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Eric K. Yamamoto |
Eric K. Yamamoto
BA, University of Hawai`i, 1975; JD, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, 1978.
Eric Yamamoto is an internationally-recognized law professor at the University of Hawai'i William S. Richardson School of Law. He is known for his legal work and scholarship on civil rights and racial justice, with an emphasis on reparations for historic injustice. In 1984 he served as coram nobis co-counsel to Fred Korematsu in the successful reopening the infamous WWII Japanese American internment case, Korematsu v. U.S.. He worked on the legal team for Manuel Fragante in his accent discrimination case to the U.S. Supreme Court and for Alice Aiwohi in her successful Hawaiian Homelands breach of trust class action resulting in a state reparations settlement of $600 million. He has written amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court, most recently as co-author in the Grutter v. Michigan affirmative action case and the Rasul v. Bush post-9/11 Guantanamo Bay mass detention case, as well as a recent amicus brief to the Ninth Circuit in Doe v. Kamemameha.
Professor Yamamoto has published two books and sixty book chapters and law review articles. His first book on Interracial Justice (conflict and reconciliation among racial communities) received the Gustavus Meyers Award for Outstanding Books on Social Justice for 2000. His second book, Race, Rights and Reparation: Law and the Japanese American Internment, co-authored with Chon, Izumi, Kang and Wu, received national attention in light of its relevance to the post-September 11th tension between national security and civil liberties in America. His recent articles include: "American Reparations Theory and Practice at the Crossroads" (charting a new reparations path of social healing through justice); "From Heart Mountain to Iraq: Lt. Watada and a Long Line of Resistance" (assessing Watada's refusal to deploy as an act of conscience governed by Nuremberg principles); "White(House) Lies: Why the Public Must Compel the Courts to Hold the President Accountable for National Security Abuses"(providing a strategic roadmap for activists and scholars); and "Contextual Strict Scrutiny," (coalescing a new methodology for Equal Protection judicial review). His earlier article, "Critical Race Praxis: Race Theory and Political Lawyering," in the Michigan Law Review, was the centerpiece of a later law review symposium on strategies for connecting racial justice scholarship with frontline advocacy.
For 2001-2002 Professor Yamamoto was awarded the Haywood Burns Chair in Civil Rights for New York, where he taught and lectured, and in 2000 he received the Rockefeller Foundation's coveted Residency Fellowship for international justice scholars in Bellagio, Italy. In 1999 he taught as a visiting professor at his alma mater, Boalt Hall Law School, University of California at Berkeley. In Fall 2006, he was a featured speaker at an international conference on "Racial Reparations: A Transatlantic Dialogue" in Tour outside of Paris, France. For Spring 2007 he was the Scholar-in-Residence at the Boalt Hall Law School's Thelton Henderson Center for Social Justice speaking about American Reparations Theory and Practice. And in Spring 2008 he served as the Scholar-in-Residence at Hokkaido University Law School's Advanced Institute for Law & Politics, giving public and law school lectures on Ainu Peoples-Japan reparations and reconciliation. He is also an organizer of an international reparations workshop for the Fall 2008.
Professor Yamamoto has received eight outstanding law teaching awards, including the University of Hawai'i's highest award, the 2005 Regents Medal for Teaching Excellence, and the Society of American Law Teachers' nation-wide award as Outstanding Law Teacher for 2005. He has also received awards for his work on civil rights and social justice -- most recently the Equal Justice Society's inaugural "Scholar Advocate" Award in 2007, the Japanese American Citizens League - Honolulu Chapter's 2006 Distinguished Public Service Award (with Chris Iijima) and the Patsy T. Mink Award for Social Justice in 2004. In his work outside the classroom, he trains law students and new lawyers interested in social justice as part of the national "Scholar-Advocate" pilot project he helped create with Susan Serrano. He is a founding member of the Equal Justice Society. He speaks regularly across the country and internationally on issues of racial reconciliation, reparations, civil and human rights and national security and civil liberties.
Teaching Areas: Civil Procedure, Advanced Procedure/Complex Litigation, Public Law Litigation, Race, Culture and Law, Reparations
Recent and Forthcoming Publications:
Eric Yamamoto, (with Sogi), Korematsu v. U.S., in Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court (forthcoming in 2008).
Eric Yamamoto, (with Betts), Rice v. Cayetano: Disfiguring Civil Rights to Deny Indigenous Hawaiian Self-Determination, in Race and Law Stories, (forthcoming 2008).
Eric Yamamoto, American Reparations Theory and Practice at the Crossroads, California Western Law Review (lead article 2007).
Eric Yamamoto, (with Serrano at al.), Restorative Justice for Hawaii's First People: selected Amicus Curiae in Doe v. Kamehameha, Asian American Law Journal (2007).
Eric Yamamoto, (with Obrey), From Heart Mountain to Iraq: Lt. Watada and a Long Line of Resistance, UCLA Amerasia Journal (2007).
Eric Yamamoto, White (House) Lies: Why the Public Must Compel the Courts to Hold the President Accountable for National Security Abuses, Duke Journal of Law and Contemporary Problems (2005).
Eric Yamamoto, (with Ebisugawa), The Politics and Law of Japanese American Redress, in Reparations and Transitional Justice, (2005).
Eric Yamamoto, (With Minner and Winter), Contextual Strict Scrutiny, Howard Law Journal (lead volume article 2006).
Eric Yamamoto, Showing the Way, Harvard Blackletter Law Journal, (2006).
