Faculty Profiles

May 31 - July 26, 2012

Stephanie M. Nichols

B.B.A., University of Notre Dame, cum laude
J.D. Seattle University School of Law, cum laude

Prior to joining Seattle University School of Law as the Director of the Study Law in Alaska Program and adjunct faculty, Stephanie was an attorney for an Indian Tribe near Olympia, Washington.   Stephanie was born and raised in Fairbanks, Alaska and has traveled extensively throughout Alaska. She teaches courses in Alaska Native Law, on the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, and on Alaska's Legal History.  She has also taught the Indian Trust and Estates clinic in Seattle University's Ronald A. Peterson Law Clinic.

As Director of Seattle University's Study Law in Alaska Program, Stephanie brings a lifetime of experiences from Alaska to this position.  She has also been a speaker at several national conferences on the American Indian Probate Reform Act. She lived and worked with the Lakota people on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota as well as the indigenous people in the village of San Lucas Toliman in Guatemala, and Oaxaca, Mexico.  During law school, Stephanie clerked for the Northwest Intertribal Court System and was a First Place winner of the Fredric C. Tausend Appellate Oral Argument Competition.

Sam Kalen

B.A., Clark University (1980), cum laude and High Honors in History
J.D., Washington University School of Law (1984)

In 2009, Professor Sam Kalen was appointed to the University of Wyoming College of Law faculty as an assistant professor of law. Prof. Kalen comes to UW from the Washington, D.C., law firm of Van Ness Feldman and various teaching positions at the University of Baltimore, Florida State University, Washington & Lee University, and Penn State University. Van Ness Feldman is one of the nation's leading energy, environmental and natural resources law firms. Before joining Van Ness Feldman, Prof. Kalen began his career as a law clerk for Justice Warren D. Welliver of the Missouri Supreme Court.

With his experience in our nation's capital, Prof. Kalen hopes to bring not just a D.C. lawyer's perspective, but the experiences of someone who has practiced law in a variety of areas for many years. In addition to working in private practice, he also has served in the Office of the Solicitor of the U.S. Department of Interior.

Teaching:
Climate Change, EENR Practicum, Energy & Climate Policy, Environmental Law, Indian Law, and Legislation

Eric Laschever 

Professor Laschever is a partner at K&L Gates where he practices land use, environmental, and natural resource law.  From 1980-1989 Eric worked for the State of Alaska.  He served as Associate Director for Fisheries and the Environment in Governor Sheffield and Governor Cowper's Washington D.C. office and also worked for the State legislature, Office of Management and Budget, and the Department of Fish and Game.  During his time in D.C. he worked on securing passage of the Oil Pollution Act.  He has taught courses in natural resource damages, coastal law, and climate change law.

 

Victor B. Flatt

Vanderbilt University, magna cum laude
Northwestern University School of Law, Order of the Coif, Cum Laude

Victor B. Flatt is the Tom & Elizabeth Taft Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law and the Director of the Center for Law, Environment, Adaptation, and Resources (CLEAR) at the University of North Carolina School of Law, Chapel Hill. Prior to this, he held the A.L. O'Quinn Chair in Environmental Law at the University of Houston Law Center, where he was also the Director of the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources Law Center. He has been a visiting professor at the Seattle University School of Law.

He is a nationally recognized expert in environmental and energy legal and policy matters, and has done extensive work on climate change, particularly with respect to the Arctic. He has published extensively in law journals, including Northwestern Law Review, Seattle University Law Review, Washington Law Review, Ecology Law Quarterly, and Notre Dame Law Review. He is also published numerous op-eds and blogs and is frequently quoted in national media. He earned his B.A., magna cum laude, in Chemistry and Mathematics at Vanderbilt University in 1985, where he was a Harold Stirling Vandrerbilt Scholar, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and the analytical laboratory coordinator for the Student Environmental Health Project. He graduated from Northwestern University School of Law in 1988, where he was a John Henry Wigmore Scholar and Order of the Coif. After law school, Professor Flatt clerked for the Honorable Danny J. Boggs of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and worked in private practice in complex environmental law in Seattle, Washington. In 2005-6, Professor Flatt represented then Senators Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Barbara Boxer, among others, in their challenge to new EPA Clean Air Act rules.

Gillian Dutton

B.A., University of California, San Diego, cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa
M.A., Chinese Studies, University of California, San Diego
J.D., Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley

Before joining Seattle University School of Law as the Externship Program Director and Assistant Professor of Law, Gilllian Dutton was the Senior Attorney for the Northwest Justice Project Seattle office, and the Director of the Refugee & Immigrant Advocacy Project (RIAP), a University of Washington Law School Clinic based at the Northwest Justice Project. At the RIAP, she ran a clinic that provided legal assistance to immigrants and refugees seeking public benefits, assistance to victims of trafficking, and naturalization assistance for elderly and disabled immigrants.

Professor Dutton has an M.A. in Chinese history and is a 1988 graduate of Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. Before starting the RIAP in 1994, she worked for Evergreen Legal Services in Yakima, Washington where she represented limited-English speaking farm workers in housing and public entitlements cases. She has worked on issues such as prenatal care for undocumented women, immigrant access to managed care, the provision of language access to limited English speaking clients, assistance to victims of trafficking, and naturalization for persons with disabilities. She is a recipient of the 1999 Charles A. Goldmark Award for Distinguished Service and the 2005 Northwest Immigrant Rights Project Golden Door Award.