Full Time Faculty

SUSAN KELLER

Professor of Law

714-459-1141
skeller@wsulaw.edu

DEGREES

J.D., Harvard Law School
M.F.A. University of California, Irvine
A.B., Harvard/Radcliffe Colleges

COURSES

Property
Torts
Agency and Partnership
Gender and the Law
Employment Discrimination

BIOGRAPHY

Susan Keller first joined the faculty at Western State University College of Law in 1989 after teaching at the University of Miami and clerking for the Hon. Robert N. Wilentz, Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. She has published extensively in the area of Feminist Legal Theory, exploring the legal treatment of gender and sexuality. In 2002, she received a Masters degree in Creative Writing at the University of California at Irvine. From 2004 to 2007, and from 2010 to 2019, Professor Keller served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.

PUBLICATIONS

• Doing Things with the Language of Law and Gender: Using Speech Act Theory to Understand the Meaning and Effect of the Gender Identity Backlash, 24 Nev. L. J. 413 (2024).
• Gender-Inclusive Bathrooms: How Pandemic Inspired Design Imperatives and The Reasoning of Recent Federal Court Decisions Make Rejecting Sex-Separated Facilities More Possible,
  23 Geo. J. Gender & L. 35 (2021).
• Commentary on Sawada v. Endo in Feminist Judgments: Property Opinions Rewritten (Eloisa C. Rodriquez-Dod, Elena Maria Marty-Nelson, eds., 2021).
• Only Love Remains: Straddling the Real and the Symbolic in the Disposition of Cremated Remains Between Divorced Couples
  3 Savannah Law Review 117 (2016).
• Operations of Legal Rhetoric: Examining Transsexual and Judicial Identity, 34 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 329 (1999).
• Crisis of Authority: Medical Rhetoric and Transsexual Identity, 11 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 51 (1999).
• The Rhetoric of Marriage, Achievement and Power: An Analysis of Judicial Opinions Considering the Treatment of Professional Degrees as Marital Property, 21 Vermont Law Review 409 (1996).
• Viewing and Doing: Complicating Pornography’s Meaning, 81 Georgetown Law Journal 2195 (1993).
• Powerless to Please: Candida Royale’s Pornography for Women, 26 New England Law Review 1297 (1992).
• Does the Roof Have to Cave In? The Landlord/Tenant Power Relationship and the Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress, 9 Cardozo Law Review 1663 (1988).

SELECTED PRESENTATIONS

• Doing Things with the Language of Gender: Sports Bans, Section on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues Panel: Legislative Attacks on LGBTQ Equality, AALS, Washington, D.C., January 2024.
• The Assault on Gender-Affirming Care, Gender, Health, and the Constitution Conference, Center for Constitutional Law, University of Akron, Akron, OH, October 2023.
• The Assault on Gender-Affirming Care, UNLV Program on Race, Gender & Policing, Las Vegas, NV, November 2022.
• Unisex Bathrooms in a Post-Covid, Post-Urinal America, Feminist Theory Summer Seminar (online), July 2020.
• January 2001: “Reading Ballots: The United States and Florida Supreme Courts on Writing and Interpretation”, Law and Literature Conference, University of California, Irvine.
• May 1997: “Fetishism and Legal Institutions,” New Approaches to International Law, Harvard Law School.
• February 1997: “Operations of Discourse: Judicial Opinions and Transsexual Identity,” The Letter of the Law: Law, Literature and Culture, University of Southern California.
• October 1996: “Prophecy and Prurience,” New Approaches in Comparative and Foreign Law, University of Utah.