Episode 100: Dorothy W. Nelson And Lisa Kloppenberg

Judge
Written By Third Boxcar LLC
01:14:04
 

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Show Notes

Mentors are invaluable. This special joint episode highlights individual mentoring relationships. This episode features Judge Dorothy W. Nelson, Senior Circuit Judge on the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and her former law clerk Lisa Kloppenberg, a University of Santa Clara Law Professor, former law school Dean and Interim Provost of Santa Clara University. Host M.C. Sungaila also counts Judge Nelson among her mentors, having served as one of Judge Nelson's externs.  

Professor Kloppenberg recently celebrated Judge Nelson's impact on her students, law clerks, and the law by writing and publishing her biography of the Judge, entitled The Best Beloved Thing Is Justice.  

In this episode, they discuss Judge Nelson's impact on academia, the law, and the peaceful resolution of conflict through her multiple leading roles as one of the first women law school Deans, a trailblazing judge, and the founder of the Western Justice Center. Professor Kloppenberg also shares her leadership path in academia, and how Judge Nelson inspired and fostered her career, and demonstrated how to have a holistic life in the law, one marked by career accomplishments, faith leadership, and a rich family life. 

Tune in to this intimate and inspiring conversation.

 
 

About Dorothy W. Nelson:

Dorothy Wright Nelson is a Senior Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals (9th Circuit); former Dean and Professor of Law, University of Southern California Law Center; Former Chair, Ninth Circuit Standing Committee on ADR; Chair Emerita, Board of Directors of Western Justice Center; Co-Chair, Sino-American Conference on Mediation and Arbitration, Beijing, China, 1992. Throughout her career. she has received many awards and honors, notably: Winner ABA Dispute Resolution Section D’Alemberte/Raven Award, April 2000; Bernard E. Witkin Award from State Bar of California, Sept. 2000; Pasadena Bar Association Judge of the Year Award, Oct. 2002. 2005 Thurgood Marshall Career Achievement Award - Chicago. 2006 Harry Sheldon Award, Pasadena Human Relations Commission. 2009 Project Peace, Lifetime Achievement Award. 2009 Los Angeles County Bar Association Outstanding Jurist Award. 2009 Inner City Law Center Humanitarian Award.  2010 ADR Lifetime Achievement Award, 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. 2010 Earl Johnson Equal Justice Award, Western Center on Law & Poverty. 2012 Leadership Award, National Association of Women Lawyers. 2013 UCLA Edward A. Dickson Alumnus of the Year Award. 2017 Lady Justice Award for Public Service, National Association of Women Judges. 


About Lisa Kloppenberg 

Lisa Kloppenberg serves as Law Professor & Dean Emerita as well as Special Assistant to the Vice President for University Relations at Santa Clara University. She previously served as Acting President, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Dean of the School of Law between 2013-22. She is a nationally renowned scholar in Conflict Resolution and her latest book, The Best Beloved Thing is Justice, was published by Oxford University Press (2022). Lisa is dedicated to our Jesuit mission of educating the whole person: heads, hands and hearts for service to others. She has prioritized increased access and affordability as well as increased diversity, equity and inclusion at Santa Clara University. In her time at SCU, she also fostered stronger connections to Silicon Valley and provided more experiential learning opportunities for students. 

 

Transcript

I am beyond thrilled to have our two guests on the show, Judge Dorothy Nelson, a senior Circuit Judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, former Dean of USC Law School, and one of the judges that I worked for. I'm so pleased to have Judge Nelson with us and then in a special treat also, Lisa Kloppenberg who is a former law clerk of Judge Nelson's and has been a star in legal academia and also various positions university-wide at Santa Clara and prior law schools before that, serving as dean of a couple of different law schools. 

I'm so excited to have both Lisa and Judge Nelson here to talk about the path to the bench for Judge Nelson and the path to leadership in academia that Lisa has held. On top of that, there's a special connection in that Lisa also is the biographer for Judge Nelson. Her biography of the judge was released in 2022, The Best Beloved Thing is Justice: The Life of Dorothy Wright Nelson. I'm excited to have that discussion. As we were talking about before, it's a unique opportunity that Lisa has had to give back to her mentor in so many different ways. 

We can talk about the importance of mentorship. What we can do is pay it forward to others, which Lisa has done also but in this case, being able to celebrate Judge Nelson in a meaningful way makes this a particularly special episode. With all of that, I usually start with questions about how folks decided to go to law school but I want to work a little bit backward because there's an interesting entry point here through the book. I wanted to talk first, Lisa, about how the idea came to you to do the biography of Judge Nelson and how that came about. 

It was an idea cooked up by me and my husband, Mark Zunich. We were both big fans. We admired Dorothy and her husband Jim who was a state court judge. We admired their lives as a family, people of faith, and people with great values who kept giving back to their community and generations of students. We conceived this idea when I started my first deanship in 2001. 

It was a long work of love because as dean and then university administrator, you don't have as much time to research and write. We did it on sabbatical in the summer and all of that. Mark helped me get underway with the interviews and encouraged me. Judge Jim encouraged Dorothy too when she thought she was not worthy of a biography. Judge Jim said, "You're wrong. Your story needs to be told." My only regret is that it took so long that I didn't get it out while Judge Jim was alive. 

Writing a book is not for the faint of heart. It takes a long time. In this case, it can take a long time to come to fruition. You had a vision, a mission, and a purpose to highlight not only Judge Nelson's professional accomplishments. We would call it work-life balance but it's an integrated and holistic life of faith, family, work, and extended family professionally. 

That's a great way to put it. It's an integrated life. Her life was so full of purpose from the beginning. 

Judge Nelson, how did you first feel when Lisa said, "I'd like to do this biography?" Did you demur a little bit? 

I was very honored. Lisa was an outstanding student when I was a professor and dean. She was an outstanding lawyer, Dean of Dayton Law School twice and then Santa Clara Law School, provost, acting president, and now assistant to the vice president by her choice. Of all my clerks, and that includes you, MC, you were my extern but you went on to become probably one of the most outstanding appellate lawyers in the United States. I felt honored that Lisa and Mark were interested enough to take this on. It was a terrible job. She kept getting promoted wherever she was. 

When she was planning to write during the summer, then she was made provost of Santa Clara University. I said, "You shouldn't be spending your time on this. You have a family as I did. You should be spending your time on other things." The two of them, Jim, and so forth, said, "If it will be encouraging to other women, why don't you do it?"  

With all of them ganged up against me, I decided I would be happy to consider it but as the years went on and Lisa kept getting promoted, I thought, "There's no way this book could be finished." Knowing Lisa, she did it with Mark's help. He was also encouraging as my husband always was. One of the keys to all of this was having a supportive partner because it's a lot of work to compile something like this. 

That's an important decision in someone's personal life but also career life, especially for women in terms of making the right choice in terms of a supportive partner helping you grow and become the best and the most that you can be and contributing to the world at large also. That's something you and Judge Jim had for sure. 

It's a privilege to be with two women on this show who each deserve a biography for themselves. At any rate, I feel very fortunate to have been associated with Lisa and Mark all these years. 

Judge, I do want to hop back to the beginning, first to you and then to Lisa, about what caused you to go to law school and decide that you wanted to be a lawyer. You've had many other roles besides a practicing lawyer, academic, judge, and Founder of Western Justice Center. There are so many other things. What first put that spark for you to pursue the law? 

It all started in the eleventh grade in my family. It's filled with professionals. My mother was a teacher. In high school, I was asked, "What are you going to do until you get married?" I said, "When I get married, I'm going to have a profession, so I can have an integrated life." I was a Counselor for the Culver-Palms YMCA. My husband-to-be, Jim, was the director of this summer camp. I had eighteen little eight-year-olds. They called themselves the Gorillas. My husband's group was the Cherokees. 

As I worked with these children who were underprivileged, I would go to their homes or see them at camp. Some of them were abused. Some of them were poverty-stricken. Some of them had parents who were not around at all. I said to my parents, "I'm not going to be a social worker," which I thought I wanted to be. I did always want to be out in the community where I could serve the community, "I'm going to be a lawyer because lawyers have more power than social workers." 

I accompanied some of these children to court hearings and the like. I kept seeing all the things in the community that were not being addressed. That's when I made up my mind. Instead of being a social worker where I saw one social worker could only do so much, I had a vision that a lawyer could do a lot more for these communities than a social worker. I don't mean just a social worker. They are important in the system but they're overburdened and underfunded. 

Social workers are the most important in the system, but they are overburdened and underfunded.

Judge, I might add one other influence that also confirmed your thinking about the power of lawyers and the potential to change the world by being a lawyer and a judge. There was a day at your high school when some early women lawyers and judges came in. They were impressed with you. You were a leader in your high school. You got to speak with a few of them one-on-one at the end of the evening. That's a nice option for young women to have. I didn't have anything like that in high school. I didn't meet my first lawyer until he taught my journalism First Amendment class in my senior year of college at USC. I was not exposed as a middle-class kid to lawyers at all. Those programs are great. 

That's a very important thing. California had a law day. I got to be a judge for a day. I was a judge in juvenile court, and I liked it. I thought I was a juvenile court judge. The judge who was letting me sit with her let me make decisions about the lives of these kids, many of whom I recognized as kids that I had in my Gorilla group. The combination of the women lawyers was important because when I graduated from law school, those women lawyers invited me down to their chambers and encouraged me to go into a regular legal practice but as it turned out, I had better offers for me at the time to be on a research project on how to improve the court system. That's what I was always most concerned about. 

I was on a three-and-a-half-year research project with Judge James Holbrook on improving the court system in Los Angeles County and comparing it with San Francisco and San Diego. I got to interview every judge in the county from Justice of the Peace all the way up. I kept asking questions but I wasn't very welcome by the time I left, "Why did you do this? Who was taking care of this?" That led me on my life journey on improving the court system as well as bringing about necessary changes in the justice system. It was the women lawyers, and Lisa is quite right, who was very encouraging to me about how much a lawyer could do. That was a turning point. 

There's so much in that. That's one of the things that I hope the show will do for people too and that I've seen happen when we had the live group of judges and lawyers with the Girls Inc high school participants. Many of the judges invited some of those girls who were there to watch them in court and to see them. They hadn't ever met a lawyer or a judge before.  

It's to see what's possible and to get some encouragement from them. That's where I hope the show will go. Your episode will be part of that encouragement also. It's that sense of meaning. Having a larger vision in everything that you have done throughout your legal career in different ways has been toward improving the system overall and helping others. 

That encapsulates all of the different roles that you've had but also in there is that point of taking the offer or opportunity in an area that was of interest to you and where you could carve out expertise early on in the court systems, which positioned you well for other opportunities that you also had to assist in setting up the merit selection for judges to your role on the bench yourself and your work toward peaceful resolutions through Western Justice Center and also the very robust mediation program at the Ninth Circuit itself, which is a model for the country. 

The inspiration for that mediation was in law school. When I was at UCLA, there were only 2 women in my class out of 72. We were all invited to join an unnamed legal fraternity. The word came back, "Everybody can join but the women and the one Black person." The president of our class called our 72-member class together and said, "This is outrageous. Let's all resign and inform the UCLA Legal Association." Everybody resigned. I went up to the president. His name was Don Barrett. I said, "That was a very nice thing to do but what led you to do it?" 

He said, "I'm a Bahá'í." I said, "What's that?" He said, "It's the latest of the world's religion that teaches that all religions are one and come from the same source." The latest messenger is Bahá'u'lláh who says, "Women and men are to be treated equally. I was following my religion." Out of the class of 72 in the next 10 years, 17 of us became Bahá'ís. There are millions around the world in more countries than any religion in terms of places except Christianity. We're only about 90 behind. 

Bahá'ís resolve conflicts through what they call consultation, which is a high form of mediation. I say high form because there's a unified belief in the existence of God. When I was asked to be the first woman faculty member at USC, and my seminar, which Lisa took, was judicial administration and the administration of justice, I added a section on mediation. At a faculty meeting, I heard one faculty member say, "What's Dorothy teaching? Mediation is not law." The answer was, "It's only a woman's thing."  

That made me even more passionate about spreading the word about the peaceful resolution of conflict. That led to the establishment of the Western Justice Center which led to the establishment of the American Association of Law Schools of faculty who were interested in what I call ADR. More of us call it Appropriate Dispute Resolution. Trials are needed but for most things, mediation, arbitration, and other alternatives bring a swifter, less expensive, and more satisfactory resolution to the conflict. 

That's away from your question but it's amazing how these things can translate to being able to create things that will benefit the community. Our Western Justice Center, which is next to our courthouse, promotes the peaceful resolution of conflict and restorative justice, which deals with things like bullying, racism, sexism, and the like. Let's go back. When I graduated, I had taken a course from Dean Roscoe Pound, the former Dean of the Harvard Law School. 

Our Western Justice Center promotes peaceful resolution of conflict and restorative justice, which deals with bullying, racism, sexism, and the like. 

To be quite honest about it, in my first year, I had been very active at UCLA. They put me on their alumni council. I kept going to meetings and doing those things during my first year of law school and did not do well in my first semester. I was so used to getting good grades that my grades weren't what I expected. I was walking down the hall to drop out thinking and saying, "I would come back in a year or so." 

I got married in the middle of my first year to add to everything else but Dean Roscoe Pound came down the hall waving a paper and saying, "Ms. Wright, outstanding." I said, "He can't be talking to me because I hadn't gotten his grade in Common Law Actions yet." I said, "Are you talking to me? Dean Pound, will you look at my other papers and see what I did wrong?" I gave him a couple of my papers. 

He began to laugh and said, "Ms. Wright, you're showing off. In contracts, you talk about Williston, Corbett, and all these people but you didn't answer the question." All they wanted to know was, "Should A recover from B?" I stayed in law school happily but when I was the Dean of the law school at USC, I asked every single faculty member to give practice exams so that people like me would have an inkling about what I was doing wrong. That's way off the subject but there we are. 

Most law schools give practice exams and have some different weight to the grading so that it's not quite all or nothing, which can disadvantage people who don't know lawyers and people who haven't had the experience to know what legal education is like. MC, I could point out that the judge is always so positive. Roscoe Pound was an amazing mentor who got her interested, took all her passions for helping those kids in bettering society, and helped connect her with the ABA project and a job opportunity but she also graduated in the era of Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 

There were very few other job opportunities and not much help for them. The judge had one other vague offer at a law firm. I remember a funny story. Judge Jim, her husband, by the time she graduated, was setting up his small law practice. One day, she played secretary so that she could help Jim and his partner manage the clients. It was a different world for women back then. 

There was one professor at UCLA Law school who only called on Dorothy and the other woman in the class on Ladies' Day, which is a tradition at Harvard and other places. It could be viewed as demeaning and unfair but she took every slight or wrongful conduct, made the best of it, and kept going. She was so persistent in a diplomatic and polite way like asking her questions at the court. She kept saying, "Why do we do it this way? Why don't we do it that other way?" She helped change a lot of the practices in legal education through her leadership there and introduced conflict resolution as a field in the academy. 

Thank you, Lisa. The secret of that was that the other woman in the class, Anne and I, were not upset when the professor said, "I only call on Women on Ladies' Day," because he would always announce it. We would go home and stay up until midnight. We knew every footnote and every case backward and forward. That was one of the courses I did very well in because we always knew what we would be called on. 

In law school, sometimes it's pretty terrifying when you don't know if you're going to be called on and why. If we would adapt his bad practice now, the women law students in law school would be outraged. If you look for the good and the bad, you can always find some good. That was good for Anne and me when we were faced with a professor who grew up on those views that women were inferior and couldn't do law. 

That's a great way of turning that around because that's the case. You don't know when you're going to be called on otherwise but the one good thing was that you knew which day it was going to be. You could be prepared for that. 

It's not that we weren't prepared every day but we were super prepared for Ladies' Day. 

You also had pioneering roles in academia both in terms of the subject matter and also your role as Dean at USC law school and then the impact that your work had in judicial selection also at the federal level. There's a lot to unpack there. I don't know if there's anything you wanted to talk about your deanship, what you're most proud of from that role, or how that came about. 

When we graduated, I took seven courses. Roscoe Pound gave a membership in the American Judicature Society. The seven of us was a society that promoted merit selection of judges. It later went on to promote clinical education and many other things but that was the prime mission. I became Chairman of that organization. This is how I became known nationally because we succeeded in the first couple of years as seven judges in seven states adopting merit selection, which meant there would be a board selected with various members based on their positions to recommend people to a governor or a chief justice for promotion to a judgeship. 

I met a lot of people in the American Judicature Society. Later as it turns out when I was proposed to be a judge that as a Bahá'í, we don't belong to political parties. I was independent. I didn't work for political parties but being Chair of the American Judicature Society gave a national visibility so that I met many wonderful people, including Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Sandra Day is still living, thank God, but she has health problems. 

Both of whom I could consult with on various issues during my professorship and my deanship and then also when I became a judge. Ruth Ginsburg was appointed to the DC Court of Appeals. We, along with nine women, were appointed by President Carter to the bench. We consulted with each other. Later on, because I had met Sandra Day O'Connor, I could consult with her, not on specific cases but on the process of appeals and what would be in a hypothetical a good course to follow. 

One particular case was Sandra Day O'Connor. My consultation with her was the deciding factor. I had gone back and forth but at any rate, it was very important that these women kept in touch with each other. It was nice. Chief Justice Burger then took us all into his chambers and said, "Look on my desk." Bless his heart. I didn't always agree with him but he had put my book on the administration of justice at the center of his desk. It helped to have people who had not just the Western view. California had a much more progressive legal system than many of the states. 

Merit selection always amazes me. The League of Women Voters calls me during an election. There may be 39 people on the ballot. They have to be renewed every six years and they asked me to come and tell them who to vote for. I said, "There is no way I could do that. All I can say is read everything about them that you can and make your decisions." It's impossible to know about 39 people. Unfortunately, the committees appointed to investigate them never interviewed their clerks, secretaries, or people who knew about their temperament. Hopefully, my state of California will adopt some form of merit selection in the near future. 

That's something that has come through that is a Civics lesson for people from the show. We will have at least 32 different state members of the State Supreme Courts of our 50 states. Many of them have that merit selection component to them. The governor chooses but there's a committee that says, "You can choose 1 of these 10 we have vetted them. They're good. You choose one of those, governor." Some of them are straight elections and others are appointed. It's all different depending on the state but there are many who I've spoken to who have that merit selection process, which goes back to what you're talking about, Judge Nelson. 

I was going to add that the merit selection process at the federal level combined with the efforts of presidents and senators has helped to diversify our courts. We have still got ways to go but the federal courts are much more diverse than they were at the time Dorothy started teaching. She went on the bench in 1980 with that wonderful cohort of early women. It changed. It's not only racial and gender diversity. It's a diversity of types of law practice and background, which is all good for litigants. 

If I could briefly mention, during Judge Nelson's time as Dean Nelson or Dean Dotty, as some of them called her, she put students at the center of legal education in a way that was not traditional at the time. It has become more that way now but it wasn't. She promoted a lot of hands-on clinical experiences for her students. I was fortunate enough to be a student in her small class. We went down to the courts. 

She's the star of the class, I might add. 

Everybody felt like a star there because you got to see the law in action. It's a different way of learning. She was important with clinical education opportunities and inclusivity. She diversified the Law School Law Center at USC, during her deanship. She and Judge Jim would welcome the handful of women students into their homes once a year. That cohort grew. The minority students grew. 

When she left to go on the bench, the students at USC recognized her by fundraising and setting up a student emergency fund because they knew she was always caring about the students. They were the reason she was in education. That's so refreshing to see. She wrote a 1,000-page book. She did lots of articles and all that. She was a scholar and a reformer but her heart was with the students. 

Thank you. My heart is with you, Lisa and MC, both of whom have lived up to the highest possible standards anyone who was anti-women would have to recognize and do recognize. We had very few women in law school when I became dean. When I became dean, we had close to 49%. Now, it's over 50% women but what we found was that it was too late to try to recruit women in college. Although we did that, we needed to go to the high schools. 

We created this Western Justice Center next door to the courthouse in four buildings that had been cottages. We have a peer mediation invitational where teachers who have been trained at the Western Justice Center in the art of ADR or Appropriate Dispute Resolution come together. It's not a competition. Everybody gets a t-shirt and a medal but what's interesting is that we have one day for elementary school children and another day for junior high. We always give them food. I'm a great believer in bringing people together to eat together. 

I had fourth graders. I asked this class, "What was the most important mediation you did this year?" Little Herbie, a fourth grader, said, "Judge Nelson, my parents are always fighting. They would yell at each other and scream." I walked in and said, "You ought to mediate your differences." They said, "What?" He said, "You have to listen to each other. You have to be courteous to each other. You have to be kind to each other." It convinced me that children at a very young age can absorb these concepts of trying to resolve differences peacefully and kindly with courtesy. 

Children at a very young age can absorb these concepts of resolving differences peacefully, kindly, and courteously.

I enjoyed many times more fun with the students than I was with all of my cases, although I had a number of cases that I was very passionate about. At any rate, it's amazing how our whole educational system needs to be revised. We had four buildings that we acquired. Justice Kennedy dedicated the first and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor the second. We had the Chief Justice of California for the third and then Governor Schwarzenegger before he became scandalous. All of them at the dedication said, "Children at a young age ought to be taught peaceful resolution of conflict. They ought to be taught about ADR and restorative justice, such as dealing with bullying, racism, and the like." 

Everything is interconnected. I felt lucky that we were able to have the Western Justice Center on my court campus. We have a beautiful courthouse. It's a restored hotel but we used that for our peer mediation invitational where the students come. They're given problems and train mediators. Some of whom are judges, although judges are not always the best mediators. They're used to telling people what they ought to do, whereas instead of mediation, the question is centered around, "What do you think is fair? What do you think is just in this case?" 

At any rate, the whole spectrum is being able to keep in touch with youngsters in elementary and junior high school. I tell them that the courthouse is their courthouse. This may be a woman's thing. The only objections I had were from a couple of my male cohorts. They were returning this to a social service agency. I said, "Peer mediation invitationals once a year are not turning us into a social service agency." We needed the room. They became some of the strongest supporters of our Western Justice Center, whose aim is to teach young people of all ages focusing on kindergarten and junior high. 

We have programs going on in various areas around our courthouse. We have a program in the same school district, a kindergarten, a junior high, and a high school. These children get a different view of what a lawyer is and what a judge is. The court security called and said, "You've got someone here who says that you said he could come and bring his brother." I always tell him, "This is your courthouse." That was Herbie. He brought his brother. I went down as he toured. 

He said, "This is the library where the judge said if we have problems, we can come, and the librarians will help us." Indeed, they do. He took them into the big main room where mediations would take place. He said, "People resolved their conflicts in this room instead of waiting and paying lots of money to have to go to court. Sometimes the people who were fighting each other come out holding hands. That's what the judge says. If people can resolve their conflicts peacefully, it's more likely that they will resolve their conflicts in the future." At any rate, that's my big pitch for mediation and ADR. 

You're teaching lifelong skills to people very early in terms of how to resolve conflicts, which in the longer term also impacts the courts, their workload, and all of that. If people can manage their conflicts, they can create solutions that are more win-win for both sides and also won't always be bringing them to a third party to the court system or an adversarial system to resolve them. It all works together. 

I can say from my experience with the Western Justice Center and also the mediation program at the Ninth Circuit that the programs are amazing in different ways. The mediation program at the Ninth Circuit is quite robust. Sasha Cummings, one of the mediators for the court, was previously on the show talking about her role and the role of the mediation program at the circuit. 

Having that option to resolve something that isn't purely leading long-term, especially when you're up on appeal, adds a lot more time to the decision than the case. Giving parties an off-ramp and an opportunity to resolve it through the mediation program is an amazing thing that the Ninth Circuit has. Not that many other federal courts or even Courts of Appeal have that robust and meaningful of a mediation program. It's a special thing that the Ninth Circuit has, which came out of some of your vision for what can be done within the court system to resolve things. 

I'm very happy with our court. When I first proposed that we have one appellate mediator, we had a few in the district courts. The wonderful Chief Judge Browning says, "I'll give you one spot. I'll give a clerk spot. We will see how it works." I got some hate letters. I particularly think of letters from Seattle where I was moving to take away business from lawyers and judges. We went from 1 mediator to 3 to 5 to 7 to 9 to 11 with a handle of over 1,000 cases with an 87% rate of success. I kept hundreds of letters, mostly the ones I wanted to keep from working in Seattle where it's the best thing that has ever happened. 

There's enough legal business for everybody. Many people cannot afford the expense, the delay, and the emotional effect of having to wait long periods of time but it's getting their case resolved within 2 to 3 months. That was true also in law school. I had some longer-term faculty who said, "If we had something like that or any training whatsoever, it would be turning the school into a trade school." We happily overcame that. USC, my former deanship law school, has one of the most outstanding conflict resolution programs in the United States with the growing recognition that not just young lawyers but older lawyers need to be trained in different ways. 

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have trials because we need trials in cases like Brown versus Board of Education and the like but many of the cases can be resolved. The thing is with mediation or arbitration, many of the parties that get to know each other on a friendlier basis resolve potential conflicts in the future. We're not only dealing with conflicts now but we're dealing with preventing future conflicts because of the way in which we make parties recognize that they can help resolve a case in a justifiable way without going through the expense of a long trial. 

Many parties that get to know each other on a more friendly basis resolve potential future conflicts. 

One of the things that you're particularly good at, which works well sitting on a bench where there are a lot of colleagues, and it takes more than one person to reach a decision and be in the majority, is that sense of collegiality that you bring and the good relationships that you have with the other judges and clerks, being the center when people come to court, having the brown bag lunches, and inviting people into the chambers to meet visiting judges. All of that is part of a sense of community and collegiality, which shows up in how you work with your colleagues in reaching decisions. It has many different roles in terms of your interest in mediation and alternative dispute resolution but that skill is integral to being a good judge on a multi-member court. 

I hesitate to say it but it's a woman's thing. Food is the way to the heart. When I first came to the court, it was a big pain to my colleagues because I would say, "If you will come early and come to my chambers, I'll give you a continental breakfast." With one of our judges, I went down because he had me come. His mother was there. I had croissants, coffee, and orange juice. She said, "My boy needs an egg." I said, "I'm sorry. This is something I do myself. I can't accommodate things like that." 

We went into the hearing. There were three judges, two men and a woman. I was presiding that day. The woman had no recognition at all of who I was. I'm sure she loved thinking how inefficient our court was not to provide a full breakfast but when I had brown bag lunches for all the clerks during court week, sometimes we would have 60 people in chambers. I have one of the judges give an introductory talk and then let them first ask questions. 

We ended up with a couple of marriages as a result of those brown bag lunches. I served food. I let them bring their lunches. I had coffee, cookies, and punch. It's the very act of being able to sit and talk to each other for the judges as well because judges would attend these brown bag lunches. I miss them now because that's where I got to know my judges. The students got to know us and see us in an informal, friendly, and encouraging session. 

You have so many different roles. When I think about the brown bags, I think about warm feelings about them. It was fun to be the center of the visiting judges when court week happened. I remember some amazing judges and even Justice Kennedy one time coming. That was remarkable. I hadn't thought about that but there's collegiality between the visiting judges because you're talking about the Ninth Circuit with everyone physically stationed across multiple states and then getting to see each other in person during court week when people travel. That is part of collegiality-building among the judges as well and having that connection because, for the rest of the time, you're not physically in the same place. 

I'll add a couple of other ways in which Judge Nelson tried to encourage the community within the Ninth Circuit. When she arrived in 1980, there were very few conferences about a case before or after. Each judge wrote their opinion and sent it over. Part of her bringing food either before or lunch depending on the time of day was, "Let's get together and talk about the case. Where are we leaning? What questions do we have?" rather than, "Go off for three months and write an opinion in your chambers. We will come back and see what we think of it." 

She worked at collaboration among the panelists where that was possible. She also tried to not dissent herself unless she was so passionate and believed that this was moving the law in the wrong direction. She didn't dissent over a minor disagreement. She tried to work for consensus to show that the court was more united. Not every judge would approach it that way but that was Judge Nelson's style. If you look at her dissents, those are cases that moved her and where she felt strongly enough to write a dissent. 

I didn't realize the conferencing part because that impacts the dynamic and the decision-making process also but some of the justices on the Washington State Supreme Court whom I've interviewed for the show say that they noticed that absence. During COVID when they weren't able to come together for those conferences, they had the same thing. One of the justices that would get assigned would cook lunch or whatever it was for the rest of the justices. They would sit down, have their conference, and decide. They weren't able to do that. They noticed the impact of that on their collegiality and how they did encourage them to continue to discuss and find commonalities. 

One of them said, "You can't get terribly mad at someone who made some recipe of their grandmother of soup for you. They gave something nice to you. You take what they say in a more human way." For a long time, they didn't have that. That was an impact on how it felt. What an impact that had on their process with each other and their sense of collegiality though. When they mentioned that, I thought of Judge Nelson too. I thought, "Isn't that interesting?" It has this broader impact. 

When I was dean of the law school as well as when I was appointed to the court, and there were three women at that time on the court, this took a lot of help on Jim's part. Having the right husband is essential for me. I would have them for dinner. When I was dean, I had no problem with the faculty, me being the only woman but I had a problem with the wives because they wouldn't say, "Why are you the dean?" I wanted them to see that I had a happy home and a happy husband. I may not have been a very good cook but I had them for dinner. They saw my children and so forth. 

This happened on the court as well because not all of the longtime serving judges were fond of having women on the court. Having them to dinner made all the difference in the world. You can promote collegiality in many ways. After I would have them to dinner, they would have me to dinner and invite Jim if he was in town. Our relationships were so close that people who the LA Times would mark as ultra-conservative are among my very best friends largely because their wives are along my best friends. 

To me, it's treating it as a human thing. Oftentimes, new judges are strict in the sense of what they would say and how they will say it in emails. Emails have been very bad for us at times when certain judges have made, written by their clerks, in my opinion, unfortunate remarks about other judges. That has almost disappeared from our court and has brought us all much closer together. 

What you said about the human connection and seeing the human side of people can impact the court. In your case, the court is an institution and the connection between individuals. It's something I hope to happen but has happened with the show as well. It's seeing the human side of people who you would think otherwise, "They had a beautiful charm and a successful life. I couldn't accomplish what they have because everything must have been perfect for them. They didn't have any challenges or failures along the way." That's not true at all. We all work through that. 

I concur with that. MC, I could add one final thing about Dorothy's judicial work. Because of her teaching about the court systems and how to make them better, she and Judge Jim were often invited, whether it was by the State Department or others, to go around the world and talk about both the rule of law and alternatives. How do you improve your court systems? 

She would make an effort. After teaching on those trips, she would sit down and have dinner with a judge or a lawyer, in particular, to try to get some Bahá'ís free who were being persecuted. This often happened in the Middle East where somebody was under a death sentence because they attended a wedding of a cousin. Too many Bahá'ís gathered in one place. 

She and Judge Jim fought valiantly and quietly to use all those human relationships to try to humanize these Bahá'ís who were being under threat because of their religious beliefs. They weren't terrorists. They weren't about to overthrow the governments or anything but some of the rules were quite harsh in those countries and not providing the religious freedom we have here in the United States. 

Thank you, Lisa. On some of the most exciting and best trips that we had, federal judges are often asked to go to different countries. I did to a number of them, most of them with Jim. This business about Nasser in Egypt in 1960 passed a law that no more than three Bahá'ís could ever meet at the same time unless they were related. Bahá'ís are supposed to obey the law. They didn't. They went to a wedding. Forty were condemned to death. 

The state department asked me to go to Cairo because one judge was starting a big mediation center. I was asked to speak at the university and the like. I went and Jim met with Judge Amir. Judge Amir had brought along an Islamic scholar to a meeting, which was supposed to last an hour. It went on for three hours. We got home from Cairo on a Friday. On a Sunday, a telegram came from Judge Amir. 

We had taken Judge Amir and his Islamic scholar out to dinner with their wives, which is unusual. They called me Judge Dorothy, "I have decided to release the Bahá'ís, Fatima, and his wife. I hope this makes you happy. Your friend, Judge Amir." I can tell you this now because Judge Amir is retired from the court. I wouldn't want him to be in trouble but that same approach is amazing. 

We went to China eight different times. They have been mediating for thousands of years but I became very friendly with the women judges. For the first time in the history of China, China permitted seven women judges to come to the United States. I arranged for tours with the help of Sandra Day O'Connor in Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, and California. 

The last time I went to China, Madame Mao was Vice President of the Supreme People's Court. I went down the hallway to her chambers. There was a huge picture of the seven judges with me at the law school hanging in their gallery. I get more cards from China at Christmas time than I do for the United States. It is so easy. I should say easy because if you make the effort to make friends with judges and ordinary people or people who are not judges but they're not ordinary at all, so much can be accomplished by basic friendship. 

A lot of my former students have joined this. Judge Judy Chirlin, who died, was one of them. Lisa has been outstanding everywhere she has gone. MC, I keep reading about how you're one of the most important appellate lawyers in the United States. I'm very proud of both of you. There's such a thing as intelligence coming through your physical brain but psychologists now are talking about emotional intelligence, which means your heart has a brain that can be translated by your mind. 

The importance with kids and adults is emotional intelligence, which involves kindness, generosity, and listening. It has become part of the most cherished discovery in my lifetime because I often knew that students who didn't have the highest grades would be the best lawyers and the best people because they had what I call emotional intelligence.  

That's a more scientific way of describing some of your strengths too and describe some of the examples you've been giving. Emotional intelligence is the term now. Putting your heart into things, having that connection, seeing people on a human level, and allowing them to recognize you on a human level can have some tremendous impacts and can be influential and persuasive in itself. Lisa, I wanted to touch base with you on your perspective of being a clerk for the judge and also the impact that she had on your decision to go into academia in your career. 

Thank you, MC. As anybody who has worked with her knows it's one of the best experiences of their lives. You feel like you're a member of the family, not in any inappropriate way but you're very welcomed, encouraged, and supported. She has a vigorous red pen. She would edit our drafts carefully but she always had an encouraging word and was a great teacher. It was a thrill and an honor to clerk for her. Like many of her clerks, she is there if you want career advice. She doesn't force it on you if you're open to it. 

I did a few years at a big law firm and got some good experience teaching civil procedure and conflict resolution in federal courts. We wanted a family and a lifestyle that was not as pressurized as being a partner in a big firm. I ended up in university administration, which is pretty pressurized but it was important for us and our young family to have that time in the academic life as a faculty member and all of that. 

She was helpful. Anywhere I went, I could use Judge Nelson as a reference. She was well-known throughout her legal education. Many of her clerks have gone across the country to be stars at many law schools. She was helpful all the way. When I got tenure and I had started an appropriate dispute resolution program with some others in Oregon, the judge called and said, "You should put your name in the Women Deans’ Data Bank at Georgetown Law." 

This was through a lass. I said, "I'm young." I was in my late 30s. The kids were still little but she kept nudging me, "We need more women deans." During her tenure as dean for fourteen years, interim and then full dean, for five of those years, she was the only female dean at an ABA law school in the country. I cannot imagine what that would have been like walking into a room of blue suits but the deans are quite formal even when I started in 2001. 

Now, we're well over 35% female deans in the legal academy in the US but when I went into it in 2001, that was not the case. It was still relatively early. She encouraged me. I was a little worried, "Is this the right time in my life with three young children? Is this the right time for Mark's career and all?" As we talked through it, there was never an easy time with children and family responsibilities. You're always having to blend the two. I had an incredibly helpful husband and family. 

We decided, "I will undertake this deanship at the University of Dayton." Its values called to me. We took a leap of faith and did that. With Mark's help, it went well. There, I got connected with a whole network of women. For a while, Patty O'Hara from Notre Dame and I helped sponsor a dinner when all the deans got together. The women deans could have a place where they could confide with each other because we're all going through so many similar pressures and challenges. 

I found some good support along the way. Even when we had two children and we were thinking, "Maybe we will adopt a child. We have two boys. We would love a girl," Judge Nelson was so encouraging. I didn't know if I could handle a third child. She said, "The more kids you have, the love keeps growing." Throughout my life whenever I've consulted her, she has been there as a mentor and a role model.  

It helped that I had two women law professors. That's it. To see a woman who was passionate about the law and improving the justice system but who was also happily married to an accomplished and smart man and who had children as well was important for me in the 1980s when we still didn't have as many women in legal education and the law. I hope that answers your question, MC. 

It does on so many levels because we're talking about modeling not only the academic career but this whole holistic, integrated question because that's often something that we have, "Is this a good time personally with what's going on?" Taking that leap of faith as a family too but being encouraged to do that by someone who's like Judge Nelson who has been able to do that quite well herself throughout her career can give you the extra nudge to go forward if you had doubt to take that position. 

I didn't realize this at the time but when I was hired at the University of Dayton, they took a chance on me because I hadn't gotten the traditional route and been an Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and all of that. Many women were told, "If you don't do that, you can't become a dean." They took a chance on me. It was a great fit. I was 39 at the time. I was the youngest law dean in the country and the first female dean in Ohio. Even when I came out to Santa Clara to be dean in 2013, I was the first female dean on our Catholic and Jesuit campus. 

Judge Nelson inspired me in a way to carry it forward for other women to make room for that. I'm stepping back. I'm very happy to be going back to teaching and writing. There's more time for that as well as fundraising for the university. I finally feel as if I've done enough but it's a little hard with Judge Nelson out there as a role model and mentor. I could never do as much as she has done. 

In so many different ways and areas, that's true. We hope that will have an impact in multiple areas professionally and then with our families. It's a Renaissance woman in that regard but you do have a unique combination of those roles. To achieve to be a dean of a law school is a significant achievement but then you also have this crossover role to the larger university. Maybe you can talk about that and how that came about. 

That was interesting. It's being a part of any team you're on. I was the senior dean at the time. My boss left rather suddenly to go to another university. They needed somebody to step up. I had 24 hours to decide, "Do I want to be interim provost?" I didn't think of pursuing that. I was happy in law school but it was very good being interim provost, provost, and then acting president. It brought my horizons about the rest of higher education, the issues undergraduates are facing, and how the law could help even with some interdisciplinary work in other areas. 

I saw so many opportunities for young lawyers to be in compliance, human resources, and Title IX work at universities. There are a ton of lawyers in university administration. Going back to law school, that's one thing that I'll counsel the students for whom that would be a right fit. Maybe they don't feel that they want to be in a firm for life. At least in a university, it's a little easier to have some time for family and other passions because we do get a couple of weeks of a break in the holidays. It's got a cyclical nature. There are some incredibly busy times but there are slow times. That can be important for people who have other interests to pursue. 

When you were talking about that, Lisa, I was thinking about the university-wide position and then law school. There are two parallels that are corollaries. One is I remember when I led a particular section of a bar association. I was running for the board of directors for that association. To meet all of the constituents, I went to all the different sections. I realized that to each of those people in those sections, that's what the bar is to them. 

I had only seen one part of that but then when you can see the whole of it together, you say, "This is how it all fits together." I felt much better positioned to represent the bar as a whole because I understood all the different ways that the bar was to those individuals. I think of that university-wide position being that way. You see the role that the law school plays and then a larger additional role for law students and thinking outside the law school box in that way. 

I love the values at Santa Clara as well. That's what attracted us to come back to California and do another deanship. I could see those at large across the university in STEM and the first-generation programs and so much. A law school is also good preparation to be a president or provost because it's like a mini-university. You have everything except athletics. You have admission, career services, and the whole gamut. 

The other thing is that legal training is helpful to identify issues. Try to be concise and clear and get to the point or a decision. Finally, the mediation background is very helpful. A lot of what you end up doing is trying to get other team members in a large team to work together, find common ground, and keep moving things forward. 

You're being conscious of all the different parts of the training that impact that role. Jennifer Friend who was a big law litigator and now runs Project Hope Alliance, which helps homeless youth break out and have a great life and education, is very conscious of the different roles. Being a litigator and being in a law firm has impacted how she runs her non-profit and brings people together. You're recognizing that.  

That training is useful in so many different ways. I'm glad you said that because what I hope from the show is that law students reading will say, "There are a lot of different ways I can use my skills." In your context for those who are interested in academia within the law school setting and then broader within the university setting overall, those skills can be useful if they're interested to put their name in the hat for that. 

My husband has done a lot of work at universities over the years in all kinds of areas. There's such a need for calm and reasonable lawyers who can help people work through difficulties because it's like any major enterprise, whether it's a private business, the government, or a university. All of us face similar challenges. All those skills are great. We found we could build a nice life together. 

There's such a need for calm and reasonable lawyers who can help people work through difficulties. 

When we went into legal education in our 30s, we didn't realize there's something called tuition remission, which can help your kids go through college. You can build a nice life together where you have vacationed at similar times and all of that. I'm not saying it was perfect. There were plenty of ups, downs, challenges, and things as a family you have to adjust to but it has provided a wonderful and meaningful life because, at the end of the day, you're helping students. 

On that note, someone ought to write the biography of each one of you. The things that I've heard on this show, which I thank MC for, will encourage a lot of women. I had a student from a law school ask if she could come and interview me. I do occasional interviews. Her first words are, "I hate law school." I said, "Excuse me. Is that what you want to interview me about?" She had no concept of what women lawyers could do in the profession, not to mention males as well. You two are perfect examples of alternative ways to handle your life. I feel very privileged to know you both. 

Thank you, your honor. We feel so blessed to know you. 

Thank you so much for taking the time and participating in this, Judge Nelson. I don't know which title to use for you, Lisa, dean, provost, and professor. 

My name is Dorothy. Thank you for including me. I'm very proud of both of you. 

Thank you so much. You have a beautiful life and a beautiful contribution, Judge. Thank you so much for sharing. 

Thank you for asking me. I don't do a lot of these. 

Take care. 

Thank you so much. 

Thank you both very much. 

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