Danielle Kie Hart
Professor of Law
B.A., History and Economics, with honors in History, 1988, Whitman College; J.D., 1992, University of Hawaii; LL.M., 1998, Harvard University; Member, Hawaii State Bar
Email:
Phone: (213) 738-5720
Room: BW337
Through her experiences in the courts, private practice, the nonprofit sector, and academia, Professor Hart saw clearly "how powerful and pervasive the law is, touching every aspect of peoples' lives." She enjoys sharing this perspective with her students and exploring with them "the possible systemic changes that might be needed in the law."
Professor Hart began her legal career as a judicial clerk to Chief Justice Herman T.F. Lum and Associate Justice Mario Ramil of the Hawaii Supreme Court where she had a first-hand look at the appellate process and how laws are shaped. She then entered private practice as a commercial litigation associate with the firm of Paul, Johnson, Park & Niles. Her areas of practice included contracts, real property, insurance, construction, and bankruptcy.
A few years later, Professor Hart moved to the nonprofit sector as a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Hawaii where she established and supervised the poverty law hotline for senior citizens. At Legal Aid, Professor Hart says, "it became very apparent that many of the people who we helped were going to be repeat clients, because we could only take care of their immediate problems. The only way to affect real change would have to be on a more systemic level."
After completing her LL.M., Professor Hart accepted a teaching position at her alma mater, the University of Hawaii. In 1999, she moved to California to join the Southwestern faculty. She was named as the Irwin R. Buchalter Professor of Law in 2005. "I hope my students come away with a strong understanding of the basic substantive material that I cover," she says. "Equally as important, however, I hope they come away with a stronger skill set for legal problem solving, because this is what lawyers do every day in practice."
A former law review member herself, Professor Hart serves as a faculty advisor for the Southwestern Law Review. Her own research has covered a wide range of topics, from procedural reform and the strategic uses of procedure to same-sex marriage. Her current research focuses on commercial law - its politics, distributive effects and social consequences. Professor Hart has been a panelist at a number of academic forums, and recently served on the executive committee and as chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Gay and Lesbian Legal Issues.
Publications
Articles
"Contract Formation and the Entrenchment of Power," 41 LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO LAW JOURNAL 175 (2009)
"And the Chill Goes On – Federal Civil Rights Plaintiffs Beware: Rule 11 Vis-à-vis 28 U.S.C. § 1927 and the Court's Inherent Power," 37 LOYOLA LAW REVIEW 645 (Winter 2004)
"Still Chilling After All These Years: Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Its Impact on Federal Civil Rights Plaintiffs After the 1993 Amendments," 37 VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW 1 (Fall 2002)
"Same-Sex Marriage Revisited – Taking a Critical Look at Baehr v. Lewin," 9 GEORGE MASON CIVIL RIGHTS LAW JOURNAL 1 (1999)
