Marina Hsieh

Santa Clara University School of Law Senior Fellow

When most first year civil procedure students are being gently introduced to the concept of jurisdiction, Marina Hsieh is dropping hers right into a war zone, exploring the application of due process to so-called "enemy combatants." "I try to connect everything with what’s happening in the real world," she says. What about Pennoyer v. Neff? "That old, moldy case that alienates everyone from civil procedure?" asks Hsieh. "When we get to it, I teach it as a political scandal."

Hsieh herself stays in the center of the storm as part of the leadership of the ACLU, where she has served for more than ten years as a national board member, and spent seven years on the executive committee. Hsieh—who holds an A.B. from Harvard, a J.D. from Boalt, and clerked for Associate Justice John Paul Stevens of the United States Supreme Court—has helped shepherd the organization during a period of great change and phenomenal growth.

In the past five years, the ACLU has nearly doubled in membership from approximately 300,000 to more than 575,000, and it has "expanded the umbrella of what civil liberties mean," she says. "It’s becoming more basic as in ‘they’re listening to your phone calls’ and also more complex" with issues of international law and of science, such as privacy issues relating to genetics. The war on terror has raised many other issues in areas of international law, torture, and due process.

Vision—"anticipating what’s around the corner" in Hsieh’s words—is the key to leadership of the ACLU. Though she is quick to point out that as a member of the 83-person board she cannot take a lot of credit for its leadership, Hsieh says that when called on to lead, she draws on her experience, just out of Harvard, as a Coro Fellow, where she was taught "to think like a leader." "I am more of an out-of-the-box idea person," she says. "I tend to want to think creatively."

Hsieh’s leadership has resulted in greater diversity on the board. Having grown up "a Chinese-American in a Bible-belt Texas town" (Waco), she is dedicated to diversity, and not only in terms of ethnicity. Hsieh is currently chairing an ACLU board committee to design an affirmative action policy that extends beyond race and gender to enhance hiring of sexual minorities and people with disabilities. If adopted, it would govern the nearly 800 jobs in the ACLU’s national and affiliate offices, as well as serve as a cutting edge model for progressive private sector employers. "The law is incredibly complex in this area, but still doesn’t answer all the questions," she says. "Where the law leaves off, leadership carries us forward."

Santa Clara Law, she says, is the perfect match for her. "It has a diverse student body combined with the right mission, to train lawyers who lead and who don’t just aim for competence, but also for compassion and conscience."

Hsieh, says Robert Cullen, teacher of leadership for lawyers courses at SCU, is challenging the educational status quo and creatively focusing the students on real-life world events. "She is challenging the students to be inspired by global issues and is making the topics she is teaching relevant in today’s world. Leaders in education find more effective ways to teach; Hsieh is bringing the world into the classroom, both through her teaching methods and her ACLU work, and she is also demonstrating to her students ways to be creative and effective in their future profession."

Marina Hsieh's Faculty web page