, is its executive assistant. A final report from the commission is due at the end of 2007.

The Honorable Edward Damich, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, presented "Patents as Property Rights: The Taking of Patents by the Federal Government as an Exercise of Eminent Domain, Zoltek Corp. v. U.S." on March 12. Judge Damich was appointed to the court in 1998, and designated chief judge in 2002. The court hears cases for monetary damages against the federal government, except cases for physical injury. From 1995 to 1998, Judge Damich was chief intellectual property counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, and was involved in the passage of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. He also worked on the Omnibus Patent Act, and has written extensively on copyright law.

Joseph Cotchett

Maya Harris, executive director of the ACLU of Northern California, presented "Social Justice Lawyering: Race, Criminal Justice and Civil Rights Advocacy" on March 19. She has been with the ACLU since 2003, when she joined as director of the affiliate’s Racial Justice Project. She previously served as dean of Lincoln Law School in San Jose, and has taught at several Bay Area law schools. She also worked at the San Francisco law firm of Jackson Tufts Cole & Black.

Joseph Cotchett was the annual Distinguished Advocate in Residence on April 19. He gave a career retrospective and presented "The Ethics Gap in our Profession." He is a partner in the law firm of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy in Burlingame and Los Angeles. The National Law Journal has consistently called him one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America. Cotchett has won numerous jury awards in major consumer antitrust actions, securities fraud, qui tam suits and business litigation. He has served as defense counsel as well, defending Consumers Union in trials involving disparagement suits by Isuzu and Suzuki. He has tried over 100 cases to verdict in 41 years in practice and has lectured at numerous law schools around the country.

 

Raising green on the green

The ninth annual Justice Edward Panelli Golf Classic was held on June 25 at the San Jose Country Club. The event raises funds for endowed scholarships, as well as for the Law Alumni Emergency Loan Program. Approximately 85 golfers participated in the tournament, including more than a dozen who flew in from Southern California. The event raised more than $18,000.

"This is the first time I have had the pleasure of playing in the Justice Panelli Golf Tournament," said Sacramento attorney David Sandino ’84. "It exceeded my expectations. I had a great time playing golf with my fellow law alums at a fantastic golf course for a good cause—law student scholarships."

 

Panelli Golf Classic