Law school welcomes five new teacher-scholars to career faculty

February 6, 2023
Collage of new faculty photos
The new professors, whose positions begin July 1, 2023, are (left to right) Erin Carr (legal writing), Jeremiah Chin (constitutional law), Elizabeth Ford (law clinic), Kip Hustace (civil procedure), and Luke Maher (tax law).

Five outstanding legal scholars and engaging educators will join Seattle University School of Law’s faculty this year, possessing a range of expertise in disciplines from tax law to legal writing.

In welcoming the new tenure-track professors, Dean Anthony E. Varona said that the appointments committee succeeded in its goal to find and attract top faculty prospects.

“We recruited a large, richly diverse, and brilliant group of new tenure line professors, brimming with potential,” Varona said. “They very much appreciate our precious mission and will, together with the rest of our community, take Seattle U Law to unprecedented heights of achievement.”

The new professors, whose positions begin July 1, 2023, are Erin Carr (legal writing), Jeremiah Chin (constitutional law), Elizabeth Ford (law clinic), Kip Hustace (civil procedure), and Luke Maher (tax law).

Erin Carr is a familiar face at Seattle U Law, having joined the faculty in 2022 as a visiting professor. She teaches and writes in the areas of educational inequality, juvenile and criminal (in)justice, power and privilege, constitutional law, and legal research and writing.

“The school’s commitment to cultivating a caring and truly democratic learning community extends beyond mere platitudes. Rigorous standards are combined with a supportive academic environment that engenders enriching dialogue and critical thinking,” she said. “I am extraordinarily fortunate to be able to call Seattle U Law my professional home.”

Carr earned her bachelor's degree magna cum laude from the University of Florida and joint JD/MA degrees from Florida State University. Early in her career, she practiced public interest law as senior program attorney for Florida’s guardian ad litem program and as an attorney for the Florida Office of the Attorney General's Office of Complex Civil Litigation.

After making the switch to academia, she taught at Gonzaga University School of Law (where she was recognized as Teacher of the Year), Mitchell Hamline School of Law, and Northeastern University.

Carr’s scholarship has been published in the Georgetown Journal of Law & Modern Critical Race Perspectives, UC Davis International Affairs Journal, and the Touro Law Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity. Her writing has also appeared in several mainstream media outlets, including The Seattle Times and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Jeremiah Chin comes to Seattle fresh from the publication of “The School-Prison Trust” (University of Minnesota Press), a 2022 book he co-authored with Sabina Vaught and Bryan Brayboy. The well-received work examines Black and indigenous resistance to the use of boarding schools and incarceration as a means of colonial conquest. 

Chin currently teaches in the Academic Enrichment Program at Boston University School of Law, and previously taught civil procedure, constitutional law, federal Indian law, and race and the law at St. Thomas University College of Law.

His renowned research focuses on power and belonging, emphasizing the relationships between law and social sciences in constructions of race and indigeneity. His articles have appeared in Contexts, University of Nevada Law Review, University of Illinois Chicago (John Marshall) Law Review, and California Western Law Review. He has two forthcoming articles: “Antimatters: The Curious Case of Confederate Monuments” in Boston University Law Review, and “Modern Authorities: For Jurists who have considered social science when doctrine was not enough” in the Alabama Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law Review.

Chin earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Utah, then went on to receive not only his JD but also a master’s degree and PhD in justice studies from Arizona State University.

Elizabeth Ford has been affiliated with the law school since 2005 as a visiting assistant professor and distinguished practitioner in residence, teaching courses such as dispute resolution, labor law, and legal writing. She will continue to teach in the law school’s nationally renowned Ronald A. Peterson Law Clinic and to direct the Workers’ Rights Clinic.

“I’m excited to continue my teaching and scholarship in the Seattle U Law community and to be a part of this incredible cohort of thinkers, teachers, and advocates for justice,” Ford said.

Ford earned her bachelor’s degree from Mount Holyoke College and her JD from Northeastern University School of Law. In private practice for 25 years, she represented unions and individual employees. She also served as chief counsel for the Washington State Nurses Association and the Director of Labor Relations for King County. In 2015, she founded the Fair Work Center Legal Clinic, a nonprofit legal services office which operates in collaboration with the law clinic to provide representation to low-wage workers.

Her scholarship focuses on workplace minimum standards, labor negotiations, and clinical teaching. Her latest article, “Wage Recovery Funds,” was published in the California Law Review. Her article on externship pedagogy appeared in the Clinical Law Review.

Kip Hustace is currently a visiting professor at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, teaching professional responsibility and education law. He earned both a bachelor's degree and a JD from Stanford University, and an LLM from University of Washington School of Law.

“I was drawn to Seattle U for its mission in advancing justice and its faculty, whose humane and insightful work I have long admired,” Hustace said.

For three years, he served as staff attorney at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund in Los Angeles, where he litigated three major cases having to do with voting and education rights, including a case that resulted in a historic settlement against a school district forced to change its discriminatory discipline practices.

Most recently published in the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, Hustace’s scholarship studies the relationships between education, democratic accountability, and social movements, with an eye toward how constitutional and civil procedures affect legal change. His research is particularly focused on the experiences of Indigenous Americans and Hawaiians, (dis)abled persons, and other groups reinforcing democracy and pursuing justice in Indian Country and the American West and borderlands.

Luke Maher is a senior tax associate at an international law firm in Chicago. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Hamilton College and a JD from Yale Law School, where he served as a teaching assistant in constitutional law and a teaching fellow in undergraduate courses.

“I'm extremely grateful to be joining a community that is dedicated to the thoughtful pursuit of justice,” Maher said. “The professors, staff, and students at Seattle University School of Law have created an environment that is inclusive, rigorous, and stimulating, and I look forward to working side by side with them starting this fall.”

Maher's research focuses on taxation, and he has written about topics including the viability of reparations for slavery and Jim Crow laws through a system of tax expenditures and estate taxation issues relating to art and other culturally significant properties. Maher will teach courses on tax law. 

Maher has significant pro bono experience with asylum and immigration cases, as well as protections for victims of gender-based violence. He has also been actively involved in LGBT affinity groups throughout his career.

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