Faculty: Service and Scholarship
Santa Clara’s law faculty share a commitment to social justice and public interest work in both their research and public service work. As Professor Eric Wright has commented: "Seventy percent of our faculty have done public interest work – more than almost any law school in the country." With this wealth of experience, faculty help students to bridge the gap between legal theory and law practice. Here is a sampling of the scholarship and activities represented by the Santa Clara faculty.
Evangeline Abriel co-wrote the 2008 version of the THE VAWA MANUAL: IMMIGRATION RELIEF FOR ABUSED IMMIGRANTS, published by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. She presented trainings on immigration relief for victims of domestic abuse, human trafficking, and other serious crime in San Francisco, Louisville, Kentucky, and Atlanta, Georgia. She represented a petitioner for review before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, under the Court’s Pro Bono Program; represented a respondent before the Board of Immigration Appeals; and supervised students representing petitioners for review under the Ninth Circuit’s Pro Bono Project. She also accompanied students to New Orleans on Santa Clara’s second annual Student Bar Association Alternative Spring Break program and worked with them at the New Orleans Legal Assistance Corporation.
Margalynne Armstrong participated on a panel at the Spring Society of American Law Teacher’s Conference. She co-authored an article (with Stephanie M. Wildman), Teaching Race/Teaching Whiteness: Transforming Colorblindness to Color Insight that was published in the North Carolina Law Review. Professor Armstrong accompanied students in March on the SBA Alternative Spring break trip to New Orleans to volunteer for the New Orleans Legal Aid Corporation. She also served as a moderator for a panel at the joint Western Law Professor of Color/Conference of Asian Pacific Law Faculty in April.
Angelo Ancheta continues to work on constitutional and civil rights law, and directs the law school’s civil clinical program at the Katharine & George Alexander Community Law Center. He published Bakke, Antidiscrimination Jurisprudence, and the Trajectory of Affirmative Action Law and Antidiscrimination Law and Race-Conscious Recruitment, Retention, and Financial Aid Policies in Higher Education as book chapters, and Citizenship by Birth appears in the Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States. The article A Constitutional Analysis of Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 and Voluntary School Integration Policies, which was originally presented in September 2007 at Harvard Law School, is being published by the Rutgers Race and the Law Review, and his article The Bounds of ‘Modern Authority’: Social Science and Constitutional Fact Finding in Racial Justice Litigation will be published in the Ohio State Law Journal. He continues to work with national organizations addressing affirmative action and desegregation issues, and is a member of a team of researchers helping to develop a statewide diversity plan for the Kentucky higher education system.
Stephen Diamond taught the Social Justice Workshop this past year: Labor and the Global Economy, see page 14. Professor Diamond published an article on private equity funds in Dissent Magazine called Private Equity and Public Good. The article was recently reprinted in PE Digest, a leading private equity website. Professor Diamond delivered a paper on private equity and corporate governance at a conference at York University’s Osgoode Hall School of Law in Toronto. He chaired a panel on corporate governance at Harvard Law School and he participated in a panel on international labor rights at Cal State Pomona.
Mary Emery has served on the board of directors of Santa Clara County Legal Aid Society since 1979.
Lia Epperson's teaching and research continues to focus on civil rights, education, constitutional law, and racial discrimination. Her scholarship centers on constitutional interpretations of educational equity, and the role of public schools and universities in making manifest the Constitution’s promise of equal opportunity. She recently authored an article Supreme Power? Examining the Role of the Executive Branch in Shaping the Scope and Meaning of School Desegregation Jurisprudence, which will be published in the BERKELEY JOURNAL OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN LAW AND POLICY. Her upcoming article, Congress, the Court, and a New Model for Racially Inclusive Public Education, will be published in the OHIO STATE LAW JOURNAL. She has served as a panelist and given presentations at a number of conferences, including "Brown Undone? The Future of School Integration in Seattle after PICS v. Seattle School District," at Seattle University School of Law, and "Reclaiming and Reframing the Dialogue on Race and Racism Symposium," Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, University of California at Berkeley, School of Law. She also serves on the Board Nominating Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
Anna Han spoke to the Women in Licensing group, in Palo Alto, on careers in the technology field. On September 20, 2007, she spoke at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology on "US China IP Cooperation." The audience was a delegation of high level PRC law makers and judges studying at the Center. In November 2007, Professor Han also attended the NAPABA convention in Las Vegas and gave a talk on "Managing the Management in China: The Challenges of Building and Maintaining an Ethical and Strong Local Management Team in China and Best Practices of Corporate Governance."
Marina Hsieh continues to serve on the National Board of Directors of the ACLU and on the National Advisory Committee of the Women’s Rights Project of the ACLU. She also chairs the national ACLU’s Friends of the Legacy Challenge campaign and co-chairs the cabinet of the ACLU of Northern California’s Campaign for the Future.
Brad Joondeph published four articles: Federalism, the Rehnquist Court, and the Modern Republican Party, 87 OREGON L. REV. (forthcoming 2008); Judging and Self Presentation: Towards a More Realistic Conception of the Human (Judicial) Animal, 48 SANTA CLARA L. REV. 523 (2008); Practical Consequences, Institutional Competence, and the Kentucky Bond Case, 46 STATE TAX NOTES 267 (2007); and The Deregulatory Valence of Justice O’Connor’s Federalism, 44 HOUSTON L. REV. 507 (2007). He also authored an amicus curiae brief for the National Governors Association et al., in the Supreme Court case of Department of Revenue of Kentucky v. Davis, 128 S. Ct. 1801 (2008). In addition, Professor Joondeph presented papers at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association (March 2008) and the AALS mid-year Conference on Constitutional Law (June 2008).
Ellen Kreitzberg works principally in the criminal justice area and specifically on issues surrounding the death penalty. She is a co-founder and director of the Death Penalty College, which brings 100 capital defense litigators to Santa Clara for six days of training in preparing and presenting their pending capital cases. Started in 1992, the college is committed to raising the level of representation in capital cases. She is a member of the core committee for the statewide death penalty moratorium effort in California and serves on the California Attorney for Criminal Justice Death Penalty Conference Committee that organizes the annual death penalty training each February for more than 900 defense counsel. Professor Kreitzberg is a member of the Board of the Northern California Innocence Project. She regularly speaks at local high schools and provides radio and media commentator on issues of criminal justice.
She co-wrote a report and provided testimony (with Michael Radelet and Steven Shatz) before the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice on Response to Questions on Proportionality Review and Data Collection and a Review of Special Circumstances in California Death Penalty Cases: Special Report to the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, available at http://www.ccfaj.org/rr-dp-expert.html. Her article, But Can it Be Fixed: Constitutional Challenges to Lethal Injection Executions (with David Richter) appears at 47 Santa Clara University Law Review 445 (2007). In January, 2008 Professor Kreitzberg gave a presentation on "Lethal Injection: How to Maximize the Debate" at the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty Reaching for the Dream. In September, 2007 she met with foreign lawyers from Tunisia organized by the Institute of International Education/West Coast Center (IIE) as guests of the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program on the death penalty in the United States. She was also a Fall 2007 member of Santa Clara delegation to the El Salvador immersion program.
Kenneth A. Manaster continued to serve on the selection committee for the Justice John Paul Stevens Fellowship.
Cynthia Mertens has been actively involved in assisting the Katharine and George Alexander Community Law Center with its fund-raising efforts. In addition, she has worked closely with Katharine and George Alexander in the establishment of the endowment that awarded the first Katharine and George Alexander Law Prize to 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. Professor Mertens sits on the Committee that will conduct an annual international search for the prize recipients. She also continues to provide pro bono advice to members of the university community, many of whom have sought her assistance because of her expertise in real estate finance. She continues to serve on the Advisory Board of Child Advocates of Silicon Valley.
Michelle Oberman has co-authored a new book, entitled WHEN MOTHERS KILL: INTERVIEWS FROM PRISON. Unlike her past work on the topic of maternal filicide, this book is devoted to telling the collective stories of 40 women incarcerated for killing their children. She has co-authored (with Leslie Wolf and Patti Zettler) the book chapter Where Stem Cell Research Meets Abortion Politics: Limits on Buying and Selling Human Oocytes in BABY MARKETS: MONEY, MORALITY AND THE NEOPOLITICS OF CHOICE (Cambridge University Press, Michele Goodwin, ed., forthcoming, 2008). In addition, she has written a commentary on safe haven laws, Comment: Infant Abandonment in Texas, 13 CHILD MALTREATMENT 94 (2008) (online at http://cmx.sagepub.com).
In the past year, she has made a number of scholarly presentations, including "When Mothers Kill," John Fitzrandolph Memorial Lecture, Whittier Law School’s Center for Children’s Rights (Los Angeles, March 2008) and "Judging Vanessa: Mothers, Transgression and the Law," William & Mary College of Law, Annual Women & the Law Symposium (Williamsburg, VA, February, 2008). She also continues to serve as a volunteer community member of the GESCR (Gamete, Embryo, and Stem Cell Review) committee at the UCSF.
Lynette Parker created a workshop and participated in several panel workshops at the Biannual Conference of the National Network to End Violence Against Immigrant Women held in Lexington, Kentucky. She also provided expert testimony at a hearing of the Santa Clara County Human Relations Commission on Immigrant Voices. She presented on immigration benefits for victims of human trafficking at a number of conferences and workshops, including ones sponsored by the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Bay Area Task Force, the Central Coast Coalition to End Human Trafficking, the South Bay Coalition to End Human Trafficking training for case managers, and the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault Statewide Leadership Conference. She provided a training on vicarious trauma to staff at the Silicon Valley Law Foundation’s retreat. She has written a number of articles, including Increasing Law Students’ Effectiveness When Representing Traumatized Clients: A Case Study of the Katharine & George Alexander Community Law Center, 21 GEO. IMMIGR. L.J. 163 (Winter 2007); The Ethics of Migration and Immigration: Key Questions for Policy Makers, a briefing paper for the Markkula Center on Ethics/SCU on the Ethics of Migration, see http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/focusareas/global_ethics/migration.html, and Immigration Law and Community Service at Santa Clara University School of Law, Explorer, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Spring 2008).
Kathleen "Cookie" Ridolfi continues her work as the Executive Director of the Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP), and serves on the California Senate Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice (CCFAJ). The CCFAJ has sponsored three bills in the California State Senate. SB 609 (D-Romero) will require independent corroboration of jailhouse informant testimony. SB 511 (D-Alquist) will require electronic recording of all custodial interrogations in violent felonies and homicides. SB 756 will require the Attorney General to convene a task force to develop guidelines for the proper procedures and handling of eyewitness identification evidence. Professor Ridolfi is also a board member of the International Innocence Network. Under her guidance, NCIP is conducting research that will inform the CCFAJ on criminal justice issues effecting wrongful convictions.
Her most recent efforts include a preliminary report titled Prosecutorial Misconduct: A Systemic Review that was presented to the CCFAJ during a hearing held at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, California on July 11, 2007.
Margaret Russell spoke at the SALT Teaching Conference Teaching for Social Change (Berkeley, CA) in March on: "Teaching Whiteness/Teaching Race" (with Professors Armstrong and Wildman). She also addressed the March, 2008 Law, Culture, and Humanities Conference Imagining Justice and Injustice (Berkeley, CA) at the panel "Examining Pedagogical Norms: Explaining Why the ‘Haves’ Come Out Ahead" (with Stephanie M. Wildman).
Catherine Sandoval's article Antitrust Language Barriers; First Amendment Constraints on Defining an Antitrust Market by a Broadcast’s Language, and Its Implications for Audiences, Competition and Democracy, will be published by the Federal Communications Law Journal, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington. Professor Sandoval presented a paper at the Oxford Round Table, Oxford University in March 2008 on the application of antitrust principles to the Net Neutrality debate and its implications for competition, consumer protection, the future of the internet and democracy. She testified about her antitrust and net neutrality research at the Federal Communications Commission’s April 2008 hearing on broadband practices and the public interest. Professor Sandoval served as a Member of the Board and Corporate Secretary for Fresh Lifelines for Youth, an organization which works to give youth a better future by teaching them about the law and legal consequences of actions and choices. She also served on the Grants Selection Committee for the Social Sciences Research Council, Necessary Knowledge for the Public Sphere project which supports scholarly research in the Communications Law and Media field.
Alan Scheflin received the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis Award of Merit for his "extraordinary and exceptional representation of the hypnosis community in the legal arena, his support of the ethical use of hypnosis in the treatment of trauma, and his many publications on these topics." He also gave two presentations at a spring conference, one of which was a workshop with FBI hypnosis specialists discussing the application of hypnosis in solving crimes. He serves on the Ethics Committee for the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis.
Kandis Scott published a chapter entitled, Approaches to Autonomy in Capital Punishment and Assisted Suicide in AUTONOMY AND THE LAW, edited by Mortimer Sellers. She was also elected Director of the SouthBay Returned Peace Corps Volunteers.
E. Gary Spitko presented his work-in-progress An Empirical Study Of Will Substitutes: The Creation of New Knowledge to Challenge Old Assumptions (co-written with Mary Louise Fellows (U. Minnesota) and Charles Q. Strohm (UCLA)) at the January 2008 Association of American Law Schools Annual Meeting (session of section on donative transfers, fiduciaries and estate planning), in New York. He presented his article Open Adoption, Inheritance, and the ‘Uncleing’ Principle at the Santa Clara Law Review’s 2008 Symposium on "When Change Comes Home: Legal Repercussions and Comparative Perspectives on the Transforming Structure of American Households." The latter article will appear in a symposium issue of the 2008 Santa Clara Law Review.
Edward Steinman has continued his work as a civil rights attorney. He is currently involved, as both a lawyer and community resident, in the operation of programs for the homeless in San Francisco. He also works with California Food Policy Advocates, where he has focused on research, policy papers, and advocacy aimed at alleviating hunger and malnutrition problems that confront both low-income children and seniors. While much of the attention on the elderly poor has focused on the continuing crisis in health care, millions of seniors are at nutrition risk because they lack access to sufficient or adequate food. Professor Steinman is also a board member of the Silicon Valley Public Interest Law Foundation and chairs the Foundation’s Litigation Screening Committee.
Gerald Uelmen was named one of the "100 Top Lawyers" in California for the second year in a row by the Daily Journal. In June of 2008, he concluded his work as Executive Director of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice. This past year, he drafted reports on the California death penalty, Professional Responsibility of Prosecutors and Defense Lawyers, and Remedies for the Wrongfully Convicted for the Commission. He participated in four conferences on Wrongful Convictions, sponsored by the American Bar Association, the National Innocence Network, the San Francisco Bar Association, and Southwestern University School of Law. He continues to provide pro bono representation to the Women’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Santa Cruz and to chair the Editorial Advisory Committee for California Lawyer Magazine. His annual assessment of the work of the California Supreme Court is published in California Lawyer each year.
Beth Van Schaack drafted an amicus brief for the U.S. Supreme Court in the cases of Al-Odah & Boumediene, challenging the habeas corpus-tripping provisions of the Military Commission Act for detainees on Guantanamo. She continues to work through the Institute for Redress & Recovery (IRR) to ensure that victims and witnesses testifying in human rights trials have adequate psychological support during the process. IRR has projects in The Hague and Phnom Penh where international prosecutions are underway. She also continues to advise the Center for Justice & Accountability its ongoing cases on behalf of victims of torture and other grave human rights abuses.
Stephanie M. Wildman published an article: Teaching Race/Teaching Whiteness (with Margalynne Armstrong), 86 No. Car. L. Rev. 635 (2008); two book chapters: Race and Wealth Disparity: The Role of Law and the Legal System (with Beverly Moran) in RACE AND WEALTH DISPARITIES: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY DISCOURSE (Beverly Moran ed., 2007) and Anti-discrimination Laws Are Limited in Discrimination: Opposing Viewpoints (2007); and an encyclopedia entry: Critical Feminist Theory, ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LAW & SOCIETY (2007). In January she completed her service on the AALS Executive Committee and commenced a term on the AALS Committee on Professional Development. She appeared as a panelist in October at UNC’s One People, One Nation? Housing and Social Justice: The Intersection of Race, Place, and Opportunity conference on the panel "Is Residential Integration a Remedy? If So, How Can We Pursue It?" (with Professor Armstrong) and also spoke in tribute to John Calmore at the event. In March, she spoke at the SALT Teaching Conference Teaching for Social Change (Berkeley, CA) on two panels: "Teaching Whiteness/Teaching Race" (with Professors Armstrong and Russell) and "Bringing It All Together: Steps for Putting Together a Social Justice Textbook, Course, or Law School Curriculum." She also addressed the March, 2008 Law, Culture, and Humanities Conference Imagining Justice and Injustice (Berkeley, CA) at the panel "Examining Pedagogical Norms: Explaining Why the ‘Haves’ Come Out Ahead" (with Professor Russell).
Eric Wright was appointed to the Executive Committee of the Access to Justice Commission and the Legal Services Coordinating Committee. Eric also has joined and has been active in the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel (NCCRC). This Coalition is an association of individuals and organizations committed to ensuring meaningful access to the courts for all. The Coalition’s mission is to encourage, support, and coordinate advocacy to expand recognition and implementation of a right to counsel in civil cases.
Eric has continued to work on consumer cases in connection with the Alexander Law Center and has been instrumental in helping to secure substantial cy pres funds for the Law Center (as well as for several other public interest organizations). Eric serves on the Board of the newly incorporated Watsonville Law Center (which was started by one of his former students).
Eric and Nancy were honored with the Voices of Justice Recognition Award for their dedication and commitment to the pursuit of social justice and their support to students pursuing social justice work.
Nancy Wright is currently serving a two-year term as Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Fresh Lifelines for Youth (FLY). FLY is a non-profit organization providing at risk, primarily minority youth with legal education, mentoring and leadership training. She also serves on the selection committee for the Justice John Paul Stevens Fellowship. Nancy wrote SOS (Safeguard Our Survival): Understanding and Alleviating the Lethal Legacy of Survival-Threatening Child Abuse (with Eric Wright), that appeared in 16 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF GENDER, SOCIAL POLICY AND THE LAW 1 (2007).
Julia Yaffee serves on the Executive Committee of the Student Services Section of the Association of American Law Schools. She also serves on the Pre-Law Committee of the ABA Section on Pre-Legal Education and Admission to the Bar.
David Yosifon presented a paper at the March 7-8, 2008 conference on Feminist Theory and Economic Vulnerability at the University of Colorado Law School. The paper concerns topics of feminism and corporate theory. His law review article, titled Legal Theoretic Inadequacy and Obesity Epidemic Analysis, will be published by the George Mason Law Review.