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.
Margalynne Armstrong presented "The Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: Race, Rescue, and the Moral Purpose of Government" at Santa Clara University in the fall. She served as director of the Center for Social Justice this semester while Professor Stephanie Wildman was on sabbatical leave.
Angelo Ancheta is an Assistant Professor of Law and the Director of the Katharine & George Alexander Community Law Center. He continues to write on civil rights law and constitutional law, and his book SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE AND EQUAL PROTECTION OF THE LAW was published by Rutgers University Press in January 2006. He has developed recent articles on race-conscious policies in higher education and on language access under the federal Voting Rights Act, and the second edition of his book RACE, RIGHTS, AND THE ASIAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, a widely used text on civil rights issues affecting Asian Americans, will be published in the fall of 2006. During the summer of 2006, he will be working on amicus curiae briefs in cases before the U.S. Supreme Court addressing the constitutionality of race-conscious desegregation policies in K-12 education.
Vinita Bali represented severely disabled individuals in Federal and State administrative courts. Ms. Bali currently serves on the Board of the non-profit group HOPE Services, assisting the developmentally disabled population in the Bay Area, and on the Advisory Board of the Legal Studies Steering Committee of the East Side Union High School District.
Stephen Diamond published a letter in the Financial Times on the nomination of Christopher Cox as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. He recently advised the AFL-CIO on the Cox nomination and also advised the AFL-CIO, the Communications Workers of America, and the Chunghwa Telecom Workers Union of Taiwan during the recent $3 billion privatization of the Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd., Taiwan’s largest telecommunications company. NBC 11 News and the San Jose Business Journal interviewed him on the implications of the departure of four major affiliates from the AFL-CIO to form a new national labor federation. The San Jose Mercury News also reported his views on the settlement of securities class action lawsuits against major investment banks related to the dotcom crash.
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 most recent article, True Integration: Advancing Brown’s Goal of Educational Equity in the Wake of Grutter appears in 67 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH LAW REVIEW 175 (2005). In April 2006, Professor Epperson facilitated a discussion on the Supreme Court’s erosion of civil rights protections hosted by the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights and the Equal Justice Society. The discussion included a reading from her book chapter The Rehnquist Court, the Resurrection of Plessy, and the Elusive Definition of "Societal Discrimination," which appears in AWAKENING FROM THE DREAM: PURSUING CIVIL RIGHTS UNDER SIEGE AND THE NEW STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE (Carolina Academic Press 2005). She also serves on the Justice Fund Honorary Committee for The Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center.
Dorothy Glancy is an expert in historic preservation, land use, environmental law, administrative law, and privacy and has published extensively in these areas.
Allen Hammond was a panelist at a program sponsored by the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School in October 2005. The Regulatory Framework panelists offered updates and perspective on the current regulatory landscape, examining federal, state, and/or local regulatory practices as they affect local government broadband-wireless plans and projects.
Anna Han spoke to the Bay Area Asian Pacific Islander Law Students’ annual meeting at Golden Gate University on International Law careers. As part of her sabbatical project, she reviewed four law decrees for the Vietnamese government as part of her continuing efforts to help draft investment and enterprise codes for Vietnam through the UNDP program.
Marina Hsieh continues to serve on the National Board of the American Civil Liberties Union and chairs its Affirmative Action Goals Committee.
Philip Jimenez served as a staff attorney at California Rural Legal Assistance.
Brad Joondeph presided over The Annual Supreme Court preview and served as a respondent at the symposium "California Faces End of Life Choice: Legal Issues and the Contemporary Controversy" at Santa Clara University in the fall 2005.
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. Ellen is a member of the Board of the Northern California Innocence Project. She works with the project by consulting on cases attempting to exonerate those who have been wrongfully convicted. She continues speaking at local high schools on criminal justice issues and recently completed UNDERSTANDING CAPITAL PUNISHMENT LAW, a textbook published by Lexis.
Susan Levin is the supervising attorney for the workers’ compensation clinic at the Katharine and George Alexander Community Law Center. Recent changes in workers’ compensation law have limited the ability of many low wage earners to obtain representation for their workers’ compensation claims. In addition to her work at the clinic, Susan has assisted several legal aid organizations in their attempt to assist injured workers obtain their benefits.
Kenneth A. Manaster presented a paper at Fordham Law School titled Justice Stevens, Judicial Power, and the Varieties of Environmental Litigation. The paper was part of a two-day symposium, "The Jurisprudence of Justice Stevens," and Fordham Law Review published the paper (74 FORDHAM L. REV. 1963 (2006)). Also, his article Fairness in the Air: California’s Air Pollution Hearing Boards will be published in UCLA Journal of Environmental Law and Policy.
Scott Maurer was awarded the title of Clinical/Legal Services Attorney of the Year by the National Association of Consumer Advocates (NACA). In February 2004, he was a speaker at a national conference sponsored by the National Consumer Law Center in Kansas City on Fair Debt Collection Practices, which is one of Scott’s areas of specialization.
Cynthia Mertens taught a course entitled "Legal Systems in El Salvador" in the Fall to students who were selected to accompany her on a January immersion trip to El Salvador. The course engaged a number of outside experts to help students understand the historical and current situation regarding human rights and the state of the law in this small Central American country. The students then spent a week in El Salvador speaking with survivors of the civil war, judges, lawyers and human rights activists. Students return, committed to working either directly or indirectly to improve the situation of the voiceless in the world.
Gary Neustadter has developed electronic casebooks on secured debt (with Cynthia Mertens) and contracts. He is an expert in bankruptcy and consumer protection. He serves on the Advisory Board of the East San José Community Law Center and assists law clinic students in advising clients.
Michelle Oberman published several book chapters, including Child Rape, (with Katharine K. Baker), in THE CHICAGO COMPANION TO THE CHILD (forthcoming, 2006); Understanding Maternal Filicide, ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, (forthcoming, 2006); Mothers Who Kill Their Children: Considering Patterns, Prevention, and Intervention, (with Cheryl L. Meyer), ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY IN THE 21ST CENTURY (ed. Thomas Plante, forthcoming). Professor Oberman also published two law review articles, Sex, Lies and the Duty to Disclose, 47 ARIZ. L. REV. 871 (2005) and American Association of Law Schools Panel: The Use of Patients for Teaching Purposes Without Their Knowledge or Consent, Introduction, 8 J. HEALTH CARE L. & POL’Y 210 (2005). Professor Oberman also has given several lectures in the past several months, including "13 Ways of Looking at Surrogate Motherhood," 2005 Annual Health Law Teachers Conference (Houston, June 2005); "What Lawyers Can Learn from the Terri Schiavo Case," (with Professor Lawrence Nelson), San Jose Inns of Court (San Jose, April 2005); "When the Truth is Not Enough: Tissue Donation, Altruism and the Market," DePaul Law Review Annual Symposium (Chicago, March 2005); "The Case for Including Pregnant Women in Clinical Trials," Stanford University Human Biology Department (Feb. 2005); "Autonomy Suspended: The Use of Patients for Teaching Purposes Without Their Knowledge or Consent," Moderator and Commentator, AALS Annual Conventional (San Francisco, Jan. 2005); "Sex, Lies and the Duty to Disclose," Berkeley Conference on Socio-Economics (Berkeley, Jan. 2005).
Lynette Parker provided training for immigration legal service providers and attorneys, as well as Santa Clara County service providers. News media, including NBC Channel 11, Telemundo Channel 48, and San Jose Mercury News, interviewed her regularly about immigration law issues.
She presented at the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) symposium at Stanford and on Santa Clara University campus for the Santa Clara Community Action Program on proposed immigration legislation. She presented on U Visas for victims of crimes at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center training for Bay Area legal advocates. Lynette Parker has taken on responsibilities for both the AILA California Conference in November 2006 and the AILA National Conference in June 2006. She is also one of a panel of editors on a book about Vicarious Trauma and the Legal Process.
Mack Player has published numerous books on employment discrimination, including Employment Discrimination Law.
Patricia Rauch served as a volunteer at the George and Katherine Alexander Law Center and as the faculty advisor to the Women and Law student organization.
Kathleen "Cookie" Ridolfi continued her work as Executive Director of the Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP) and service on the California Senate Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice. The Commission is studying causes of wrongful conviction in California and drafting proposals to address the problems that will be presented to the California Senate. She serves on the board of the Innocence Network, a network of innocence projects across the United States, Canada and Australia. Barred from Life, the show she created with Professor David Popalisky, played for an audience of 500 people at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. The De Saisset Museum also featured the show as part of The Innocents, a week long program. Throughout the year, she has made presentations at conferences and programs including the Innocence Conference in Seattle, Los Altos Morning Forum, Legacy Ventures, the Northern California Clinical Conference at Stanford, and the Faces of Wrongful Conviction conference at UCLA.
Margaret Russell delivered the afternoon keynote address at the Southwestern Law Review Symposium on LGBT Rights and The Civil Rights Agenda in January. The topic was "Sexual Orientation, Civil Rights, and the First Amendment." She served as a commentator on television and radio programs on numerous Supreme Court and constitution-related issues, including the California same-sex marriage litigation and the recent vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court. Professor Russell also contributed to the Perspective series on KQED-FM, on the topic of the reopening of the Emmett Till case and the 50th anniversary of Till’s murder.
Catherine Sandoval has published a book chapter, Serving the Public Interest: Broadcast News, Public Affairs Programming, and the Case for Minority Ownership, (with Bachen and Hammond) in MEDIA DIVERSITY AND LOCALISM: MEANINGS AND METRICS (Philip Napoli, ed., Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc., forthcoming). Her recent article, Antitrust Law on the Borderland of Language and Market Definition: Is there a Separate Spanish Language Radio Market? A Case Study of the Merger of Univision and Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation, appeared in the University of San Francisco Law Review (40 U.S.F. L. REV. 381 (2006).
Alan Scheflin testified on behalf of the Wisconsin Innocence Project in a murder case involving hypnotically refreshed recollection. It was his conclusion that the hypnotist retained by the police violated the minimum standards applicable for forensic hypnosis. Professor Scheflin had been a member of a Working Group of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis that wrote the guidelines. The appellate court reversed the defendant’s conviction, citing Professor Scheflin’s testimony. Subsequently, the prosecutor dismissed the case with prejudice.
He completed his term as President of the International Cultic Studies Association, an international human rights public interest organization concerned with issues of brainwashing, extreme influence, and terrorism. He now serves as Director of Santa Clara’s Institute on Influence, Law and Ethics. He also is Vice-President of the Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence. The Leadership Council assists the media and attorneys regarding the science and the law pertaining to issues of child abuse and domestic violence, and he completed a term as Chair of the Law and Mental Disabilities section of the American Association of Law Schools. He has been appointed to serve on the Ethics Committee of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis.
Kandis Scott presented a paper entitled Imported or Indigenous NGOs: Grass Roots Civil Society to the conference "Enlivening Democracy, Building Pluralism from the Bottom" in Warsaw, Poland. The conference, in Dec. 2005, was sponsored by the University of Warsaw and a research committee of the International Political Science Association. Professor Scott has been invited to teach at the Johns Hopkins-University of Nanjing Center in China during 2006-2007. She will be teaching new law courses to Chinese graduate students in a multi-disciplinary, international master’s degree program.
E. Gary Spitko was elected chair of the AALS Section on Donative Transfers, Fiduciaries and Estate Planning. At the 2006 AALS annual meeting, he served as program chair and moderator for a panel on "Inheritance Law and the Empirical Scholar." Professor Spitko’s article, The Constitutional Function of Biological Paternity: Evidence of the Biological Mother’s Consent to the Biological Father’s Co-Parenting of Her Child, appeared in the Arizona Law Review. His article, Navigating Dangerous Constitutional Straits: A Prolegemonon on the Federal Marriage Amendment and the Disenfranchisement of Sexual Minorities, was published in the Colorado Law Review. In June, he was a panelist on "Contemporary Perspectives on Fundamental Issues in Constitutional Law and Theory" at the Law and Society Association’s annual meeting in Las Vegas.
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.
Jiri Toman has published numerous books, articles, and studies concerning international law, human rights, humanitarian law, economic law, disaster relief, the protection of cultural property, and criminal law. He recently spoke at The American Society of International Law webinar titled, "Governing the Maelstrom: The Law of International Disaster Response" on April 25, 2006. In Paris, he participated at two UNESCO Conferences in October 2005 as an expert to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. He was invited to speak at the NATO/PFP Seminar, "Civil-Military Relations – Military Ethics III – The Protection of Cultural Property and (Military) Leadership" in Vienna, Austria in November 2005.
Gerald Uelmen was appointed Executive Director of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice in January, 2006, and will direct the Commission’s study of the causes of and remedies for wrongful convictions in California until the Commission’s issues its final report in December, 2007. He continues to provide pro bono representation to the Women’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana in their suit for federal injunctive relief. He also serves on the Board of Trustees for the Presentation Center, operated by the Sisters of the Presentation, and chairs the Editorial Advisory Board for California Lawyer Magazine. As Director of the Heafey Center for Trial and Appellate Advocacy, he coordinates the mooting of upcoming U.S. Supreme Court arguments at Santa Clara School of Law. Each Summer, he directs the Law School’s Summer Program at International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague. His most recent publications include California Evidence: A Wizard’s Guide published by CALIFORNIA ACADEMIC PRESS in 2005; The California Attempt to Evade Blakely v. Washington, published as the cover story for the CALIFORNIA CRIMINAL DEFENSE PRACTICE REPORT for September, 2005; Catholic Jurors and the Death Penalty, published in the JOURNAL OF CATHOLIC LEGAL STUDIES OF ST. JOHN’S UNIVERSITY, VOL. 44 at pp. 355-378 (2005); and Supremely Futile, his annual analysis of the work of the California Supreme Court, which appeared in the July, 2005 issue of CALIFORNIA LAWYER MAGAZINE. He also publishes two bi-monthly columns for practicing criminal defense lawyers, which appear in the California Criminal Defense Reporter, published by Lexis-Nexis, and the Champion Magazine, published by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Beth Van Schaack continues to serve as a Legal Advisor to The Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA), a San Francisco non-profit human rights law firm that initiates cases on behalf of victims of grave human rights abuses. Her most recent work involves the planning stage of a case involving the doctrines of command responsibility and conspiracy as applied to a massacre committed in the Middle East. She also works with two grassroots human rights documentation centers, one based in India and the other in Cambodia, assisting their efforts to document and to ensure accountability for human rights violations in their regions. This fall, she traveled to Phnom Penh to help lay the legal framework for a quasi-international tribunal that will be embedded within the Cambodian court system to try surviving members of the Khmer Rouge for atrocities committed from 1975-79 and finished a book on the process entitled BRINGING THE KHMER ROUGE TO JUSTICE: PROSECUTING MASS VIOLENCE BEFORE THE CAMBODIAN COURTS (Mellen Press 2006). This year, she founded The Institute for Redress and Recovery (IRR) at SCU with Jerry Gray, the founder of CJA. IRR provides clinical support services and training to victims, witnesses, and lawyers involved in human rights trials. This summer, she co-founded and is co-directing with Professor Robert Peterson a new summer program entitled "Human Rights in the Americas" that is based in San Jose, Costa Rica and springboards off our growing relationship with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Professor Van Schaack is working on a textbook on International Criminal Law with Foundation Press.
Stephanie M. Wildman continued serving as the Director of the Center for Social Justice and Public Service. She spoke on "White Privilege: Implications for the Catholic University, the Church, and Theology" at the University of Notre Dame and participated in a panel discussion on "Whiteness: Engaging White Students in Discussions on Race" at the National Conference on Racial Equality (NCORE). She published The Persistence of White Privilege, 18 WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF LAW AND POLICY 245 (2005), and Democracy and Social Justice: Founding Centers for Social Justice in Law Schools, 55 JOURNAL OF LEGAL EDUCATION 252 (2005). She chaired the AALS section on Women in Legal Education and served as moderator for the AALS Section program. She serves on the AALS Executive Committee.
Eric Wright Eric has been recently appointed by the State Bar of California to a two year term on the Access To Justice Commission. He has worked with the Alexander law clinic on several consumer law class action cases. He serves on the Boards of Directors of the East Palo Alto Community Law Center and the Watsonville Law Center (founded by one of his former students).
Nancy Wright serves on the Board of Directors of Fresh Lifelines for Youth (FLY) and has been elected to a two year term as Chairperson. Stanford Law School has also named their first clinical chair as "The Eric and Nancy Wright Clinical Law Professorship." Nancy served as a member of the Justice John Paul Stevens Fellowship selection committee.
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.
Stevens Fellowship selection committee.