Deirdre Bowen

Biography

Before joining the faculty in 2007, Dr. Bowen taught in the Sociology and Criminal Justice departments at Seattle University where she was honored with the 2007 Criminal Justice Faculty Appreciation Award. She taught courses in Research Methods, Statistics, Law, Society and Justice, Family and Society, and Deviance and Social Control. In addition, Dr. Bowen has been an adjunct faculty member of the law school, teaching Family Law and Consumer Law since 2001. Professor Bowen earned her doctorate in Sociology studying alternative plea bargaining systems, where she was the recipient of the Norman S. Hayner award. While in law school, Professor Bowen was a member of the Moot Court Board and received the Adolph Homberger award for excellence in Civil Procedure.

Prior to earning her doctorate, Professor Bowen headed the consumer mediation and fraud department of the national headquarters of Call For Action, an international nonprofit consumer group. She was instrumental in working with the FBI and US Attorney Generals Office to identify and dismantle the largest telemarketing fraud circuit in the Western United States in 1994. She has successfully litigated and negotiated many consumer “unfair” business practices and telemarketing fraud cases. In addition, Dr. Bowen litigated a number of complex high profile RICO and family law cases while an associate at the law firm of Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Bowen continues to conduct sociological research in the areas of judicial process, and law and justice, as well as acting as a consultant in various consumer and family law cases nationally.

Currently, she is writing about Same Sex Family Formation & Legal Protections and Anti-Affirmative Action & Under-represented Minority Student's Responses to College Climate in Applying to Graduate School. She has presented her work at a number of conferences nationwide.

Articles

Calling Your Bluff: How Prosecutors and Defense Attorneys Adapt Plea Bargaining Strategies to Increased Formalization, Justice Quarterly, Vol. 26, 2009.

Differential Power in Intact Same-Sex Families Based on Legal and Cultural Understandings of Parentage, William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law, Vol. 15, p. 1, 2009.