Faculty Profiles

June 7 – July 29: Summer 2010

Victor B. Flatt

Vanderbilt University, magna cum laude
Northwestern University School of Law, Order of the Coif, Cum Laude

Victor B. Flatt is the Tom & Elizabeth Taft Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law and the Director of the Center for Law, Environment, Adaptation, and Resources (CLEAR) at the University of North Carolina School of Law, Chapel Hill. Prior to this, he held the A.L. O’Quinn Chair in Environmental Law at the University of Houston Law Center, where he was also the Director of the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources Law Center. He has been a visiting professor at the Seattle University School of Law.

He is a nationally recognized expert in environmental and energy legal and policy matters, and has done extensive work on climate change, particularly with respect to the Arctic. He has published extensively in law journals, including Northwestern Law Review, Seattle University Law Review, Washington Law Review, Ecology Law Quarterly, and Notre Dame Law Review. He is also published numerous op-eds and blogs and is frequently quoted in national media. He earned his B.A., magna cum laude, in Chemistry and Mathematics at Vanderbilt University in 1985, where he was a Harold Stirling Vandrerbilt Scholar, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and the analytical laboratory coordinator for the Student Environmental Health Project. He graduated from Northwestern University School of Law in 1988, where he was a John Henry Wigmore Scholar and Order of the Coif. After law school, Professor Flatt clerked for the Honorable Danny J. Boggs of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and worked in private practice in complex environmental law in Seattle, Washington. In 2005-6, Professor Flatt represented then Senators Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Barbara Boxer, among others, in their challenge to new EPA Clean Air Act rules.

Stephanie M. Nichols

B.B.A., University of Notre Dame, cum laude
J.D. Seattle University School of Law, cum laude

Prior to joining Seattle University School of Law as the Director of the Study Law in Alaska Program and Attorney for Native American Projects, Stephanie was most recently an Attorney for an Indian Tribe near Olympia, Washington. She was born and raised in Fairbanks, Alaska, and has traveled extensively throughout Alaska. She teaches both Alaska Native Law for the Study Law in Alaska Program and Indian Trust and Estates in Seattle University's Ronald A. Peterson Law Clinic.

During law school, Stephanie clerked for the Northwest Intertribal Court System and worked with the Indian Estate Planning Project providing will drafting and estate planning services on the Swinomish and Upper Skagit Reservations in Washington state. Stephanie has also been a speaker at several national conferences on the American Indian Probate Reform Act. She lived and worked with the Lakota people on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota as well as worked with the Indigenous people in the village of San Lucas Toliman in Guatemala, and Oaxaca, Mexico. While a student at Seattle University School of Law, Stephanie was Co-President of the Native American Law Student Association and a First Place winner of the Frederic C. Tausend Appellate Oral Argument Competition. Additionally, she completed an externship at the National Labor Relations Board in downtown Seattle.

As the Director of Seattle University School of Law's Study Law in Alaska Program, Stephanie teaches the Alaska Native Law class for that Program. In her position as Attorney for Native American Projects, Stephanie oversees the summer Indian Estate Planning Project where second and third year law students work under the direction of experienced attorneys to provide will drafting and other estate planning services for tribal communities throughout Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. Stephanie will also manage an Indian Estate Planning Project with law students and a paralegal to provide will drafting and other estate planning services for tribal members of the Spokane and Colville Indian communities.

Gillian Dutton

B.A., University of California, San Diego, cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa
M.A., Chinese Studies, University of California, San Diego
J.D., Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley

Before joining Seattle University School of Law as the Externship Program Director and Assistant Professor of Law, Gilllian Dutton was the Senior Attorney for the Northwest Justice Project Seattle office, and the Director of the Refugee & Immigrant Advocacy Project (RIAP), a University of Washington Law School Clinic based at the Northwest Justice Project. At the RIAP, she ran a clinic that provided legal assistance to immigrants and refugees seeking public benefits, assistance to victims of trafficking, and naturalization assistance for elderly and disabled immigrants.

Professor Dutton has an M.A. in Chinese history and is a 1988 graduate of Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. Before starting the RIAP in 1994, she worked for Evergreen Legal Services in Yakima, Washington where she represented limited-English speaking farm workers in housing and public entitlements cases. She has worked on issues such as prenatal care for undocumented women, immigrant access to managed care, the provision of language access to limited English speaking clients, assistance to victims of trafficking, and naturalization for persons with disabilities. She is a recipient of the 1999 Charles A. Goldmark Award for Distinguished Service and the 2005 Northwest Immigrant Rights Project Golden Door Award.