Fall 2011 Law Briefs

Catherine J. K. Sandoval

Sandoval Appointed to CPUC

Santa Clara Law Professor Catherine J. K. Sandoval was named by Gov. Jerry Brown to serve on the California Public Utilities Commission in January. She is the first Latina to serve as CPUC commissioner in its more than 100-year history.

The CPUC oversees rates and other rules for privately owned electric, natural gas, telecommunications, water, railroad, rail transit, and passenger transportation companies.

“We are extremely proud to learn of Professor Sandoval’s appointment to the California Public Utilities Commission,” said Donald Polden, law school dean. “She has a wealth of experience, industry knowledge, and legal expertise to offer the state of California in this important role.”

Sandoval joined the SCU Faculty in 2004, where she has taught telecommunications law, antitrust law, and contracts. She is a tenured associate professor. She has been an active participant in the law school’s academic programs in high-tech, international and social justice law.

Prior to joining SCU, Sandoval served as undersecretary for California’s Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, where she worked on infrastructure and energy issues. She previously was the vice president and general counsel for Z-Spanish Media Corporation, a Sacramento-based telecommunications company that provides broadcast and Internet services in several languages. From 1994 to 1999, she was a senior official in the Federal Communications Commission, where she directed the office of communications business opportunities.

Sandoval is a graduate of Yale University and the Stanford Law School. She received a Master’s of Letters in Politics (political science) from Oxford University, which she attended through a Rhodes Scholarship.

Angelo Ancheta

Ancheta Serves on California Citizens Redistricting Commission

When a state commission recently worked to draw new lines for redistricting California, a Santa Clara University law professor had a seat at the table.

Angelo Ancheta, who teaches election and voting rights law at the law school and is director of the law school’s Katharine and George Alexander Community Law Center, was one of 14 commissioners who worked to create new voting districts for the state’s congressional and legislative seats.

The decisions were made in August by the Citizens Redistricting Commission after 30 public meetings throughout the state, and with additional input from the public through written comments.

“We were trying as much as possible to have a transparent process to have the public participate,” Ancheta said.

Previously, the work of redrawing district lines after the federal census had been done by state elected officials. But with the passage of Proposition 11 in 2008 and Proposition 20 last year, the work was allocated to the Citizens Redistricting Commission. Ancheta was appointed to the commission in March, after another commissioner resigned. Ancheta had worked on redistricting advocacy in the 1990s, advising Asian Pacific Islander–American groups.

Lawsuits and attempts to repeal the commission’s work through ballot measures are expected to follow. Ancheta will continue his work as those challenges unfold, since he is one of two commissioners designated to work as liaisons with the commission’s legal team.

“You had to make a lot of hard choices,” Ancheta said. “You can’t make everyone happy.”

Still, he said, “It was a lot of fun. I learned a lot about the state of California, and worked with an excellent group of people on the commission itself, as well as the staff and consultants for the commission. It was a great opportunity to engage in the democratic process and policy making.”

Eric Goldman

Eric Goldman Receives IP Award From State Bar

In November, Eric Goldman, the director of Santa Clara Law’s High Tech Law Institute, received the IP Vanguard Award from the State Bar of California’s Intellectual Property Law Section for his outstanding contributions to the field of intellectualproperty law.

Santa Clara Law Dean Donald Polden called Goldman “a marvelous teacher, a highly productive scholar who publishes pertinent ideas and information in a variety of media and formats, and a creative thinker on technology law and policy.” Polden added, “his work has exerted a substantial and positive influence on his students, lawyers and intellectual property policy makers.”

Among his contributions to IP law in the past year, Goldman published an article on different legal regimes governing information about reputation; spoke at the Russian government’s invitation on digital copyright issues at a conference in St. Petersburg, Russia; helped gain public access to key filings in Rosetta Stone v. Google (a trademark lawsuit over keyword advertising), and worked to highlight how some doctors misuse copyright law to control patients’ reviews of their doctors. This summer, he launched a co-authored casebook on advertising and marketing law, the first of its kind for the law school market. In the past 12 months, he gave more than 30 public talks and made more than 250 media appearances on issues related to high-tech law. His Technology & Marketing Law Blog, read by thousands of readers a day, has for the past two years been listed as one of the top 100 legal “blawgs” by the ABA Journal.

Santa Clara Law Student Founds First Detention Visitation Program in California

Christina Fialho, a third-year law student, is the founder of Detention Dialogues (DD), a volunteer, student-led detention visitation program in Northern California and a member of the Detention Watch Network’s National Visitation Network. In July, DD received approval from the West County Detention Facility (WCDF) and from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal department responsible for housing ICE detainees, to begin visitation. The visitation program will be operating as an official service to detainees at WCDF, a program-oriented facility in Richmond, California.

“Our mission is to connect immigrants in detention to the outside world through visitation, while stimulating public awareness and meaningful dialogue about immigration detention,” said Fialho, who has served as a research fellow for the Global Detention Project and program coordinator for Upwardly Global. Fialho earned her B.A. in English and Philosophy from SCU, graduating summa cum laude with a scholarship to Oxford University. She is in her third year at Santa Clara Law, with a focus on immigration and refugee law. She serves as the articles editor of the Santa Clara Law Review and she is the president/founder of the first law school student group in the country affiliated with American Immigration Lawyers Association. For more information, see detentiondialogues.org.

Caroline Chen

New Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic Created at Santa Clara Law

In August, Santa Clara Law established the South Bay’s first clinic providing free assistance to low-income taxpayers who have disputes with the Internal Revenue Service. The Santa Clara University School of Law Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic will be headed by Caroline Tso Chen, previously a senior attorney with the Office of Chief Counsel of the Internal Revenue Service in San Jose. The clinic, which will be fully operational in January, is located at the Katharine and George Alexander Community Law Center, 1030 The Alameda, San Jose.

Through the clinic, SCU law students will provide counsel and advice to clients, and represent the clients’ cases before the IRS and in Tax Court. The IRS and the Tax Court allow such student-attorney representation from law school-affiliated clinics led by a qualified supervising attorney. Santa Clara Law professor David Hasen said the clinic will be a rigorous learning experience for the law students who sign up to spend between 15 to 25 hours a week at the clinic for a semester. “This is not filling out tax returns or answering general tax questions. Every student is going to get controversy experience—audits, appeals, or even going to Tax Court,” added Hasen, the faculty adviser to the clinic. “Students will get great exposure to tax law, tax procedure, litigation, and dealing with clients.” For more information, see law.scu.edu/taxclinic.

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