Santa Clara University

Honoring Leaders

2005 Spring Awards Banquet

BY LARRY SOKOLOFF ’92, PHOTOS BY GREG PIO

At the Spring Awards Banquet on April 29, the School of Law honored four distinguished alumni and one current professor. More than 200 people attended the dinner, which was held in the Leavey Activity Center at the Santa Clara campus.

Kyong “Kenny”W. Ahn ’85, Alumni Achievement Award recipient, shares a big hug to celebrate the occasion.

The Alumni Special Achievement Award was established by Santa Clara University School of Law’s Alumni Association to publicly recognize outstanding achievements of its alumni.

Recipients have distinguished themselves in their profession, community, and in service to humanity. The awards are based on a variety of factors, including community service, youth activities, career achievement, community educational involvement, professional and community honors, business and professional leadership, and educational honors and SCU involvement.

School of Law Dean Donald Polden; the Honorable Eileen A. Kato ’80, Alumni Achievement Award Recipient; and Kurt Seibert ’84, past president of the Law Alumni Board.

Former Law School Dean Mack Player was also honored at the event with the Edwin J. Owens Lawyer of the Year award, an award given to a distinguished member of the law school community who is devoted to the highest ideals of the profession and has made significant contributions to the University, the community, and the law. First awarded in 1966, the Owens award is named for Edwin J. Owens, a longtime dean of the law school who was later a judge of the Superior Court.

“I’m honored and pleased by the award,” Player said. “It certainly is an honor to be among such previous distinguished recipients.”

“This is the first year the Owens Award and the Alumni Association Special Achievement Awards were presented at the same function,” said Kurt Seibert ’84, past president of the Law Alumni Association. “It turned out to be a tremendous success in terms of the number of attendees, the presentation, the camaraderie, and the celebration of the positive impact the honorees have had on both the legal community and the community at large.”

2005 Alumni Achievement Award Recipients

Kyong “Kenny” W. Ahn ’85

Ahn was born in Seoul, Korea, and is dean and Professor of Law at Seoul National University’s College of Law. He studied law there, as well as at the University of Pennsylvania and Santa Clara University, where he earned a J.D. in 1985. Professor Ahn worked in private practice in California before returning to Korea in 1987. He has been at Seoul National University’s College of Law since 2002. He has also been a visiting scholar at the London School of Economics and a visiting professor of law at Southern Illinois University Law School. This past spring, he was a visiting professor at Santa Clara, teaching a comparative constitutional law class. Ahn has served as president of the Korean Constitutional Law Association, the Korean Anglo-American Law Association, and the Korean Law School Deans’ Association. He has authored 21 books and has written over 100 articles on constitutional law, Anglo-American law, law and literature, and jurisprudence.

The Honorable Eileen A. Kato ’80

After graduating from the School of Law in 1980, Eileen Kato worked as a special assistant to the U.S. Attorney for the Western Washington District, and as a senior trial attorney with the Department of the Treasury. She also practiced as an attorney in two private firms before joining the bench in King County, Washington, in 1994. Judge Kato was elected president of the Washington State District and Municipal Judges Association, becoming the first judge of color to head the organization. Judge Kato serves on the American Bar Association’s Justice Kennedy Commission on Sentencing and as immediate past-chair of the ABA’s Conference on Specialized Court Judges. She also served as president of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association’s Judicial Council and as West Division Presiding Judge of the King County District Court. She is active in numerous committees for the judicial and legal communities, and in many community organizations such as Nikkei Concerns and the Japanese American Citizens League.

School of Law Dean Donald Polden and The Honorable Eugene M. Premo ’62, Alumni Achievement Award Recipient.

The Honorable Eugene M. Premo ’62

Associate Justice Eugene Premo served two years in the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps before entering the School of Law. After graduating cum laude in 1962, he worked in private practice in Santa Clara area law firms. In 1969, he was appointed a municipal court judge of the Santa Clara Judicial District, later serving as president of the Municipal Court Judges Association. In 1974 he was elevated to the Santa Clara County Superior Court where he served as assistant presiding judge and presiding judge. In 1988, he was appointed to the Sixth District Court of Appeal. He has since served as a member of the Commission on Judicial Performance, including two years as its chair. He has taught at SCU School of Law as an adjunct professor and has been a member of the SCU Board of Visitors. He received the Owens Lawyer of the Year award in 1991.

Richard Watters ’73

Watters is a native of Fresno, and served as a sergeant in the California Air National Guard from 1966 to 1972. He earned his B.S. degree, cum laude, and an MBA degree from California State University, Fresno. He graduated from Santa Clara’s School of Law in 1973. He is a member of the Fresno County and American Bar Associations, American Trial Lawyers Association, American Board of Trial Advocates, and the National Board of Trial Advocacy, which has certified him as a civil trial advocate. He was president of the San Joaquin Valley chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates from 1994 to 1996. He is a fellow of the International Society of Barristers, the American College of Trial Lawyers, and the International Academy of Trial Lawyers. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California; the U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit; and the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. District Court, Central District of California.

Richard Watters ’73, Alumni Achievement Award recipient; and 2005 Owens Lawyer of the Year, Mack A. Player.

2005 Owens Lawyer of the Year Mack A. Player Mack A. Player earned his law degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and served as law clerk for Judge Floyd R. Gibson, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He was a faculty member at the University of Georgia in Athens. He then served in the Office of the Solicitor, U.S. Department of Labor, and earned his LL.M. with highest honors from George Washington University. He was a “scholar-in-residence” in the civil division of the U.S. Department of Justice in 1986, and in 1987 joined the law faculty at Florida State University in Tallahassee. He served as associate dean for academic affairs and was also codirector of the Florida Dispute Resolution Center. He was also honored there with a clinical professorship. He served as dean at SCU’s School of Law from 1994 to 2003. He is now a professor of law at SCU, teaching disability law, contracts, and employment discrimination. He also serves as an adviser to the law school’s Moot Court and Moot Court Board and is currently active in the expansion of the school’s international law program.