Robert S. Chang

Robert S. Chang

Executive Director, Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality and Professor of Law

 Sullivan Hall 318

 206-398-4025

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AREAS OF EXPERTISE

  • Contracts
  • Asian Americans and the Law
  • Latinas, Latinos, and the Law
  • Critical Race Theory
  • Jurisprudence
  • Perspectives on Immigration and Citizenship

EDUCATION

  • A.B., cum laude, Princeton University, 1988
  • M.A. (Philosophy), J.D., cum laude, Duke University, 1992

Biography

Robert S. Chang is a Professor of Law and is founder and Executive Director of the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality at Seattle University School of Law. He writes primarily in the area of race and interethnic relations. He is the author of Disoriented: Asian Americans, Law and the Nation-State (NYU Press 1999) and Minority Relations: Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation (University Press of Mississippi, 2016) and numerous articles, essays, and chapters published in leading law reviews and books on Critical Race Theory, LatCrit Theory, and Asian American Legal Studies. He is currently completing two books: The United States Supreme Court and White Social Dominance (with Tanya K. Hernandez, Michalyn Steele & Carlton Waterhouse); and Banned: Fighting for Mexican American Studies in the Streets and in the Courts (with Nolan Cabrera). Both will be published by Cambridge University Press.

An elected member of the American Law Institute, he has received numerous recognitions for his scholarship and service. In 2021, ACLU-Washington named him as co-recipient of the Kathleen Taylor Civil Libertarian Award for his role as co-counsel representing Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County in its lawsuit against the City of Seattle for its use of force against people protesting police brutality following the murder of George Floyd. In 2018, the Society of American Law Teachers recognized him with the M. Shanara Gilbert Human Rights Award for his work as co-counsel in taking to trial, successfully, a constitutional challenge to the enactment and enforcement of a facially neutral law that was used to terminate the Mexican American Studies Program at the Tucson Unified School District. For work in Washington, he was a co-recipient of the 2014 Charles A. Goldmark Distinguished Service Award from the Legal Foundation of Washington for his leadership role in a statewide task force on race and the criminal justice system.

He and the Korematsu Center will be moving to UC Irvine Law on July 1, 2024.

Publications

Books

  • Minority Relations: Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation (University Press of Mississippi 2017) (with Greg Robinson, co-editor) (original solicited contributions from legal and humanities scholars).
  • Disoriented: Asian Americans, Law, and the Nation-State (New York University Press, 1999) (reviewed in several journals including the Michigan Law Review, Journal of Asian American Studies, and Amerasia Journal).

Articles and Essays

  • Whitewashing Precedent: From the Chinese Exclusion Case to Korematsu to the Muslim Travel Ban Cases, 68 Case Western Reserve University Law Review 1183 (2018).
  • The Great White Hope: Social Control and the Psychological Wages of Whiteness, Law, Cultures & the Humanities (online 2017, forthcoming in print 2018).
  • Will LGBT Antidiscrimination Law Follow the Course of Race Antidiscrimination Law? 100 Minnesota Law Review 2103 (2016).
  • Evading Miller, 39 Seattle University Law Review 85 (2015) (with David A. Perez, Luke M. Rona, and Christopher M. Schafbuch).
  • The Invention of Asian Americans, 3 U.C. Irvine Law Review 947 (2013).
  • Analyzing Stops, Citations, and Searches in Washington and Beyond, 35 Seattle U. L. Rev. 673 (2012) (with Mario Barnes).
  • Centering the Immigrant in the Inter/national Imagination (Part III): Aoki, Rawls, and Immigration, 90 Oregon Law Review 1319 (2012).
  • Keith Aoki"s Theory of Racial Microclimes, 45 U.C. Davis Law Review 1913 (2012).
  • Preliminary Report on Race and Washington"s Criminal Justice System, 47 Gonzaga Law Review 251 (2011), 35 Seattle University Law Review 623 (2012), 87 Washington Law Review 1 (2012) (published by flagship law reviews of all three law schools in the state of Washington.
  • The Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality and Its Vision for Social Change, 7 Stanford Journal of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties 197 (2011).
  • Joan Williams, Coalitions, and Getting Beyond the Wages of Whiteness and Maleness, 34 Seattle University Law Review 825 (2011.
  • Making Up Is Hard to Do: Race/Gender/Sexual Orientation in the Law School Classroom, 33 Harvard Journal of Law & Gender 1 (2010) (with Adrienne Davis) (colloquium built around this article, with responses by Professors Darren Rosenblum, Dean Spade, and Adele M. Morrison).
  • Asian Americans and the Road to the White House: Musings on Being Invisible, 15 Asian American Law Journal 205 (2010).
  • Democratizing the Courts: How an Amicus Brief Helped Organize the Asian American Community to Support Marriage Equality, 14 UCLA Asian Pacific American Law Journal 22 ( 2009) (with Karin Wang).
  • Richard Delgado and the Politics of Citation, 11 Berkeley Journal of African-American Law and Policy 28 (2009).
  • Half Full, Half Empty? Asian American Electoral "Presence" in 2008, 86 Denver University Law Review 565 (2009) (with Keith Aoki).
  • John Calmore"s America, 86 North Carolina Law Review 739 (2008) (with Catherine E. Smith).
  • Afterword: The Race Question in LatCrit Theory and Asian American Jurisprudence, 7 Nevada Law Journal 1012 (2007) (with Neil Gotanda).
  • The Adventures of Blackness in Western Culture: An Epistolary Exchange on Old and New Identity Wars, 39 U.C. Davis Law Review 1189 (2006) (with Adrienne D. Davis).
  • Business as Usual? Brown and the Continuing Conundrum of Race in America, 2004 University of Illinois Law Review 1181 (2004) (with Jerome M. Culp, Jr.).
  • (Racial) Profiles in Courage, or Can We Be Heroes, Too? 66 Albany Law Review 349 (2003).
  • Closing Essay: Developing a Collective Memory to Imagine a Better Future, 49 UCLA Law Review 1601 (2002).
  • After Intersectionality, 71 UMKC Law Review 485 (2002) (with Jerome Culp).
  • Los Angeles as a Single-Cell Organism, 34 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 843 (2001).
  • Dreaming in Black and White: Racial-Sexual Policing in The Birth of a Nation, The Cheat, and Who Killed Vincent Chin?, 5 Asian Law Journal 41 (1998).
  • Who's Afraid of Tiger Woods? 19 Chicano-Latino Law Review 223(1998).
  • Nothing and Everything: Race, Romer, and (Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual) Rights, 6 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 229 (1997) (with Jerome Culp).
  • Centering the Immigrant in the Inter/National Imagination, 85 California Law Review 1395, 10 La Raza Law Journal 309 (1997) (with Keith Aoki) (published simultaneously in both journals).
  • Racial Cross-Dressing, 2 Harvard Latino Law Review 423 (1997).
  • Passion and the Asian American Legal Scholar, 3 Asian Law Journal 105 (1996) (Keynote Address, Asian Law Journal Spring 1996 Banquet).
  • Reverse Racism!: Affirmative Action, the Family, and the Dream that Is America, 23 Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly 1115 (1996).
  • The Nativist's Dream of Return, 9 La Raza Law Journal 55 (1996).
  • The End of Innocence, or, Politics after the Fall of the Essential Subject, 45 American University Law Review 687 (1996).
  • Toward an Asian American Legal Scholarship: Critical Race Theory, Post-structuralism, and Narrative Space, 81 California Law Review 1241 (1993), reprinted in 1 Asian Law Journal 1 (1994).

Book or Anthology Chapters

  • The Band that Must Not Be Named, and the Indians Who Were Not Heard, IP/Race Anthology (Deirdre Keller, Minh-ha T. Pham & Anjali Vats eds., forthcoming 2019).
  • Korematsu Reimagined, in Critical Race Judgments (Bennet Capers, Devon Carbado, Robin Lenhardt & Angela Onwuachi-Willig eds., Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2018)
  • Rescue Me in Masculinities & Law: A Multidisciplinary Approach (Frank R. Cooper & Ann C. McGinley eds., New York University Press, 2012).
  • Who Are You Rooting For? Transnationalism, the World Cup, and War, in Pedagogies of the Global: Knowledge in the Human Interest (Arif Dirlik ed., Paradigm Publishers, 2006).
  • Critiquing "Race" and Its Uses: Critical Race Theory"s Uncompleted Argument, in Crossroads, Directions, and a New Critical Race Theory 87 (Francisco Valdes, Jerome Culp, & Angela Harris eds., Temple University Press, 2002).
  • Who"s Afraid of Tiger Woods, in Mixed Race America and the Law: A Reader (Kevin Johnson ed., New York University Press 2002).
  • Why We Need a Critical Asian American Legal Studies, in Asian American Studies: A Reader (Jean Yu-Wen Shen Wu & Min Song eds., Rutgers University Press, 2000).
  • Toward an Asian American Legal Scholarship, reprinted in Power, Privilege and Law: A Civil Rights Reader (Leslie Bender & Daan Braveman eds., West Publishing, 1994), reprinted in Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (Richard Delgado ed., Temple University Press, 1995), reprinted in Readings in Race and Law: A Guide to Critical Race Theory (Alex Johnson ed., West Publishing, 1998).
  • A Meditation on Borders, in Immigrants Out!: The New Nativism and the Anti-Immigrant Impulse in the United States (Juan Perea ed., New York University Press, 1997).

Review Essays and Other Writings

  • Stop Repeating History: The Story of an Amicus Brief and Its Lessons for Engaging in Strategic Advocacy, Coalition Building, and Education, Case Western Reserve University Law Review (forthcoming 2018) (with Alice Hsu, Robert A. Johnson, Elizabeth C. Rosen & Sofie Syed).
  • Book Review, A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South. By Stephanie Hinnershitz. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2017. Pp. x, 296. Florida Historical Quarterly (forthcoming 2018) (invited).
  • Book Review. Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy. By Hidetaka Hirota. New York: Oxford University Press. 2017. Pp. xii, 302. 123 American Historical Review 962 (forthcoming 2018) (invited).
  • Bias in the Courtroom, One Degree Removed: The Story of Turner v. Stime and Amicus Participation, UCLA Asian Pacific American Law Journal (forthcoming 2013) (with Taki V. Flevaris).
  • Taking to Task Race and the Criminal Justice System, Bar News, Washington State Bar Association, June 2011.
  • What Comes After Gender? 31 Pace Law Review 818 (2011).
  • Rock Climbing with the Gotandas, 13 Journal of Gender, Race & Justice 321 (2010).
  • "Testing the "Model Minority Myth"": A Case of Weak Empiricism, 101 Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy 5 (2007) (with Rose Cuison Villazor).
  • A Call from Jerome, 50 Villanova Law Review 785 (2005) (tribute to the late Jerome M. Culp, Jr.).
  • Teaching Asian Americans and the Law: Struggling with History, Identity, and Politics, 10 Asian Law Journal 59 (2003).
  • Syllabus: Asian Americans and the Law, 10 Asian Law Journal 105 (2003).
  • "Forget the Alamo": Race Courses as a Struggle Over History and Collective Memory, 13 Berkeley La Raza Law Journal 113 (2003).
  • The Sojourner"s Truth and Other Stories, 55 University of Florida Law Review 479 (2003).
  • When Interests Diverge, 100 Michigan Law Review 1532 (2002) (reviewing Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights (Princeton University Press, 2001)) (with Peter Kwan).
  • Book Review, 5:3 Journal of Asian American Studies 285 (2002) (reviewing Eric K. Yamamoto, Margaret Chon, Carol L. Izumi, Jerry Kang & Frank Wu, Race, Rights and Reparation: Law and the Japanese American Internment (Aspen Law & Business, 2001)).
  • Performing LatCrit, 33 U.C. Davis Law Review 1277 (2000) (with Natasha Fuller).
  • Facing History, Facing Ourselves: Eric Yamamoto and the Quest for Justice, 5 Michigan Journal of Race & Law 111 (1999) (reviewing Eric K. Yamamoto, Interracial Justice: Conflict and Reconciliation in Post-Civil Rights America (NYU Press 1998).
  • Pain and Promise of Memory, American Bar Association Journal, Nov. 1999, at 68.
  • Foreword: Citizenship and Its Discontents: Centering the Immigrant in the Inter/National Imagination (Part II), 76 Oregon Law Review 207 (1997) (with Keith Aoki and Ibrahim Gassama) (Symposium: Citizenship and Its Discontents).
  • Foreword: Toward a Radical and Plural Democracy, 33 California Western Law Review 139 (1997) (Symposium).