Bio
Professor Kass is a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Seattle University School of Law and Professor Emeritus at Thomas Jefferson Law School.
She is also a frequent Visiting Professor at Seattle University, where in addition to teaching she serves as a faculty advisor for the Seattle Journal of Technology, Environment, and Innovation Law (formerly, the Seattle Journal of Environmental Law) and the Seattle Environmental Law Society. As a 2019 Fulbright recipient, she held a visiting scholar appointment at the College of Europe in Belgium, and as a 2022 ISSR Global Scholar, she held a visiting fellow position at the University of Dundee in Scotland. She was also a lecturer and visiting scholar at the University of Milan, in Italy, in the University’s Interdisciplinary Approaches to Climate Change master’s program.
Professor Kass is active in the American Bar Association (ABA). She currently serves on Council for the ABA Section of Environment, Energy & Resources (SEER) and on the Editorial Board of the SEER’s publication National Resources & Environment. She is a past-chair and continues on the leadership committees of both the ABA’s Biodiversity and International Environmental and Resources Law committees.
In past years she has also served as Chair and Executive Committee member of the AALS Natural Resources & Energy Section; Chair of the Public Interest Grant Selection Committee of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Bar Association of Washington (QLaw); a Board of Directors and Legal Committee member with the Puget Soundkeepers Alliance; and as a member of the Washington State Board of Bar Examiners.
Prior to entering academia, Professor Kass practiced law for close to a decade in the Seattle offices of Preston Gates & Ellis (now K&L Gates) and Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe. Her practice focused on environmental compliance and land use. She earned her J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley Law, and M.E.S. from Yale University School of the Environment. She clerked at the Massachusetts State Superior Court following law school.
Her primary areas of teaching and scholarship are environmental law, natural resources law, comparative US/EU environmental law, and torts.
Accomplishments & Activities
Seattle University 2024 Provost’s Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence
Thomas Jefferson School of Law Golden Apple Teaching Award
Council Member, American Bar Association Section of Environment, Energy & Resources
Editorial Board Member, American Bar Association Natural Resources & Environment (NR&E)
Editor and Scientific Committee Member, European Journal of Consumer Law
Member, IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law
Selected Scholarship
Biodiversity Laws of the US and EU, in Comparative Environmental Law Research Handbook (Tseming Yang et al., eds., forthcoming 2024).
Conserving At-Risk Species and Birds in the US and the EU: A Comparative Summary, 28 Env Liability Law, Policy & Practice J. 80 (2023) (co-authored with Temple Stoellinger).
Right to Repair and the Environment – Fix it or Nix It?, 38 Nat. Res. & Envt. 54 (Fall 2023).
Climate Anxiety, 37 Nat. Res. & Envt. 52 (Fall 2022).
Comparing EU and US Waste Management Approaches, in Interdisciplinary Approaches to Climate Change for Sustainable Growth, Ch. 11 (2022).
“30 by 30” Strategies for Biodiversity, 36 Nat. Res. & Envt. 49 (Winter 2022).
Make Them Cry: Using Public Service Announcements to Teach Environmental Law in The Media Method: Teaching Law with Popular Culture (Christine Corcos ed.), ch. 18 (2019).
Presidentially Appointed Environmental Agency Saboteurs, 87 UMKC L. Rev. 697 (2019).
Education
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Yale University
M.E.S., Environmental Policy 1997 -
University of California, Berkeley Law School
J.D. 1989 -
Tufts University
B.S., Biology 1984