Biography

Miyoko T. Pettit-Toledo ‘15 is a proud graduate of the William S. Richardson School of Law, where she joined the faculty in 2022 and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2026.  She teaches Civil Procedure, Advanced Civil Procedure, Complex Litigation and Political Lawyering, Reparations and Reconciliation, and Second Year Seminar.  Since its inception in 2020, she has also helped organize and lead Richardson’s annual non-credit Business Boot Camp course.

In 2026, Professor Pettit-Toledo received the University of Hawai‘i’s highest teaching award, the Board of Regents’ Medal for Excellence in Teaching, and served as the faculty commencement speaker.  She was also selected as the 2025 Law Professor of the Year and a 2025-2026 University of Hawai‘i Innovation and Impact Showcase awardee.  Honolulu Magazine honored her with a “Celebrating Wāhine” award to be featured in the October 2026 issue.

Professor Pettit-Toledo’s scholarship merges legal theory and analysis with frontline advocacy for civil and human rights as well as social justice—something she learned and took to heart as the inaugural Korematsu Scholar Advocate while in law school.  Her recent scholarship focuses on two areas: (1) critical civil procedure, with an emphasis on state courts; and (2) reparative justice, with a focus on healing transgenerational harms flowing from mass historic injustices, particularly through her work on the Jeju (South Korea) April 3, 1948, Tragedy.  Her 2024 Denver Law Review article, “The Politics of Proportionality in State Civil Rulemaking,” received an Honorable Mention from the American Association of Law Schools Civil Procedure Section’s 2026 Junior Scholars’ Competition and was featured on JOTWELL.  Her ongoing research examines the processes, consequences, and shortcomings of making civil procedure in the U.S. Territories.  Her scholarship has appeared in the Denver Law Review, Berkeley Journal for Gender, Law, and Justice, Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems, University of Hawai‘i Law Review, and Asia Pacific Law and Policy Journal, in addition to other publications in South Korea such as the World Environment and Island Studies Journal.  She is co-author, with Professor Emeritus Eric K. Yamamoto and Sara Lee ’13, of The Jeju 4.3 Tragedy: Next Steps Toward Reconciliation (book translated in Korean) (2015).

Before joining the Richardson faculty, Miyoko served as Executive Director of Maximum Legal Services Corporation, a Hawai‘i 501(c)(3) non-profit, and practiced civil litigation at McCorriston Miller Mukai MacKinnon LLP.  She also clerked for Hawai‘i Supreme Court Associate Justice Richard W. Pollack and U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii Senior Judge Susan Oki Mollway.  Her professional accomplishments earned her recognition as a Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch and a Super Lawyers Rising Star.

During law school, she served as a Case Note Editor and Publications Committee Editor for the University of Hawai‘i Law Review.  As a Sam L. Cohen Foundation International Human Rights Summer Fellow, she served as a summer law clerk in the Trial Chamber at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in The Hague, Netherlands, where she assisted in the trial of Prosecutor v. Ayyash, Badreddine, Merhi, Oneissi & Sabra, an in absentia criminal prosecution of terrorists who committed a bombing of political figures in Beirut, Lebanon. 

Professor Pettit-Toledo currently serves on the Advisory Committee of the Hawai‘i State Bar Association’s Leadership Institute and the Hawai‘i Supreme Court’s Committee on Equality and Access to the Courts.

Publications

Journal Articles, Essays, and Book Chapters

• Collective Memory & The Temporality of Justice:  Healing Trauma Across Generations After Historic Injustices, 35 Transnat’l L. & Contemp. Probs. __ (forthcoming 2025).
• The Politics of Proportionality in State Civil Rulemaking, 101 Denv. L. Rev. 641 (2024). HeinOnline | SSRN | ScholarSpace
• Healing Intergenerational Wounds in Present-Day Jeju Redress: United States-South Korea-Jeju Support for the Jeju 4.3 Trauma Healing Center, 12 World Environ. & Island Studies J. 107 (2024) (with Elizabeth “Kalei” Akau).  SSRN | ScholarSpace
• United States Apology and Reparations for Its Role in the Jeju 4.3 Tragedy: Healing the Persisting Wounds Across Generations, in Jeju’s Past, Present and Future: Peace-Building for Co-Prosperity, at 95-102 (2024) (book chapter with Eric K. Yamamoto).  Amazon | ScholarSpace
• Collective Memory and Intersectional Identities:  Healing Unique Sexual Violence Harms Against Women of Color Past, Present and Future, 45 U. Haw. L. Rev. 346 (2023). HeinOnline | SSRN | ScholarSpace
• Bridging the Chasm:  Reconciliation’s Needed Implementation Fourth Step, 15 Seattle J. Soc. Just. 109 (2016) (with Eric K. Yamamoto and Sarah Sheffield). HeinOnline | SSRN | ScholarSpace
• A Crucial 2016 Next Step Toward Jeju April Third Reconciliation:  United States Responsibility for Social Healing Through Justice, in Jeju 4.3 Grand Tragedy During Peacetime Korea: The Asia-Pacific Context (1947-2016) (2016) (book chapter with Eric K. Yamamoto et al.)
• Who Is Worthy of Redress?:  Recognizing Sexual Violence Injustice Against Women of Color as Uniquely Redress-Worthy—Illuminated by a Case Study on Kenya’s Mau Mau Women and Their Unique Harms, 30 Berkeley J. Gender L. & Just. 268 (2015).  HeinOnline | SSRN | ScholarSpace
• Unfinished Business:  A Joint United States and South Korea Jeju 4.3 Tragedy Task Force to Further Implement Recommendations and Foster Comprehensive and Enduring Social Healing Through Justice, 15 Asia-Pac. L. & Pol’y J. 1 (2014) (with Eric K. Yamamoto and Sara Lee). HeinOnline | SSRN | ScholarSpace
• What’s Next?:  A Joint United States and South Korea Jeju 4.3 Tragedy Task to Further Implement Recommendations and Foster Comprehensive and Enduring “Social Healing Through Justice,” 2 World Environment and Island Studies 1 (2013) (with Eric K. Yamamoto).

Book

Jeju 4.3 Solutions: Korea – United States Jeju 4.3 Task Force (with Eric K. Yamamoto and Sara Lee, translated into Korean by Jin Ho Kim) (2015).

Recent Media

KHON2 – What’s the Law?, “The Future of Abortion and IVF in America,” Invited Speaker, by Coralie Chun Matayoshi, July 12, 2024.

Hawai‘i Public Radio, “Panel Discussion on the Status of IVF in Hawai‘i,” Invited Speaker (with Dr. Celia Dominguez) by Catherine Cruz, Host of The Conversation, March 1, 2024.

Related News

Richardson Law Celebrates Miyoko Pettit-Toledo ’15 and Dina Shek ‘06 for UH honors

Professor Miyoko T. Pettit-Toledo ’15 Recognized for Innovative Teaching Practice

Kaukehakeha: Faculty Scholarship Spotlights