Biography

MJ Palau-McDonald joined the law school in 2024 as an Assistant Professor of Law.  She is a proud graduate of Richardson, where she served as the Editor-in-Chief of the University of Hawaiʻi Law Review and earned a certificate in Native Hawaiian Law from Ka Huli Ao Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law.

Prior to joining the faculty, Professor Palau-McDonald worked as a Lecturer-in-Law here at Richardson and clerked for the Honorable Richard R. Clifton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Susan Oki Mollway of the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaiʻi.

During law school, she externed for the Honorable Jill A. Otake of the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaiʻi, at Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic, and, thanks to Ka Huli Ao and the Island Girl Foundation, she worked alongside a small non-profit of kalo farmers navigating legal processes to restore loʻi kalo.  She won numerous awards, including Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review’s national student writing competition, the Amy C. Richardson Award for the best paper in Native Hawaiian Law, and the best overall second-year seminar paper.

Professor Palau-McDonald’s areas of scholarship and research include Native Hawaiian Law, restorative environmental justice, legal writing, and law and political economy.  As a Kanaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) who grew up in the Bay Area, she is interested in diasporas, critical race studies, and intergenerational trauma.  She is also an artist with an affinity for printmaking and textile monstrosities.

Selected Publications

Framing Restorative Environmental Justice (in progress).

Teaching Indigenous Perspectives in an Antiracist Law School Curriculum, in 4 Building an Antiracist Law School, Legal Academy, and Legal Profession (Penn. St. Antiracist Dev. Inst.) (forthcoming) (book chapter with Richard Chen).

From Wai to Kānāwai:  Water Law in Hawaiʻi, in Native Hawaiian Law: A Treatise (Melody K. Mackenzie, D. Kapuaʻala Sproat, Susan Serrano & Mahina Tuteur eds.) (forthcoming) (book chapter with D. Kapuaʻala Sproat).

The Duty to Aloha ʻĀina: Indigenous Values as a Legal Foundation for Hawaiʻi’s Public Trust Doctrine, 57 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 525 (2022) (with D. Kapuaʻala Sproat).

Blockchains and Self-Determination for the Native Hawaiian People: Toward Restorative Stewardship of Indigenous Lands, 57 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 395 (2022).

A Reckoning for “Rational” Discrimination: Rethinking Federal Welfare Benefits in United States-Occupied Islands, 43 U. Haw. L. Rev. 265 (2021) (with Sarah Kelly, Patricía Sendão, and Olivia Staubus).