First Year Faculty
Legal Analysis, Research, and Writing Instructors
Helen A. Anderson
Assistant Professor of Law
Professor Helen Anderson joined the law school faculty in 1994. She teaches Basic Legal Skills, Criminal Law and Persuasive Writing. She has also taught Professional Responsibility and directed an Appellate Practice Clinic. Prior to joining the faculty, Professor Anderson clerked for Judge Walter Webster of the Washington State Court of Appeals and practiced as an appellate criminal defense attorney for eight years. She became Assistant Director of the Washington Appellate Defender Association, which represented indigent parties in the state appellate courts. She is an author of the Washington State Bar Association's Appellate Practice Deskbook and past chair of the Washington State Bar Association Corrections Committee. Professor Anderson is also a founding member of the Washington Appellate Lawyers Association.
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Tom Cobb
Senior Law Lecturer
Professor Thomas Cobb joined the UW law school faculty in 2004. Before joining the faculty, Professor Cobb clerked for Justice Susan M. Leeson at the Oregon Supreme Court and was an Assistant Attorney General in the Appellate Division at the Oregon Department of Justice.
Professor Cobb graduated from the University of Alabama magna cum laude and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. After completing his master's degree in literature, rhetoric, and translation theory, he taught and studied in Colmar, France under an IIE-Fulbright Grant. He then received a University of Chicago Fellowship to study literature and art history and concentrated his studies on rhetoric and visual culture, earning an M.A. in comparative literature.
At the University of Minnesota Law School, he was a student director of the Legal Assistance to Minnesota Prisoners clinic and was involved in the redesign, expansion, and translation of the University of Minnesota Human Rights Library. He graduated magna cum laude and is a member of Order of the Coif.
Professor Cobb's current research interests include legal rhetoric, statutory interpretation, evidence, and criminal law. He is a member of the Rhetoric Society of America, the American Society for the History of Rhetoric, and the National Council of Teachers of English. He is admitted to practice before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
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Sarah Kaltsounis
Law Lecturer
Professor Kaltsounis joined the faculty in 2006. She previously clerked for the Hon. Richard C. Tallman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was in private practice at Karr Tuttle Campbell, where she focused on school law and employment law.
In 2003, Professor Kaltsounis graduated with honors from the UW School of Law and was elected to the Order of the Coif and the Order of Barristers. She served on the executive boards of the Washington Law Review and the Moot Court Honor Board, and was a member of the William L. Dwyer Inn of Court.
A former special education teacher, Professor Kaltsounis has worked as an early intervention behavior analyst for children with autism and taught at the UW's Experimental Education Unit. She holds a Master's degree in Special Education.
Professor Kaltsounis is a member of the Washington state bar and the Washington Council of School Attorneys, and is active on the board of directors of Lawyers Helping Hungry Children. Her research interests include legal rhetoric, learning theory, K-12 education law and policy, and disability law. She was selected as the Student Bar Association's Phillip A. Trautman 1L Professor of the Year in 2007, and currently serves as the faculty advisor for the UW's Academic Support Program.
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Kathleen McGinnis
Senior Lecturer
Senior Law Lecturer
Professor McGinnis returned to the UW law school in 1997 to teach Basic Legal Skills, having also taught that subject in the 1994-95 academic year. She practiced law from 1984-94 at Preston, Gates & Ellis in Seattle, concentrating on commercial litigation and antitrust law. Professor McGinnis has directed the summer law clerk program at Lane Powell Spears Lubersky in Seattle, and worked as a freelance legal writing lecturer and consultant. She is admitted to the Washington state bar and is a member of Order of the Coif. Her teaching and research interests include professional skills development, jurisprudence, constitutional law and civil procedure.
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Theodore Myhre
Law Lecturer
Professor Myhre teaches Legal Analysis, Writing, and Research, Contract Negotiations and Drafting, Pre-Trial Motions Practice, Public Interest Practicum: LGBT Youth Project, Judicial Clerkship Practicum, Advanced Civil Procedure, Client Counseling, and the freshman discovery seminar, Law and Social Justice: Landmark Cases in Civil Rights.
He believes strongly in experiential learning and serves as the faculty supervisor/head coach of the International Commercial Arbitration Competition team. He acted as an arbitrator for the 2009 VIS East competition in Hong Kong and as judge for the final round of the Falkner appellate competition. Additionally, professor Myhre regularly supervises judicial externs, as well as provides lectures and workshops to further support students in their clerkship application process.
Prior to joining our faculty, Professor Myhre served as a Visiting Professor of Legal Writing at Seattle University School of Law. He has also served as an Acting Staff Attorney for the Washington State Supreme Court, a Managing Partner of McGlothin Myhre, PLLP, an Associate of Corr Cronin, LLP, Law Clerk to Justice Charles Johnson of the Washington State Supreme Court, and Judicial Extern to Judge Thomas S. Zilly of the U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington.
His practice areas include trial and appellate litigation, alternative dispute resolution, employment law, business law, family law, and civil rights law. He holds a J.D. from Seattle University School of Law, an M.A. in History from Boston College, an M.A. in Modern European Intellectual History from Drew University, a Certificate in Language and Civilization from the University of Paris, and an interdisciplinary B.A. from The Evergreen State College.
His current academic interests include discourse analysis, cultural studies, civil rights, international dispute resolution, and learning theory/pedagogy.
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Civil Procedure Instructors
Craig H. Allen
Judson Falknor Professor of Law
Professor of Law
Professor Allen joined the UW law school faculty in 1996, following his retirement from the U.S. Coast Guard. He was the Honor Graduate in his law school class, served as Editor-in-Chief of the Washington Law Review and Vice President of the Moot Court Honor Board. At graduation he received the Vivian Carkeek Prize for legal writing and was inducted into the Order of the Coif and the Order of Barristers. His teaching and research interests include maritime and international law, civil litigation, national and homeland security law, and constitutional law issues in the conduct of international relations. He is a licensed master mariner, a fellow in both the Nautical Institute and the Royal Institute of Navigation, and a member of the U.S. Maritime Law Association and the Secretary of Homeland Security Navigation Safety Advisory Council. Professor Allen is on the board of editors of Ocean Development and International Law and authored Farwell's Rules of the Nautical Road (8th ed. 2005). He is admitted to practice in Oregon and Washington and in the Ninth and Federal Circuits, the Court of International Trade, and the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2003 he was named a Washington Law Foundation Scholar, and in 2005 he was appointed the Judson Falknor Professor of Law. In 2006, the members of the Washington Law Review honored Professor Allen with their "Distinguished Alumni Award." During the 2006-07 academic year he served as the Charles H. Stockton Chair in International Law at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, RI.
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Kathleen McGinnis
Senior Lecturer
Senior Law Lecturer
Professor McGinnis returned to the UW law school in 1997 to teach Basic Legal Skills, having also taught that subject in the 1994-95 academic year. She practiced law from 1984-94 at Preston, Gates & Ellis in Seattle, concentrating on commercial litigation and antitrust law. Professor McGinnis has directed the summer law clerk program at Lane Powell Spears Lubersky in Seattle, and worked as a freelance legal writing lecturer and consultant. She is admitted to the Washington state bar and is a member of Order of the Coif. Her teaching and research interests include professional skills development, jurisprudence, constitutional law and civil procedure.
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Eric Schnapper
Professor of Law
Professor Schnapper, who joined the UW law school faculty in 1995, teaches Civil Rights, Civil Procedure and Employment Discrimination. He served for twenty-five years as an assistant counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., specializing in appellate litigation and legislative activities.
Most recently, Professor Schnapper won three U.S. Supreme Court cases, including two high-profile employment discrimination cases, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway v. White (June 22, 2006) and Ash v. Tyson Foods, Inc. (Feb. 21, 2006). In addition, he has handled more than seventy Supreme Court cases, including Kolstad v. ADA (1999), Bogan v. Scott-Harris (1998), Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Oil (1998), Faragher v. Boca Raton (1998), and Burlington Industries v. Ellerth (1998).
Professor Schnapper taught at Columbia Law School from 1979-94, and at Yale Law School in 1990. His articles on constitutional law and civil rights have appeared in law reviews published by Harvard, Columbia, Virginia, Stanford and other law schools. He served in 1981-82 as administrative assistant to Representative Tom Lantos (Calif.). He was the recipient of a Marshall Scholarship for study at Oxford University in 1963-65, served as articles editor of the Yale Law Journal, and clerked for the California Supreme Court.
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Lea B. Vaughn
Professor of Law
Professor Vaughn, a native of Seattle, came to the UW in 1984. Her teaching and research focuses on employment relations (labor law, employment discrimination, employment law) and procedural courses such as civil procedure. She also has interests in K-20 education, Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), and administrative law and policy. Prior to her career in education, she practiced labor law representing unions. In Michigan, she was chair of the Michigan Teacher Tenure Commission. Professor Vaughn was awarded the Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Fellowship at the end of her third year of law school. At UW, she was appointed by the university president to serve as Secretary of the Faculty for all three UW campuses from 1999-2005. In that position, she had oversight of the university-wide faculty governance structure, the faculty grievance procedures and the University Handbook. She is a member of the Michigan bar.
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Comparative and International Law Instructors
Joel Ngugi
Associate Professor of Law
Professor Ngugi joined the faculty in 2004. His research interests include the role of law in economic development, the role of governments in market regulation and wealth allocation, and legal reforms in transition and developing economies. He teaches Contracts Law and Contracts Theory, Public and Private International Law (including courses in Law and Development, International Business Transactions, Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples Rights, International Economic Law), and Business Organizations. Professor Ngugi was selected by the students as a Philip A. Trautman Professor of the Year for 2004-05.
Prior to joining the faculty, Professor Ngugi practiced law with the Boston law firm of Foley Hoag, LLP, as a corporate and international litigation associate. He also practiced law with the Kenyan firm Kariuki Muigua & Company Advocates. Professor Ngugi has worked with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and conducted research work for the Global Coalition for Africa/World Bank, Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (HPCR) at Harvard University and at the Global Trade Watch Division of the Public Citizens, Inc. in Washington, DC.
At Harvard University, he was one of two recipients of the John Gallup Laylin Prize in International Law in 2002. At Harvard, his many fellowships and grants included the Clark Byse Fellowship (for academic distinction among graduate students) and the European Law Research Center Seminar Fellowship. Professor Ngugi was also awarded dissertation fellowship grants from the Institute for the Study of World Politics, Washington, DC and the MacArthur-Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
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Veronica Taylor
Director, Asian Law Center
Dan Fenno Henderson Professorship in East Asian Legal Studies
Professor of Law
Professor Taylor joined the faculty in 2001. As Director of the Asian Law Center she is responsible for the J.D., LL.M., Ph.D., and Visiting Scholar programs in Asian, Comparative and Development Law. She leads a team of fifteen faculty and staff who carry out the Center's teaching, research and policy work on Afghanistan, Central Asia, Indonesia, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. She serves as a faculty advisor to the Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal.
Professor Taylor specializes in commercial law and society in Asia, regulation, and law reform in transition economies. She has published extensively on commercial law in Japan and Indonesia, on regulation, law and society in Asia and on the 21st century challenges of law and development.
She has over twenty years' experience as a scholar and consultant participating in and managing projects for the U.S. Agency for International Development, World Bank, Asian Development Bank and AUSAID. She has designed law reform and legal training projects focused on Afghanistan, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Egypt, Indonesia, Japan, Mongolia, Vietnam, and the United States.
Professor Taylor is the Project Director for the U.S. Department of State Afghan Legal Educators Project based at the Asian Law Center and in Afghanistan, which is designed to help professionalize the Afghan justice sector personnel, reconstruct the criminal justice system, and foster development of the rule of law. She also directs, with Professor Susan Whiting (UW Political Science) a State Department-funded multi-year project on Empowering Rural Communities: Legal Aid and the Rule of Law in Rural China, which both delivers and studies the effects of legal aid in some of China's poorest provinces.
With Professors Tom Ginsburg (Illinois) and John Ohnesorge (Wisconsin), Professor Taylor established the new Rule of Law, State-building and Transition Collaborative Research Network with the Law and Society Association and is active in shaping new intellectual approaches to law and development initiatives.
Before joining the Law School Professor Taylor was a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo and tenured as Associate Director of the Asian Law Centre, University of Melbourne. She maintains her appointment as an Associate of the Australia-Japan Research Centre, Australian National University.
She serves on a number of UW and professional committees relating to Asia and globalization. She is currently a member of the American Advisory Committee for the Japan Foundation and Vice-President of the Urasenke Foundation, Seattle.
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Walter J. Walsh
Associate Professor of Law
Professor Walsh was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, and joined the UW law school faculty in 1998, after serving as a visiting professor from 1996-98. His prior appointments include serving as a Samuel I. Golieb Fellow in Legal History at New York University School of Law; Visiting Professor at Central European University, Budapest; Associate Professor, Seton Hall University School of Law; and Harry A. Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law at University of Chicago Law School. His research and teaching interests are in the areas of legal history, constitutional law, European Union law, and law and religion. Professor Walsh has been admitted to practice in Ireland, California, New York, and the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts. He served as judicial clerk to Judge Julia Cooper Mack, District of Columbia Court of Appeals, 1985-87, and practiced law in New York City with Debevoise & Plimpton. Professor Walsh serves on the UW Center for West European Studies steering committee and teaches at the UW Rome Center in Italy.
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Jane Winn
Director, Shidler Center for Law, Commerce & Technology
Charles I. Stone Professor of Law
Professor of Law
Professor Winn, co-director of the Shidler Center for Law, Commerce & Technology and Fulbright Scholar, is a leading international authority on electronic commerce law and technological and governance issues surrounding information security. She joined the faculty in 2002. Her current research interests include electronic commerce law developments in the United States, the European Union, and China. She is coauthor of Law of Electronic Commerce and the casebook Electronic Commerce.
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Constitutional Law Instructors
Stewart Jay
Professor of Law
Professor Jay has taught at the UW law school since 1980. Prior to coming to Washington he taught at the University of North Carolina for two years. Before entering teaching, Professor Jay clerked for two years, first with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and then for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Warren E. Burger. His teaching and research interests include constitutional law and constitutional history. Professor Jay is the author of Most Humble Servants: The Advisory Role of Early Judges (Yale 1997). He has worked extensively to assure the reproductive rights of women, particularly access to safe and legal abortions. During 1984-85 he was a visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center.
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Clark Lombardi
Associate Professor of Law
Professor Lombardi joined the UW law school faculty in 2004. A specialist in Islamic law and in constitutional law, he teaches in these areas and also teaches courses in federalism, comparative law, and development law. Professor Lombardi's current research and writing have focused on the evolution of Islamic law in contemporary legal systems. He also focuses on comparative judicial institutions and on the way that constitutional systems deal with religious organizations and religious law.
Professor Lombardi has a Ph.D. in Religion from Columbia University where he focused on Islamic law. At Columbia Law School in 1998 he was a James Kent Scholar and editor-in-chief of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law. From 1999-2000, he clerked for Judge Samuel A. Alito, then on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He practiced law with the firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York City, where he specialized in representing sovereigns and in complex transnational commercial matters, often with sovereign participation.
Professor Lombardi has lived, worked or studied in Indonesia, Yemen, Egypt, and Afghanistan. He has taught courses on Islamic law at Columbia Law School and the NYU Department of Middle East Studies. He has spoken at the Council on Foreign Relations and numerous academic forums. He has been involved in projects advising on constitutional or legal reform in the Muslim world, including Iraq and Afghanistan. In recognition of his work, he was named a Carnegie Scholar for 2006-08, which will allow him to expand his research into Islamic law and constitutionalism in the modern world.
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Kathryn Watts
Assistant Professor of Law
Professor Watts, a native of Oregon, joined the law school faculty in 2007 as an assistant professor. She teaches administrative law and constitutional law, and her research and teaching interests also include federal courts and Supreme Court decision-making.
Professor Watts earned her J.D., summa cum laude, from Northwestern University School of Law, where she was awarded the John Paul Stevens Prize for Academic Excellence for graduating first in her law school class. Following law school, Watts clerked for Judge A. Raymond Randolph of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court. After her clerkships, Watts worked at Sidley Austin LLP in Chicago where she specialized in appellate work and brief writing. She then joined Northwestern from 2005 to 2007 as a visiting assistant professor to teach administrative law, federal courts, and a Supreme Court seminar.
Professor Watts's research focuses on interaction between the federal courts and executive actors, with a particular emphasis on interaction between the judiciary and administrative agencies. She recently published Adapting to Administrative Law's Erie Doctrine, 101 Nw. U. L. Rev. 997 (2007). She also is an author of Agency Rules with the Force of Law: The Original Convention, 116 Harv. L. Rev. 467 (2002) (co-authored with Thomas W. Merrill), which received the ABA Section on Administrative Law Award for Distinguished Scholarship in 2003.
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Contract Law Instructors
Steve Calandrillo
Associate Dean
Charles I. Stone Professor of Law
Professor of Law
Professor Calandrillo joined the UW law school faculty in 2000. Prior to teaching, he clerked for Judge Alfred Goodwin on the Ninth Circuit and practiced corporate law at Foster Pepper & Shefelman in Seattle. Professor Calandrillo graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School where he was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law & Economics and a member of the Harvard Journal on Legislation. He is a frequent speaker nationally and has published articles on a wide variety of subjects, including economic analyses of intellectual property rights, eminent domain law, and U.S. health and safety regulatory policy. He also authored articles addressing organ donation incentives, physician-assisted suicide, the Americans with Disabilities Act, sports medicine law, and exemptions to compulsory vaccination laws. He teaches Contract Law, Law & Economics, Law & Medicine, and Secured Transactions, and was selected by the students Philip A. Trautman Professor of the Year in 2003-04 and 2007-08. Prof. Calandrillo serves on the law school's Executive Council, as faculty advisor to Washington Law Review, and on the Advisory Board of LifeSharers, a national non-profit organization dedicated to saving the lives of patients awaiting organ transplants. He has co-authored four amicus briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court, and he and his wife recently won a landmark property rights case before the Washington State Supreme Court on behalf of Washington landowners, Viking v. Holm et al., 155 Wash. 2nd 112.
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Yong-Sung (Jonathan) Kang
Assistant Professor of Law
Professor Kang's teaching and research interests are in the areas of contract law and theory, international business transactions, Korean law, comparative law, and moral and legal philosophy. His scholarship seeks to explore the normative underpinnings of contractual obligations and the theoretical justifications for the regulation of contractual relationships in concrete private and/or public contexts, using insights drawn from philosophy and comparative jurisprudence.
Prior to joining the UW School of Law, Professor Kang was a visiting assistant professor at Fordham University School of Law, where he taught contracts, contract theory, and commercial transactions. Before entering academia, he worked at the law firms of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton and Latham & Watkins in New York, and at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in Boston. While in private practice, Professor Kang's work centered on commercial litigation and international arbitration matters.
Professor Kang was born in Seoul, Korea, and grew up in Singapore. Professor Kang attended Oxford University, where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Jesus College and obtained his degree with First Class Honors. A fluent speaker of Korean and a proficient speaker of Mandarin Chinese, Professor Kang is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, where he was Developments Chair of the Harvard Law Review. After law school, he clerked for Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
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Kate O'Neill
Associate Professor of Law
Professor O'Neill joined the UW law school faculty in 1993 to direct and teach in the Basic Legal Skills Program. She has been teaching legal analysis, research, and writing since 1983, first at New York University and then at Brooklyn Law School. Her teaching and research interests include copyrights, contracts, professional skills development, learning theory, jurisprudence, legal rhetoric, and law and literature. Before teaching, Professor O'Neill was in private practice in New York for three years.
In 2003, she initiated a pilot project to reform the way first-year law students are taught to analyze legal texts and to communicate that analysis. The project applies contemporary scholarship on how adults learn a discipline and employs novel collaborative teaching and learning methods. She presented a paper on the project at the Legal Writing Institute Conference in June 2006. In addition, she is working on an interdisciplinary analysis of contemporary rhetoric in the federal judiciary and revising a paper on the law and rhetoric surrounding the transfer of intellectual property generated during employment.
Professor O'Neill is a member of the Association of Legal Writing Directors and former Chair of the Legal Reasoning and Writing Section of the Association of American Law Schools. In 2005-06 she served as chair of the law school's Curriculum Committee and has recently served on the law school's Strategic Planning Committee and its faculty Executive Council. For two years she served as chair of the University's Faculty Council on Faculty Affairs. She is the President of the UW chapter of the American Association of University Professors. She is admitted to the bar in New York and Washington.
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Michael Townsend
Associate Professor of Law
Professor Townsend joined the UW law school faculty in 1992 and has taught Contracts, Torts, Quantitative Methods in the Law, and Copyrights and Trademarks. He also has taught mathematical logic in the Department of Philosophy. Prior to his arrival at the UW, he was on the mathematics faculty at Harvey Mudd College, and the computer science faculty at Columbia University. He was a research scientist at Bell Laboratories.
Professor Townsend's interests include law, science, and technology and the use of quantitative methods in legal reasoning. He has published on the use of statistics in legal proceedings and on mathematics and theoretical computer science. He has served as a referee for several technical journals. While at Yale Law School, he was Articles Editor for the Yale Law Journal and Senior Editor for The Yale Journal on Regulation. Also at Yale, he was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law, Economics and Public Policy.
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Criminal Law Instructors
Helen A. Anderson
Assistant Professor of Law
Professor Helen Anderson joined the law school faculty in 1994. She teaches Basic Legal Skills, Criminal Law and Persuasive Writing. She has also taught Professional Responsibility and directed an Appellate Practice Clinic. Prior to joining the faculty, Professor Anderson clerked for Judge Walter Webster of the Washington State Court of Appeals and practiced as an appellate criminal defense attorney for eight years. She became Assistant Director of the Washington Appellate Defender Association, which represented indigent parties in the state appellate courts. She is an author of the Washington State Bar Association's Appellate Practice Deskbook and past chair of the Washington State Bar Association Corrections Committee. Professor Anderson is also a founding member of the Washington Appellate Lawyers Association.
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James H. Hardisty
Professor of Law
Professor Hardisty practiced as an attorney for three years before joining the UW law school faculty in 1970. He teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, and Family Law.
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Jacqueline McMurtrie
Director, Innocence Project Northwest
Associate Professor of Law
Professor McMurtrie joined the UW School of Law in 1989 after a career as a public defender. She teaches Criminal Law and Procedure and Evidence and directs the Innocence Project Northwest Clinic (IPNW). Since its formation in 1997, IPNW has secured the release of eleven wrongly convicted inmates.
Professor McMurtrie received a "President's Award" from the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and a "Pro Bono Award" from the National Law Journal for her work with IPNW. She has been recognized as a Washington State "Super Lawyer" and selected by the students as a UW School of Law's Phillip A. Trautman Professor of the Year. She is a member of the bars of Washington state, the Western District and Eastern District of Washington, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Ron Whitener
Director, Tribal Court Criminal Defense Clinic
Assistant Professor of Law
Professor Whitener graduated from the UW School of Law in 1994 and went to work as a tribal attorney for the Squaxin Island Tribe (of which he is a member) where he represented the tribal government in treaty rights defense, gaming and enterprises, and infrastructure development. In January 2000, he left Squaxin Island to take a position with the Northwest Justice Project's (NJP) Native American Unit in Seattle. At the NJP he headed the Indian Law Clinic, a joint project between the NJP and the UW School of Law. In 2002, Professor Whitener left the NJP to take over the Tribal Court Criminal Defense Clinic, a project of the UW School of Law Native American Law Center.
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Property Law Instructors
Robert Anderson
Director, Native American Law Center
Associate Professor of Law
Professor Anderson is an Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Native American Law Center. Before joining the law school, he was a Senior Staff Attorney for the Native American Rights Fund in Boulder, Colorado and Anchorage, Alaska for twelve years. He litigated major cases involving Native American sovereignty, hunting and fishing rights, and natural resources. From 1995-2001 he served as an appointee of Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt where he provided legal and policy advice on a wide variety of Indian law and natural resource issues. He teaches Indian Law, Public Land Law, Water Law and first-year Property Law. Professor Anderson was selected by students as a Philip A. Trautman Professor of the Year in 2005 and again in 2007. In 2007, he received the Native Justice Award from the Northwest Indian Bar Association. He is also a co-author and member of the Board of Editors of Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law (2005) and is co-author of American Indian Law: Cases and Commentary, which is now in press. He is an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (Bois Forte Band).
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Samuel A. Donaldson
Director, Graduate Program in Taxation
Professor of Law
Professor Donaldson teaches a number of courses in both the J.D. and LL.M. programs, including Basic Income Tax, International Taxation, Property Dispositions & Transactions, Partnership Taxation, and Estate Planning. He is the co-author of a two-volume treatise, International Taxation: Corporate and Individual (4th ed. Carolina Academic Press), and the sole author of the casebook, Federal Income Taxation of Individuals (West: American Casebook Series). Prior to joining the UW law school faculty in 1999, he was an attorney in Bellevue, WA, where his practice focused on federal taxation, estate planning, business acquisitions, and business succession planning. Professor Donaldson was the Harry R. Horrow Visiting Professor in International Law at Northwestern University School of Law in 2005. He has also served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. He is admitted to practice in Washington, Oregon, and Arizona. Professor Donaldson was recognized by the students as a Philip A. Trautman Professor of the Year in 2002, 2004, and 2006.
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Linda S. Hume
Professor of Law
Before coming to the UW School of Law in 1972, Professor Hume clerked for the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles and taught at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her teaching and research interests include international commercial law, sales, secured transactions, and land use. She has served as a Commissioner on the Washington State Human Rights Commission and on a Committee of the Washington State Bar Association that drafted the Real Estate Contract Forfeiture Act. She is a member of the California and Washington Bar Associations and the Order of the Coif. Professor Hume taught International Sales at the University of Peking in 1990 and was a visiting scholar at the University of Kobe in 1991.
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Sylvia Kang'ara
Assistant Professor of Law
Professor Kang'ara joined the UW law school faculty in 2006 and teaches first year property and international law. She also teaches in the African Studies program at the Jackson School of International Studies. Professor Kang'ara graduated from Harvard Law School with an LL.M. and an S.J.D in Comparative Private Law and Property Theory and holds an LL.B. from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. Her research focuses on the interaction of ideas that shape our understanding of property, poverty, and difference.
As a doctoral fellow, Professor Kang'ara taught a workshop on comparative property law at the European Law Research Center, Harvard Law School. She also received academic awards during her doctoral research including the American Association of University Women International Fellowship in 1998, the Institute for the Study of World Politics Fellowship in 2000, and a research grant from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in 2001.
Prior to undertaking advanced legal studies, Professor Kang'ara was a legal consultant on law reform for the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA-Kenya). After graduate studies, Professor Kang'ara worked in the project finance and equipment leasing department of the New York law firm of White & Case, LLP before joining the faculty of Oklahoma City University Law School as a visiting assistant professor.
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Tort Law Instructors
Paul Steven Miller
Henry M. Jackson Professor of Law
Director, UW Disability Studies Program
Professor of Law
An internationally renowned expert in disability and employment discrimination law, Professor Miller joined the faculty in 2004, after spending twelve years in public service in Washington, DC. He was one of the longest serving commissioners of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency which enforces employment discrimination laws. While at the EEOC, Professor Miller spearheaded the development of the agency's successful mediation program. He has also served as the White House liaison to the disability community and as Deputy Director of the U.S. Office of Consumer Affairs. Prior to joining the U.S. government, Professor Miller was the director of litigation for the Western Law Center for Disability Rights (now the Disability Law Center) and taught at the law schools of Loyola University and UCLA. He began his career as a litigation associate at a Los Angeles law firm.
Since 2006, Professor Miller has been the director of the University of Washington's Disability Studies Program, an interdisciplinary program that examines the social, cultural, historical and personal experience of disability. He is also a member of the UW Graduate School faculty, a Faculty Associate of the UW Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, and a faculty advisor to the UW School of Law Health Law Concentration Track.
Professor Miller currently serves as a member of the board of Mental Disability Rights International, an international human rights NGO; a member of the National Advisory Board of the Center for Genetic Research, Ethics, and Law at Case Western Reserve University; the Medical Ethics Committee of Seattle Children's Hospital; a member of the Grants and Community Leadership Committee of The Seattle Foundation; and an International Associate of the Employers' Forum on Disability based in London, England. He also serves as an appointed member of the HHS Secretary's Advisory Committee on Genetics Health and Society.
Professor Miller is an active member of the American Bar Association's (ABA) Labor and Employment Section, and he is a Fellow of the ABA Foundation. He was also elected to be a Fellow in the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers. Professor Miller is a Fellow of the British American Project. In 2003, Professor Miller received an honorary Doctor of Laws from CUNY Law School. He is a former trustee of the University of Pennsylvania.
Professor Miller is a frequent speaker and lecturer in the area of equal employment opportunity, workplace diversity, disability issues, and the legal, social and ethical issues of the Human Genome Project, and he is a prolific writer on these topics. Professor Miller's expert insights on the topics of the workplace, disability, genetics and the law often appear in the national media, in print, television and radio. He has received grant funding for his research and work in the areas of disability human rights, genomics and health equality, and bioethics. He has been the convener and chair of several national and international symposia, including Framing Legal and Human Rights Strategies for Change: A Case Study of Disability Rights in Asia (2008); and The Ethics and Policy of Limiting Growth in Children with Severe Disabilities: Issues of Decision Making, Benefits and Social Impact (2007).
In 2006, Professor Miller reprised his lead role as Don Baklava, in the revival production of the musical comedy Ring Job by The Mask and Wig Club.
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Michael Townsend
Associate Professor of Law
Professor Townsend joined the UW law school faculty in 1992 and has taught Contracts, Torts, Quantitative Methods in the Law, and Copyrights and Trademarks. He also has taught mathematical logic in the Department of Philosophy. Prior to his arrival at the UW, he was on the mathematics faculty at Harvey Mudd College, and the computer science faculty at Columbia University. He was a research scientist at Bell Laboratories.
Professor Townsend's interests include law, science, and technology and the use of quantitative methods in legal reasoning. He has published on the use of statistics in legal proceedings and on mathematics and theoretical computer science. He has served as a referee for several technical journals. While at Yale Law School, he was Articles Editor for the Yale Law Journal and Senior Editor for The Yale Journal on Regulation. Also at Yale, he was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law, Economics and Public Policy.
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Dongsheng Zang
Assistant Professor of Law
Professor Zang joined the faculty full-time in 2006, after serving as a visiting professor in 2005-06. His academic interests include international trade law, and comparative study of Chinese law, with a focus on the role of law and state in response to social crises in the social transformation in China. He holds an S.J.D. and LL.M. from Harvard Law School, in addition to his LL.M. from Renmin University (Beijing) and LL.B. from Beijing College of Economics. His doctoral dissertation, One-way Transparency: The Establishment of the Rule-based International Trade Order and the Predicament of Its Jurisprudence, was awarded the 2004 Yong K. Kim '95 prize. He was a research fellow at the East Asia Legal Studies at Harvard Law School during the 2004-05 academic year.
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