Kimberly West-Faulcon
Associate Professor of Law
Contact Information
919 Albany St.
Los Angeles, CA 90015-1211
(213) 736-8172
FAX: 380-3769
E-mail: kimberly.west-faulcon@lls.edu
Educational and Professional Background
BA, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Duke University
JD, Yale Law School
Kimberly West-Faulcon teaches Constitutional Law and Principles of Social Justice. During law school, Professor West-Faulcon was a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal. After law school, she clerked on the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals with the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt and began her legal career as a Skadden Fellow, selected by the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom to work in the public interest legal organization of her choice. Professor West-Faulcon’s research interests in intelligence theory, constitutional law, affirmative action and critical race theory stem from her extensive experience as a civil rights litigator.
Prior to joining the Loyola faculty, Professor West-Faulcon was the Western Regional Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF). While at LDF, she maintained a heavy civil rights caseload.
Her nationally-recognized litigation accomplishments include various cases involving the legal standard for proper use of standardized tests in elementary, secondary and higher education. From 1999 to 2003, Professor West-Faulcon served as chief coordinating counsel and lead African-American plaintiffs’ counsel in a post-Proposition 209 lawsuit filed by African-American, Latino and Filipino students challenging the admissions policies of the University of California at Berkeley – Rios/Castaneda v. The Regents of California. She also litigated employment discrimination issues as lead counsel for the African-American plaintiff classes in a successful multi-million dollar lawsuit against the clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch and a class action lawsuit filed by African-American, Latino and Asian-American police officers challenging the promotion practices of the Los Angeles Police Department.
In 2005 and 2004, West-Faulcon was honored as a “Southern California Super Lawyer” and, in 2004, Los Angeles Magazine named her a “Rising Star Lawyer Under 40.” Also, in 1999, the Los Angeles Daily Journal featured West-Faulcon as one of the top lawyers under the age of 40 “making their mark in the legal world.” West-Faulcon’s significant accomplishments have also been praised in the company of successful young stars outside the legal profession. In the 1999 millennial issue of Ebony Magazine, West-Faulcon was recognized as one of Ebony’s “Ten for Tomorrow” (along with Jesse Jackson, Jr., Lauryn Hill, Serena Williams, Brandy, Sean Combs, Chris Rock, Bernice King, Tiger Woods, and Marion Jones) “who will almost certainly redefine their fields in the next millennium.”
Professor West-Faulcon has been featured, quoted and interviewed by various local and national media including: CNN, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Black Issues in Higher Education, Education Week and National Public Radio’s Tavis Smiley Show.
* Although established by the NAACP, the LDF has been a separate and independent entity for over five decades. LDF’s founder and first Director-Counsel was the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
Professional Memberships and Activities
Presenter, "France's Statistical Color-Blindness in Question: Statistical Analysis as Proof of Racial 'Effect' Discrimination," Centre d'etudes de recherches internationales Bi-National Colloque, Paris, France on May 20, 2008.
Presenter, “What Can We Do, Post-Michigan Proposal 2?,” National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) 63rd National Conference, Austin, Texas on September 27, 2007.
Presenter, “More Intelligent Design: The New Lessons of Intelligence Theory,” Southeastern Association of Law Schools, Annual Meeting, Amelia Island, Florida on August 2, 2007.
Presenter, “Exploring When and How Race Matters,” Southeast/Southwest People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference, Florida A&M University College of Law, Orlando, Florida on March 17, 2007.
Presenter, “Equal Opportunity in Higher Education: The Past and Future of Proposition 209” symposium sponsored by the Boalt Hall Earl Warren Institute, Berkeley, California on October 28, 2006.
Supreme Court Justice, “Defending Brown: Race Conscious Remedies in Education” Supreme Court Moot for Respondent in Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education at UCLA School of Law, Los Angeles, California on October 24, 2006.
Presenter, "Regression Analysis: The Status of African Americans in American Legal Education," The National Black Law Journal panel at UCLA School of Law, Los Angeles, California on November 18, 2005.
Presenter, "Proposition 209: Ten Years Later," UCLA Chicano-Latino Law Review panel at UCLA School of Law, Los Angeles, California on November 1, 2005.
Presenter, "New Strategies for Justice: Linking Corporate Law with Progression Social Movements," panel sponsored by the Center on Corporations, Law & Society at Seattle University School of Law, Fourth Annual Conference of the Equal Justice Society, Los Angeles, California on April 9, 2005.
Presenter, "Promoting Equal Opportunity Post-Grutter," Affirmative Action Strategy Summit sponsored by the African American Policy Forum & the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Washington, DC on October 14, 2004.
Testimony before the California Assembly Select Committee on Urban and Youth hearing on "Brown v. Board of Education: 50 Years Later" regarding the national significance of the Brown decision and the history of segregation litigation in California, Sacramento, California on May 4, 2004.
Member, Individual Rights & Responsibilities Section, American Bar Association
Member, Black Women Lawyers of Los Angeles
Member, National Employment Lawyers Association (2001-2005)
Board Member, Environmental Justice Fund, Liberty Hill Foundation (2000-2002)
States: New York (1997), California (1998)
United States District Courts: Southern District of New York (1997), Central District of California (1998), Northern District of California (1999)
United States Courts of Appeal: First Circuit (2000), Ninth Circuit (2005)
"The River Runs Dry: When Title VI Trumps State Anti-Affirmative Action Laws," 157 U. Pa. L. Rev. __ (2008) (forthcoming).
Note, “A Desegregation Tool that Backfired: Magnet Schools and Classroom Segregation,”103 Yale Law Journal 2567 (1994).
AIDS and the Anti-Gay Crusade,” 9 Duke Journal of Politics 75 (Spring 1991).
“Looking Beyond the Numbers,” Los Angeles Daily Journal, Nov. 4, 2003.
“Stop Playing the SAT Numbers Game,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 8, 2001 (with Elaine R. Jones).
“Randolph County: A Game of Discovery,” Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CCALI), Copyright 2003 (civil procedure instructional computer game) (with Owen M. Fiss and Ronald F. Wright).
Constitutional Law, Principles of Social Justice