Remembering Trina Grillo (1948-1996)

This past weekend the University of Oregon law school hosted the 12th annual Trina Grillo Public Interest and Social Justice Law Retreat with the theme Globalization, Economic Justice, and Climate Change. The retreat embodies the aspirations of Trina’s scholarly and administrative work against injustice in its many forms and toward diversity and equality. As part of the program, I detailed her personal and scholarly legacy, and want to share some of that information here, especially for our young professors of color who may be unfamiliar with her work. Trina spent most of her life in Oakland, California. The daughter of an Italian mother and a Black Cuban American father, she started her teaching career in 1977 at UC Hastings and taught later at the University of San Francisco, in the subject areas of constitutional law, torts, and mediation, while also directing the academic support program. Her published writings encompassing themes of women, women of color, multiracialism, mediation, and inequality include these:

Trina Grillo & Stephanie M. Wildman, Obscuring the Importance of Race: The Implications of Making Comparisons Between Racism and Sexism (or Other-Isms), 41 Duke L.J. 397 (1991)

Trina Grillo, The Mediation Alternative: Process Dangers for Women, 100 Yale L. J. 1545 (1992)

Trina Grillo, Anti-Essentialism and Intersectionality: Tools to Dismantle the Master's House, 10 Berkeley Women's L.J. 16 (1995)

Trina Grillo, A Tribute to Dean Robert A. Stein: Former Dean of the University of Minnesota Law School, 80 Minn. L. Rev. 1 (1995)

Trina Grillo, Respecting the Struggle: Following the Parties' Lead, 13 Mediation Q. 279 (1996)

Stephanie M. Wildman with contributions by Margalynne Armstrong, Adrienne D. Davis & Trina Grillo, Privilege Revealed: How Invisible Preference Undermines America (1996)

Trina Grillo, Tenure and Minority Women Law Professors: Separating the Strands, 31 U.S.F. L. Rev. 747 (1997)

Scholars acknowledging our collective debt owed to Trina’s pathbreaking work include Richard Delgado writing in a symposium of essays published in her memory: Richard Delgado, Conflict as Pathology: An Essay for Trina Grillo, 81 Minn. L. Rev. 1391 (1997) (part of his ongoing Rodrigo Chronicle series). Trina’s struggles against injustice and her vision live on through the work of the annual retreat in her honor co-sponsored by SALT, through the work of the dozens of students, law professors, and activist lawyers who attended this year’s retreat, and through the work of all of us who labor toward la causa.