Dear Friends,

Welcome to a glorious new academic year! 

We are so blessed to be joined by five outstanding new full time faculty members. Each of them brings a distinguished record of scholarship, teaching, professional accomplishment, and service to our community. Please join me in welcoming:

Brandon Honoré - Brandon is joining Santa Clara Law as an Assistant Professor of Law. His scholarship focuses on property and public law, combining interdisciplinary qualitative, quantitative, and geospatial analyses with doctrinal interpretation to reveal systemic injustices and propose reforms. Prior to joining us, Brandon was an American Bar Foundation Doctoral Fellow in Law and Social Science. From 2014 to 2018, he was Legislative Assistant and then Senior Policy Advisor to U.S. Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro, Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health, Education, and Related Agencies in Washington, D.C. 

Erika Douglas - Erika is joining Santa Clara Law as an Associate Professor of Law and as Co-Supervisor of the Privacy Law Certificate. Her scholarship focuses on the interactions between antitrust, data privacy, and regulation. Prior to joining us, Erika taught at Temple University, Beasley School of Law and practiced antitrust law at the Silicon Valley office of Covington & Burling LLP. Erika was recently awarded the Jerry S. Cohen Award for Antitrust Scholarship, Best Publication of 2025 on Antitrust in Regulated Industries for her article Antitrust Abandonment.

 

Megan Crane - Megan is joining Santa Clara Law as a Clinical Professor of Law and as the new Legal Director of the NCIP, leading its post-conviction innocence litigation efforts, supervising its staff attorneys, and teaching its law clinic. Prior to joining us, Megan taught a Wrongful Conviction Clinic at Washington University School of Law and at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. She has been an active litigator for two decades, focusing on post-conviction defense in cases of wrongful conviction, the death penalty, and youth sentenced to extreme sentencing, as well as civil rights litigation aimed at reform of the criminal legal system and mass incarceration. Megan has litigated in state and federal courts across the country, including as amici in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Tania Valdez - Tania is our new Albert J. Ruffo Assistant Professor of Law. Her scholarship is dedicated to the study and practice of immigration law, highlighting the inadequacies of protections for noncitizens in the current era of aggressive immigration enforcement. Her scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal Forum, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the Washington University Law Review, among others. Prior to joining us, Tania was an Associate Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School.

Sejal Patel - Sejal is our new Senior Fellow. She has been practicing law for over 25 years, starting her career in the Attorney General Honors Program in the U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division/ Fraud Section and as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Domestic Violence and Sex Office Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. Sejal also had a solo practice out of Boston, through which she represented many defendants at the trial and appellate levels in the Massachusetts state and federal courts. She litigated an exoneration in 2008 (Commonwealth v. Guy Randolph), which was featured on the front page of the Boston Globe. She also tried a federal terrorism case (U.S. v. Tarek Mehanna) with the law firm of Carney & Bassil in Boston, which was featured in nearly every major media outlet and involved complex issues of religious freedom, free speech, national security, and terrorism. 

We are incredibly fortunate that faculty of this caliber have chosen to make Santa Clara Law their home. Their arrival is a testament to how we are rising together as we continue to enrich our curriculum, expand our scholarly community, and further our mission of developing competent, conscientious, and compassionate lawyers. 

Please take the opportunity to introduce yourselves this week and share your insights with our new members of our team as they settle into their roles. 

With warm regards and tremendous gratitude,

 

Michael J. Kaufman
Dean and Professor of Law
Santa Clara University School of Law