2011 - 2012 First Year Faculty
Legal Analysis, Research, and Writing Instructors
Helen A. Anderson
Associate Professor of Law
Professor Helen Anderson joined the law school faculty in 1994. She teaches Legal Analysis, Research & Writing; Criminal Law; Advanced Criminal Procedure; and Persuasive Writing. She has also taught Professional Responsibility and directed an Appellate Practice Clinic. Professor Anderson's areas of scholarly interest are written advocacy, ethics, criminal law and procedure.
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Tom Cobb
Co-Chair, Judicial Clerkship Program
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.
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Sarah Kaltsounis
Co-Chair, Judicial Clerkship Program
Senior Law Lecturer
Professor Kaltsounis joined the faculty in 2006. She teaches Legal Research, Analysis, and Writing; Professional Responsibility; and Post-Conviction Review. She also serves as the faculty advisor for the UW School of Law's Academic Support Program, and, with Professor Tom Cobb, as the Faculty Co-Director of the Judicial Clerkship Program.
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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.
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Civil Procedure Instructors
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.
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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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Sanne Knudsen
Assistant Professor of Law
Professor Sanne H. Knudsen received a B.S. in Environmental Engineering from Northwestern University, an M.S. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Michigan, and a J.D. from the University of Michigan, where she graduated Order of the Coif and was a member of the Michigan Law Review. After graduating from law school, she clerked for the Honorable Ronald M. Gould on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Professor Knudsen went on to practice law in the area of environmental litigation at Faegre & Benson in Minneapolis, and Sidley, Austin Brown & Wood in Chicago. While at Faegre, Professor Knudsen represented numerous environmental public interest organizations on a pro bono basis. Her clients included Defenders of Wildlife, the Humane Society of the United States, Sierra Club, Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, and Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness.
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Kathleen McGinnis
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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Comparative and International Law Instructors
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.
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Anita Ramasastry
D. Wayne & Anne Gittinger Professor of Law
Professor of Law
Professor Ramasastry joined the faculty in 1996. Her research interests include commercial law, banking and payments systems, law and development and comparative law. Her current research focuses on the accountability of economic actors in conflict and weak governance zones. During 2008, she was a Fulbright Scholar and visiting professor at the Irish Center for Human Rights - NUI Galway.
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Hugh Spitzer
Affiliate Professor
Affiliate Professor of law
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Constitutional Law Instructors
Ronald K.L. Collins
Visiting Professor
Professor Collins is the Harold S. Shefelman Scholar at the UW School of Law. He specializes in First Amendment law and in constitutional law. Before coming to UW in 2010, he was a scholar at the First Amendment Center in Washington, D.C. He received his law degree from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles (law review) and his bachelor's degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara (political philosophy). He clerked for Justice Hans A. Linde on the Oregon Supreme Court and was a Supreme Court Fellow under Chief Justice Warren Burger. After working with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles and the Legal Aid Society of Orange County, Collins was a teaching fellow at Stanford Law School. Thereafter, he taught constitutional law and commercial law at several leading schools, including George Washington University Law Center and Temple Law School.
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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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Lisa Marshall Manheim
Visiting Assistant Professor of Law
Visiting Professor
Professor Lisa Manheim, a native of Seattle, joined the law school faculty in 2011 as a Visiting Assistant Professor. She teaches and writes in the areas of election law, constitutional law, and civil procedure.
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Kathryn Watts
Associate Dean for Research & Faculty Development
Associate Professor of Law
Professor Kathryn A. Watts, a native of Oregon, joined the law school faculty in 2007. She teaches administrative law, constitutional law and Supreme Court decision making. She is currently serving as Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development, and she has previously served on the law school's Executive Council, its Dean's Search Committee, and as the Faculty Director for the UW School of Law Judicial Clerkship Program. Her scholarship has been published in a variety of top journals, including the Yale Law Journal, the Harvard Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review and the U.C. Davis Law Review. In addition, she is a two-time recipient of the Philip A. Trautman Professor of the Year Award given by the student body.
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Contract Law Instructors
Steve Calandrillo
Charles I. Stone Professor of Law
Professor of Law
Professor Calandrillo joined the UW law school faculty in 2000 and was named Charles I. Stone Professor of Law in 2009. Prior to teaching, he clerked for Judge Alfred Goodwin on the Ninth Circuit and practiced corporate law at Foster Pepper 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, organ donation, compulsory vaccinations, assisted suicide, and U.S. health and safety regulatory policy. His recent law review articles have appeared in George Washington, William & Mary, Georgia, Ohio State, Wake Forest and Boston University Law Reviews as well as Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. He teaches Contract Law, Law & Economics, and Law & Medicine, and was selected by the students Philip A. Trautman Professor of the Year in 2003-04 and 2007-08. Prof. Calandrillo served as Associate Dean for Faculty from 2009-10, as Faculty Advisor to the Washington Law Review from 2007-11, and is 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.
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Kate O'Neill
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.
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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.
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Criminal Law Instructors
Mary D. Fan
Assistant Professor of Law
Professor Mary Fan's work focuses on policing, prosecution, cross-border crimes and the intersection of criminal and immigration (crimmigration) law. Her research and teaching are informed by experiences working as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of California and as an Associate Legal Officer at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. She worked with Judge O-Gon Kwon on cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide and clerked for the Hon. John T. Noonan, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Professor Fan has commented on issues within her expertise for a diverse range of media, from Al-Jazeera International to Fox News as well as local news organizations. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute.
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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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John Junker
Emeritus Professor of Law
Professor Junker clerked for Justice Roger Traynor of the California Supreme Court and practiced in San Diego before joining the UW law school faculty in 1964. His research and teaching interests are chiefly in criminal law, criminal procedure, and evidence. He has participated in a number of studies of the administration of juvenile and criminal justice and was a principal draftsman of the Washington Criminal Code. He was Reporter of the Standards Relating to Juvenile Delinquency and Sanctions for the Juvenile Justice Standards Project. Professor Junker was a founder of the Seattle Public Defender Association and is currently a member of its Board of Directors. He is admitted to the bar in California.
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Jacqueline McMurtrie
Director, Innocence Project Northwest
Associate Professor of Law
Jacqueline McMurtrie joined the University of Washington School of Law faculty in 1989 to teach the Criminal Law Clinic after a career as a public defender. She has taught Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, and Evidence and founded the Innocence Project Northwest (IPNW) Clinic. Since its formation in 1997, the IPNW has overturned the convictions of thirteen wrongly convicted inmates. Professor McMurtrie's research and teaching interests revolve primarily around criminal law and appellate/post-conviction practice, with a particular emphasis on wrongful convictions. She is on the Board of the Integrity of Justice Project, a non-profit that furthers policy changes to avoid erroneous convictions. She has received awards from the Washington Defender Association, Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the National Law Journal for her work with the IPNW. She has been recognized as a Philip A. Trautman Teacher of the Year and the received a Pacific Coast Banking Faculty Service Award. Professor McMurtrie obtained her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan.
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Property Law Instructors
Thomas Andrews
Professor of Law
Professor Andrews came to the UW in 1985 after five years' experience as an associate in the Washington, DC firm of Shea and Gardner, where he practiced in a variety of areas, including trusts and estates and asbestos litigation. Before entering private practice, Professor Andrews clerked for The Honorable Louis H. Pollak, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He is especially interested in law and ethics and in legal philosophy and has taught undergraduate courses in philosophy, law and ethics, and medical ethics. His principal teaching and research interests currently are in the areas of professional responsibility, trusts and estates, torts, and property, and community property. Professor Andrews, a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Order of the Coif, is a member of the Washington State Bar and a fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel.
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Robert Anderson
Director, Native American Law Center
Professor of Law
Bob Anderson is a Professor of Law and Director of the Native American Law Center at the University of Washington. He also has a long-term appointment as the Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He is a co-author and member of the Board of Editors of Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law (2005) and is co-author of Anderson, Berger, Frickey and Krakoff, American Indian Law: Cases and Commentary (Thomson/West 2008). He teaches and writes in the areas of Indian Law, Public Land Law and Water Law. Students have selected Professor Anderson as a Professor of the Year three times at the UW. In 2008, he was co-lead of the Obama Transition team for the Department of the Interior. He spent twelve years as a Staff Attorney for the Boulderbased Native American Rights Fund where he litigated major cases involving Native American sovereignty and natural resources. From 1995-2001, he served in the Clinton Administration under Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, providing legal and policy advice on a wide variety of Indian law and natural resource issues. He is an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (Bois Forte Band).
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Gregory A. Hicks
Professor of Law
Professor Hicks joined the UW law school faculty in 1984. He teaches courses in property, water law, and public land and natural resources law. He came to the law school after four years with the Seattle firm of Perkins, Coie, Stone, Olsen & Williams, and two years as special assistant to the chairman of the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Professor Hicks was the recipient of a Rhodes scholarship for study at Oxford University in 1972 and while a law student was an instructor in the legal writing program at the University of Texas Law School and a member of the Texas Law Review. Professor Hicks is a member of the American Law Institute and has been a visiting faculty member at the University of Texas Law School (2001) and the University of Arizona College of Law (1998). Professor Hicks has served on the boards of a number of non-profit organizations, including The Nature Conservancy (Washington, 2000-07) and the Pacific Forest Trust (2001-04). He has also participated on governmental advisory and oversight panels, including the National Endowment for the Arts and the Water Law Advisory Panel of the Washington State Attorney General's Office.
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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.
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Tort Law Instructors
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.
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Dongsheng Zang
Associate 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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Elizabeth Porter
Visiting Assistant Professor of Law
Visiting Assistant Professor
Professor Elizabeth G. Porter joined the law school faculty in 2010 as a visiting assistant professor. She teaches torts and advanced civil procedure.
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Zahr Said
Assistant Professor of Law
Professor Zahr Said joins us as an Assistant Professor. She comes to us after completing a stint as a visiting professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. Zahr earned her B.A. from UC Berkeley (magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa), her J.D. from Columbia (where she served as Articles Editor for the Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts, and was a Kent Scholar) and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University.
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