Susan
K.
Serrano
Fred T. Korematsu Professor of Law & Social Justice
Associate Director, Ka Huli Ao Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law
Director of Research and Scholarship, Ka Huli Ao Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law
Degrees
JD, William S. Richardson School of Law, 1998
BA, University of California, Berkeley, 1992
Biography
Susan Serrano is the Associate Director of Ka Huli Ao Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai‘i. She teaches Pacific Island Legal Systems, Lawyering Fundamentals I, and Second Year Seminar.
Serrano’s work focuses particularly on the impacts of U.S. colonialism on Native and territorial peoples. She also publishes in the areas of critical race theory, Native Hawaiian rights, civil rights, Puerto Ricans and U.S. law, and implicit bias. She is an Executive Editor of Native Hawaiian Law: A Treatise (MacKenzie, Serrano & Sproat eds., 2015). Her most recent scholarship includes A Reparative Justice Approach to Assessing Ancestral Classifications Aimed at Colonization’s Harms, 27 Wm. & Mary Bill of Rts. J. 501 (2018); Elevating the Perspectives of Territorial Peoples: Why the Insular Cases Should be Taught in Law School, 21 J. Gender, Race & Just. 309 (2018); and Dual Consciousness about Law and Justice: Puerto Ricans’ Battle for U.S. Citizenship in Hawai‘i, 29 Centro J. 164 (2017).
Prior to joining Ka Huli Ao, Serrano was a Staff Attorney at the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco, California. She was also the founding Research Director of the Equal Justice Society, and served as the Thurgood Marshall Fellow at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. Before joining the Lawyers’ Committee, she clerked for Associate Justices Robert G. Klein and Mario R. Ramil of the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court.
While in law school, Ms. Serrano served as the Articles Editor for the University of Hawai`i Law Review, and won the Trina Grillo Award for Best Student Paper in Critical Race Theory for her article, Rethinking Race for Strict Scrutiny Purposes: Yniguez and the Racialization of English Only, 19 Univ. Hawaiʻi L. Rev. 221 (1997).
Publications
- A Reparative Justice Approach to Assessing Ancestral Classifications Aimed at Colonization’s Harms, 27 Wm. & Mary Bill of Rts. J. 501 (2018). HeinOnline | SSRN | ScholarSpace
- Elevating the Perspectives of Territorial Peoples: Why the Insular Cases Should be Taught in Law School, 21 J. Gender, Race & Just. 395 (2018). HeinOnline | SSRN | ScholarSpace
- Dual Consciousness About Law and Justice: Puerto Ricans’ Battle for U.S. Citizenship in Hawai‘i, 29 Centro J. 164 (2017). SSRN | ScholarSpace
- Traditional and Customary Access and Gathering Rights, in Native Hawaiian Law: A Treatise (MacKenzie, Serrano & Sproat eds., 2015) (with David Forman).
- Ali‘i Trusts, in Native Hawaiian Law: A Treatise (MacKenzie, Serrano & Sproat eds., 2015) (with Avis Poai).
- The Human Costs of “Free Association”: Socio-Cultural Narratives and the Legal Battle for Micronesian Health in Hawai‘i, 47 John Marshall L. Rev. 1377 (2014). HeinOnline | SSRN | ScholarSpace
- Reparations Theory and Practice Then and Now: Mau Mau Redress Litigation and the British High Court, 18 Asian Pac. Am. L.J. 71 (2013) (with Eric Yamamoto). HeinOnline | SSRN | ScholarSpace
- Federal Indian Law: Implicit Bias Against Native Peoples as Sovereigns, in Implicit Racial Bias Across the Law (Justin Levinson & Robert Smith eds., 2012) (with Breann Swann Nuʻuhiwa). SSRN Synopsis
- Collective Memory and the Persistence of Injustice: From Hawai‘i’s Plantations to Congress – Puerto Ricans’ Claims to Membership in the Polity, 20 S. Cal. Rev. L. & Soc. Just. 353 (2011). HeinOnline | SSRN | ScholarSpace
- Cuyahoga Falls v. Buckeye: The Supreme Court’s “Intent Doctrine”- Undermining Viable Discrimination Claims and Remedies for People Of Color, in WE DISSENT: TALKING BACK TO THE REHNQUIST COURT – EIGHT CASES THAT SUBVERTED CIVIL LIBERTIES AND CIVIL RIGHTS (Michael Avery ed., 2008) (with Eva Paterson).
- Restorative Justice for Hawai`i’s First People: Selected Amicus Curiae Briefs in Doe v. Kamehameha Schools, 14 ASIAN AM. L. J. 205 (2007) (with Eric K. Yamamoto, Melody Kapilialoha MacKenzie & David Forman). HeinOnline | SSRN | ScholarSpace
- Environmental Justice for Indigenous Hawaiians: Reclaiming Land and Resources, 21 NATURAL RESOURCES & ENVIRONMENT 37 (Winter 2007) (with Melody Kapilialoha MacKenzie & Koalani Kaulukukui). HeinOnline | ScholarSpace
- Breathing Life into Brown at Fifty: Lessons About Equal Justice, 34 THE BLACK SCHOLAR 2 (Summer 2004) (with Eva Paterson, Lee Cokorinos and William Kidder). Taylor Francis Online | ScholarSpace
- Korematsu v. U.S.: A Constant Caution in A Time of Crisis, 10 ASIAN L. J. 37 (2003) (with Dale Minami). HeinOnline | SSRN | ScholarSpace
- American Racial Justice On Trial – Again: African American Reparations, Human Rights And The War On Terror, 101 MICH. L. REV. 1269 (2003) (with Eric K. Yamamoto and Michelle Natividad Rodriguez). HeinOnline | SSRN | ScholarSpace
- Dismantling civil rights: Multiracial resistance and reconstruction. 31 Cumb. L. Rev. 523 (2001) (with Eric K. Yamamoto, Minal Shah Fentron, James Gifford, David Forman, Bill Hoshijo, Jayna Kim) HeinOnline | SSRN | ScholarSpace
- Rethinking Race for Strict Scrutiny Purposes: Yniguez and the Racialization of English Only, 19 U. Haw. L. Rev. 221 (1997). HeinOnline | SSRN | ScholarSpace

Contact
Phone: (808) 956-6432
Fax: (808) 956-5569
Office
By Appointment
Files
Classes
Course # | Class Title | Semester | Year |
---|---|---|---|
530 | Spring | 2022 | |
530 | Spring | 2023 | |
530 | Spring | 2021 | |
530 | Spring | 2020 | |
530 | Spring | 2019 | |
530 | Spring | 2017 | |
530 | Spring | 2018 | |
530 | Spring | 2015 | |
530 | Spring | 2016 | |
530 | Spring | 2014 |