Full Time Faculty

Adam Abelkop teaches legal research, writing, and analysis. From 2016 to 2019, he served as a teaching fellow supervising Stanford Law School's Environmental Law and Policy LLM program. His research focuses on institutional analysis within the realm of public health and environmental protection. Adam has written on chemical risk regulation, international and domestic climate change policy, and the role of tort law in environmental protection. He earned his PhD in Public Policy from Indiana...

Lara Bazelon is a professor of law and the director of the Criminal Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice Clinical Programs at the University of San Francisco School of Law. From 2012-2015, she was a visiting associate clinical professor at Loyola Law School and the director of the Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent. Professor Bazelon was a trial attorney in the Office of the Federal Public Defender in Los Angeles for seven years. Prior to that, she was a law clerk for the Honorable Harry...

Professor Luke A. Boso taught property and constitutional law courses at Savannah Law School in 2013-14 as an associate professor, and he was a law teaching fellow with the Charles R. Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at the UCLA School of Law from 2011-13. Boso has served as a judicial intern for the Honorable Irene M. Keeley of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District Court of West Virginia, and a law clerk to the Honorable Judge Phillip D. Gaujot of the...

Jonathan previously served at Golden Gate University School of Law as the Director of Bar Exam Services and the Director of Graduate Law Programs. He was a former grader for a national bar company and has tutored students and attorneys for over 14 years to pass the California bar exam. He has worked with associates and partners from top 25 law firms and Fortune 500 companies to successfully pass the bar exam. Jonathan worked as a staff aide to Congressman Tom Lantos (SF/San Mateo) and served in...

Professor Joshua Paul Davis was the School of Law's associate dean for academic affairs from 2013-2017, during which he oversaw the law school's academic programs and was responsible for curricular and program developments and implementation. Davis focuses his scholarly research on complex litigation, ethics, and the interplay between the two. As director of the Center for Law and Ethics, he leads panels, organizes symposia, and undertakes research exploring these topics. Davis is active in law...

Professor Connie de la Vega writes extensively on international human rights law and participates in United Nations human rights meetings. She has submitted amicus briefs detailing international law standards to U.S. courts for juvenile death penalty and affirmative action cases, including Roper v. Simmons and Graham and Sullivan v. Florida, and has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court. De la Vega is the co–author of The American Legal System for Foreign Lawyers (Wolters Kluwer, 2011) and...

Professor Reza Dibadj’s research involves both corporate and securities law as well as administrative law and regulation. His writing focuses on two themes. The first involves the application of new tools, such as network theory, to legal analysis. The second is an exploration of different institutional choices the law has made. For instance, corporate and securities law often try to achieve similar goals, but through very different means; similarly for antitrust and regulation. For their part...

Assistant Clinical Professor and Supervising Attorney Jessica Fajfar works with several law clinics at USF, including the Internet & IP Justice Clinic, where she supervises the USPTO Trademark Program, the Entrepreneurial Ventures Legal Services (EVLS) Program, and the Employment Law Clinic. She has worked on many trademark prosecution matters with students, including filing initial trademark applications, responding to office actions, and defending and enforcing oppositions. She also has...

Amy Flynn joined USF Law in 2007. From 2004 to 2007, Dean Flynn served as the Assistant Public Defender in Contra Costa County. Professor Flynn is co-author of California Criminal Law: Cases and Problems, 4th Ed. She teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, and Appellate Advocacy and has taught Legal Research, Writing, and Analysis I and II, Criminal Practice, and Legal Drafting. Committed to supporting students’ skills development with an emphasis on legal analysis and oral advocacy,...

Dean and Professor Susan Freiwald joined the USF School of Law faculty in 1997. A former software developer, Freiwald has published numerous articles on the regulation of online surveillance, including, most recently, in the Harvard Law Review. As amicus curiae, Freiwald has briefed and argued major cases involving the Fourth Amendment protection of new communications technologies and has been recognized for her leadership in securing landmark electronic surveillance legislation in California....

Professor Jack I. Garvey has taught at the law school since 1976, and specializes in public and private international law. His work can be found in numerous domestic and foreign law journals including The Yale Law Journal and the Oxford Journal of Conflict and Security Law, and principal peer–reviewed international law journals, such as the American Journal of International Law and the American Journal of Comparative Law. Garvey’s book, A New Grand Bargain for the Counter–Proliferation of...

Professor Tristin Green specializes in laws affecting inequality, especially employment discrimination law. She brings to her teaching and her scholarship a background in journalism and sociology, and an interest in human relations and in the ways in which laws and contexts shape those relations. She often draws on the social sciences in her work to better understand how discrimination operates and how laws can be better framed and implemented to reduce discrimination. She is a founding member...

Professor April Ham is a research librarian at USF's Dorraine Zief Law Library, where she provides research assistance to students and faculty. She also teaches Taxation Research, trains first-year students in online legal research, and manages the library's research assistant program, which provides research support to the law faculty. She practiced commercial litigation in San Francisco for four years prior to starting library school, and is a member of the California bar and the American...

Throughout his career, Professor Bill Ong Hing pursued social justice through a combination of community work, litigation, and scholarship. He is the author of numerous academic and practice-oriented publications on immigration policy and race relations, including American Presidents, Deportation and Human Rights Violations (Cambridge Univ. Press 2019); Ethical Borders—NAFTA, Globalization, and Mexican Migration (Temple University Press, 2010), Deporting Our Souls–Morality, Values, and...

Professor of Legal Writing Edith Ho received her bachelor of arts from Smith College and her juris doctor from the University of Pennsylvania. After graduation, she worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on health care and social service matters in federal court and administrative hearings. After public service, she was in private practice specializing in insurance coverage and civil litigation with several San Francisco law firms. Ho teaches and directs the Legal Research,...

Heidi Ho is an assistant professor and the co-director of the Academic Support Program. She previously served as the Asian Battered Women’s project attorney and managing attorney of the Asian Outreach Unit at Great Boston Legal Services. As a student at the University of San Francisco School of Law, she participated in the Academic Support Program and was the Public Interest Scholar. She is admitted in the Bar in California, Massachusetts, and Hawaii. She graduated from UC Irvine having majored...

Professor Peter Jan Honigsberg’s current research focuses on the rule of law and human rights violations that occurred in the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and on the study of terrorism and other post–9/11 issues. Honigsberg is the founder and director of Witness to Guantanamo, which began in fall 2008. He has filmed over 158 full–length and in–depth interviews in twenty countries of former detainees and others who have worked in or are associated with the prison in Guantánamo,...

Megan Hutchinson is a legal research, writing, and analysis assistant professor at USF. As an attorney she represents employers in all aspects of employment litigation, with a focus on employment discrimination claims. In her practice, she also advises employers with respect to compliance issues arising under local, California, and federal labor and employment laws, including handbook policies, terminations, reductions in force, meal and rest periods, reimbursement of business expenses, leaves...

Professor Tim Iglesias, an expert in housing and property law, has served on the USF law faculty since 2001. He co–edited The Legal Guide to Affordable Housing Development Law (American Bar Association, 2011). He has published several articles on affordable housing and fair housing law, including “Our Pluralist Housing Ethics and the Struggle for Affordability” (Wake Forest Law Review, 2007), “Beyond Two–Persons–Per–Bedroom: Revitalizing Application of the Federal Fair Housing Act to Private...

Professor and Associate Dean for Faculty Scholarship Alice Kaswan is an expert on climate change and on environmental justice. She has written and spoken widely about climate federalism, addressing the appropriate roles of federal, state, and local governments in mitigating and adapting to climate change. Her work also explores the intersection between environmental justice and climate change policy, with special emphasis on the environmental justice implications of climate adaptation...

Assistant Professor Eugene Kim received his undergraduate degree from Carnegie Mellon University and his law degree from the University of San Francisco. He previously worked as a litigation associate in the San Francisco office of Nixon Peabody LLP and served as a law clerk to the Hon. Donna M. Ryu of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. In January 2019, he became co-director of USF’s Tracy Seeley Center for Teaching Excellence, where he leads USF's efforts to build...

Professor Daniel Lathrope's teaching and research focus is taxation. He is the co–author of several casebooks on individual, corporate, and partnership taxation, including Fundamentals of Federal Income Taxation, Fundamentals of Corporate Taxation, and Fundamentals of Partnership Taxation. He is the author of The Alternative Minimum Tax—Compliance and Planning with Analysis, a treatise on the alternative minimum tax, and a book on comparative income taxation titled Global Issues in Income...

Richard A. Leo, PhD, JD, is the Hamill Family Professor of Law and Psychology at the University San Francisco School of Law, and a Fellow in the Institute for Legal Research at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. He was previously a tenured professor of psychology and criminology at U.C. Irvine for a decade (1997-2006), and a professor of sociology and adjunct professor of law at the University of Colorado, Boulder (1994-1997). Dr. Leo is one of the leading experts in the...

Professor Matthew Liebman joined the USF faculty in 2020 as the endowed Justice for Animals chair and as an assistant professor of Law. Before coming to USF, Professor Liebman was the director of litigation for the Animal Legal Defense Fund, where he litigated animal protection cases, including groundbreaking cases to defend the First Amendment rights of activists and to establish fundamental legal rights for nonhuman animals, for 12 years. Professor Liebman is a frequent media commentator on...

Professor Rhonda V. Magee is a teacher of mindfulness-based stress reduction interventions for lawyers, law students, and for minimizing social-identity-based bias. A full-time faculty member at University of San Francisco since 1998, and a full professor since 2004, she has been named Dean’s Circle Research Scholar, served as co-director of the University’s Center for Teaching Excellence, and co-facilitator of the Ignatian Faculty Forum faculty development program. She teaches Torts; Race, Law...

Professor Suzanne Mawhinney is a research librarian at the Dorraine Zief Law Library at the USF School of Law, where she provides research assistance to students and faculty, teaches online legal research to first-year students, and serves as advisor to the University of San Francisco Maritime Law Journal and the student externship program. She also manages the library's research assistant program, which provides research support to the law faculty. Mawhinney practiced law for eight years...

Assistant Professor and Co-Director of Academic and Bar Exam Success (ABES) program Katie Moran JD ‘16 is a proud USF School of Law graduate. An advocate and deputy district attorney in Contra Costa County for nearly four years, she tried 29 jury trials to verdict. In her final year at that office, Moran worked on the felony domestic violence team, where she handled a caseload of 30 cases from filing to resolution. While at USF, Moran externed for the Honorable Justice Mark Simons of the...

Professor Julie A. Nice joined the USF faculty in 2009 as the Herbst Foundation Professor of Law. She has received 12 awards for her law teaching, including the 2012 Distinguished Professor Award at USF. Nice focuses her scholarly work on constitutional law, poverty law, and sexuality law. She is the lead author of Poverty Law: Theory and Practice, and has written numerous articles. Nice previously served as the Delaney Professor of Law at the University of Denver, where she received numerous...

Professor Maria Linda Ontiveros focuses her scholarly work on employment law with an emphasis on immigrant workers' rights. She publishes and presents regularly on a variety of related topics, including the history of immigrant workers, workplace harassment of women of color, organized labor, immigrants and the Thirteenth Amendment, and access to education for children of undocumented workers. Ontiveros is co–author of Employment Discrimination Law: Cases and Materials on Equality in the...

Professor Bruce M. Price primarily focuses his research on empirical studies involving consumer bankruptcy issues. During his years of practice, Professor Price concentrated on bankruptcy, contracts, and corporate law. He joined the faculty at Denver University in 2004, where he received the Mentorship Award and was nominated for Most Outstanding Faculty Member and Most Engaging Professor in 2006. A graduate of Haverford College, Price earned his juris doctor with honors from George Washington...

Professor Joshua D. Rosenberg has two main areas of expertise: (1) tax law, and (2) psychology of lawyers and laws. Professor Rosenberg is the co–author of leading treatises in federal income tax and in corporate tax, as well as co-author of the nation’s leading casebooks in corporate tax, partnership tax, and taxation of business enterprises. His many scholarly tax articles have been published in journals including the California Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and...

Jacqueline Brown Scott is an immigration attorney with experience solving a wide array of immigration issues pertaining to asylum, deportation defense, and family-based immigration. Jacqueline began her career in immigration law at the San Francisco Immigration Court as an attorney advisor through the Department of Justice Honors Program. There, she wrote hundreds of orders and written decisions for the Immigration Judges. When working at her firm, Law Office of Jacqueline Brown Scott, she...

Professor John Shafer is a reference and instruction librarian at the Dorraine Zief Law Library at the USF School of Law. After graduating from the USF School of Law in 1986 he worked for several years as a Westlaw academic representative, training students, librarians, and professors throughout the western United States. Shafer received a master's in library and information science from UC Berkeley in 1993 and began working at USF that same year. Since then he has trained hundreds of students...

Since receiving her undergraduate degree in international relations from Brigham Young University, Professor Anne Sidwell has dedicated her professional and academic life to social justice. Professor Sidwell graduated from the George Washington University Law School in May 2011. After graduation, Professor Sidwell worked for the Honorable Zoe Bush in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia and as a court advocate for DC SAFE, a domestic violence prevention organization, before joining...

Professor Michelle Travis is a Dean’s Circle Scholar and co–director of USF’s Labor and Employment Law Program. She specializes in employment law with a focus on disability discrimination, sex discrimination, and work/family balance. Her interdisciplinary scholarship uses social cognition and sociology research to reveal how antidiscrimination law could be used to eliminate structural, organizational, and cognitive biases in the workplace. She regularly speaks on these topics around the country...

Professor Monalisa Vu received a post-graduate fellowship from Boalt Hall School of Law's Berkeley Law Foundation. She subsequently worked as a staff attorney at Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach. Vu is currently a partner at Murphy, Vu, Thongsamouth & Chatterjee LLP, a firm practicing in the areas of family, domestic violence, immigration, and estate planning law.

Assistant Professor Carol Wilson is co–director of the Academic Support Program (ASP) and has contributed to USF's Center for Law and Global Justice programs. As ASP co–director, she helps students prepare for the study of law and enhance academic performance throughout law school. With Professor Sharon Meadows, Wilson revised the Martindale–Hubbell Law Digest: California (Martindale–Hubbell, 2007).

Assistant Professor Amy Wright is Director of the USF School of Law Library. She oversees general library operations, the library budget, and represents the law library on law school committees and with external constituencies. Prior to joining USF, she practiced health law for over five years with two Bay Area law firms and served as in-house counsel with Dignity Health. Amy is a member of the California bar, the Northern California Association of Law Libraries, and the American Association of...