Three McGeorge School of Law faculty each dedicate 40+ years of service to the law school

May 04, 2023

The University of the Pacific honored fifty faculty members at the 2023 Faculty Retirement and Years of Service Celebration on Wednesday, May 3. During the celebration, three McGeorge School of Law faculty were recognized for teaching at the law school for 40 years or longer. Distinguished Professor Stephen McCaffrey and Professor Christine Manolakas have both served on the law faculty for the past 45 years. Associate Dean for Scholarship and Distinguished Professor of Law Franklin Gevurtz has taught at the law school for 40 years. 

Five additional faculty also celebrated significant years of service anniversaries this year. Professors Leslie Gielow Jacobs and John Sprankling have taught at the law school for 30 years. Professor Rachael Salcido celebrated her 20-year teaching anniversary at McGeorge this year. Professors Jeffrey Michael and Brian Slocum both have served on the faculty for the past 15 years.

A professor laughs with a few students in an office

Distinguished Professor Stephen McCaffrey has taught courses on Environmental Law, Water Law, and various Public International Law topics at McGeorge School of Law for the past 45 years.

Stephen McCaffrey – 45 years of service

McCaffrey serves as the Carol Olson Endowed Professor of Law at McGeorge School of Law. McCaffrey joined the law faculty in 1977, and he has taught courses on Environmental Law, Water Law, and various Public International Law topics for the past 45 years.

McCaffrey is one of the world's foremost authorities on international water law, having been the 2017 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate for his unparalleled contribution to the evolution and progressive realization of international water law. The Stockholm Water Prize is regarded as being comparable to a Nobel Prize in the field of water.  McCaffrey was the first attorney to win this award. He also received the 2018 Elisabeth Haub Award for Environmental Law and Diplomacy, which is the world’s most distinguished award in the field of environmental law.  In addition, the ABA Section of International Law conferred the Louis B. Sohn Award for Public International Law upon McCaffrey in 2020.

McCaffrey has been involved in eight cases brought before the International Court of Justice and the Permanent Court of Arbitration concerning international water law, representing various countries. He also served two terms as a member of the United Nations International Law Commission (ILC) and chaired that prestigious body's 39th session from 1987-88. He was only the third American to do so.

He has published widely in the fields of international and comparative law, in the form of articles, book chapters, edited books, and books of which he is the sole author. He has his own published books for the courses he teaches at McGeorge, including co-authored coursebooks on Public International Law, International Environmental Law, and Transnational Litigation, a treatise on the Law of International Watercourses for the seminar on that subject, and a co-authored supplement, Global Issues in Environmental Law.

McCaffrey earned a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Colorado, a JD degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, and a doctorate from the University of Cologne in Germany.

McCaffrey’s father, Stanley McCaffrey, served as the University of the Pacific’s president from 1971 to 1987.

A female professor behind a podium speaks to a classroom of students

For 45 years, Professor Christine Manolakas has taught federal income tax courses at McGeorge School of Law.

Christine Manolakas – 45 years of service

Manolakas joined the law faculty in 1978. She teaches courses in Federal Income Taxation, Taxation of Real Estate Transactions, Taxation of Corporations and Partnerships, Taxation of Corporate Reorganizations, U.S. Taxation of International Transactions, and Community Property Law. Professor Manolakas serves as the Director of the Tax and Business Certificates of Concentration at McGeorge School of Law.

Manolakas served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2005-2008. As a result of her contributions to the law school, the "Manolakas Extraordinary Contribution Award" was established. The award is conferred annually to a member of the faculty or administrative staff.

Most recently, Manolakas has published articles on the taxation of artists, art dealers, and investors in art; the tax law and tax policy of natural disasters; the inequities of the qualified residence interest deduction; the tax treatment of thieves and gamblers; and the taxation of mixed-use personal residences. For many years, her scholarship focused on issues relating to international tax law, the interpretation of tax treaties, and the comparison of the tax laws of NAFTA countries. She has also published works centered on community property law.

In addition to teaching at McGeorge, Manolakas has also taught courses at the University of California, Davis School of Law, and throughout California for the California CPA Education Foundation.

Manolakas received a bachelor’s degree in history and English from the University of Southern California, a JD degree from Loyola Marymount University’s Law School, and an LLM in Taxation from New York University, School of Law.  Prior to joining McGeorge in 1978, she worked in the tax department of Chevron in San Francisco.

A man in a suit teaches a class

Associate Dean and Distinguished Professor Franklin Gevurtz has taught courses on Business Associations, Antitrust, Securities Regulation, and Business Planning at McGeorge School of Law for the past 40 years.

Franklin Gevurtz – 40 years of service

Gevurtz has served as the Associate Dean for Scholarship since 2019 at McGeorge School of Law. Gevurtz joined the law faculty in 1982.

Gevurtz is — in the words of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit — a "leading commentator" on corporate law. Courts, lawyers, students, and scholars in the United States and abroad look to his treatise, Corporation Law, for authoritative guidance.

He has authored seven books, and more than 50 articles, essays, and book chapters. These works have been cited hundreds of times, including by the Supreme Courts of Delaware, Georgia, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, and by United States Courts of Appeals for the First, Ninth, and D.C. Circuits.

He teaches courses on Business Associations, Antitrust, Securities Regulation, and Business Planning — his casebook on which is used to teach this course at law schools across the country. He has also taught as a visiting professor at the law schools at the University of California, Berkeley and Davis as well as Catolica University in Portugal.

Gevurtz developed, serves as series editor of, and contributed two volumes to the revolutionary 23-volume Global Issues book series. The Global Issues series responds to the growing impact of globalization on legal practice by facilitating the introduction of international and comparative law issues in core law school courses.

Gevurtz earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of California, Los Angeles and a JD degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Prior to joining the McGeorge faculty in 1982, Professor Gevurtz practiced with the prestigious law firm of O'Melveny and Myers in Los Angeles.

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