New Faculty Highlight Oregon Law’s Bold Future

Oregon Law’s 141-year legacy in legal education is matched by its dynamic present, with four new faculty members joining the school this fall.

An intellectual property expert focused on the intersection with healthcare and scientific breakthrough, a passionate advocate leading practical education on domestic violence, a national leader in Indigenous rights, and an authority on sports law and Name, Image, Likeness in Eugene where world class athletes achieve their dreams, ignite new dynamism through transformative learning experiences, interdisciplinary scholarship, and a commitment to pedagogical excellence.

We are proud to introduce the new members of the Oregon Law community. 

Robin Runge

Robin Runge, assistant professor and director of Oregon Law’s Domestic Violence Law Clinic, credits a courtroom experience assisting a survivor of domestic violence with fueling her commitment to this work and improving how victims experience the legal system. 

 An internationally recognized expert in the field, Professor Runge comes to Oregon Law from The George Washington University Law School in Washington DC, where she served as a distinguished professorial lecturer in law. 

Her professional experience includes leadership roles in domestic and international nonprofit organizations, the federal government, and academic appointments. She served as director of the Division of Enforcement, Policy, and Procedures in the Wage and Hour Division and a senior advisor in the Civil Rights Center at the US Department of Labor. 

Professor Runge was the director of the American Bar Association Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence and started the first project of its kind representing survivors of domestic and sexual violence in employment law cases at Legal Aid at Work in San Francisco, California.

Internationally, she led a multi-year global campaign to end gender-based violence in the world of work, supporting low-wage working women in their successful campaign. This led to the adoption of the first-ever international binding labor standard addressing gender-based violence and harassment in the world of work, including domestic violence. 

She received Fulbright Fellowships to study the legal system response to domestic violence in Beijing, China, in 2012-13, and more recently to Universidad Catolica de Salta in Argentina, where she helped the institution develop its international human rights law clinic.  Professor Runge has written extensively on the legal response to gender-based violence and harassment including co-authoring the book, Stopping Gender Based Violence and Harassment at Work.

In her new role, she expects students will explore the experience of trauma-informed client representation, developing habits of reflection and lifelong learning while building substantive legal knowledge and practical skills.

“The goal will be to provide needed legal services to survivors of domestic and sexual violence in the community that provide the students with wonderful opportunities to learn and explore for themselves what kind of lawyer they want to be, learn about domestic violence and its impacts, learn about how rewarding it can be to try to help somebody in a moment of crisis but also how that can be really challenging,” Runge said.

Runge earned her JD from The George Washington University and a BA from Wellesley College.

Charles F. “Chuck” Sams III

Charles F. “Chuck” Sams III, joins Oregon Law as the inaugural Oregon Tribes Scholar-in-Residence and the senior fellow for the Native Environmental Sovereignty Project housed within the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center.
Sams is known for his role as National Park Service Director, appointed during the Biden Administration. The first Indigenous NPS Director, Sams is Cayuse and Walla Walla and an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Northeast Oregon, with blood ties to the Cocopah Tribe and Yankton Sioux of Fort Peck. 

He has had additional prominent roles in both Tribal and state government, as well as in nonprofits, and has more than thirty years of conservation management experience. He serves on the Pacific Northwest Power and Conservation Council (NW Council), appointed by Oregon Governor Kate Brown and later by Oregon Governor Tina Kotek. He served as executive director for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

Sams is a US Navy veteran, serving as an intelligence specialist. He has a master of legal studies in Indigenous Peoples Law from the University of Oklahoma School of Law and a BS in business administration from Concordia University.

At Oregon Law, Sams will mentor students across campus while advising law students on research focused on emerging Tribal roles in co-managing lands and resources. He expects that to include a focus on research and discussions around the rights of nature. 

“That discussion is happening mostly in South America and is making its way north. Where does that fit into the American law system and understanding in the bundle of rights of property law? Where does nature’s voice actually have somebody speaking for it? And how does that pre-date the US Constitution in American Indian societies?” Sams said.

Allison A. Schmitt

Assistant Professor Allison A. Schmitt specializes in intellectual property and regulation at the intersection of healthcare, life sciences, artificial intelligence, and scientific innovation at large. 

Professor Schmitt is both scientist and lawyer, with a JD from University of California, Berkeley School of Law; a PhD in chemistry from Duke University; and BS degrees in chemistry and biochemistry from the University of Washington. Her research interests broadly span science and the law, including exploring how legal regimes can promote (and hinder) development of breakthrough scientific innovation, technology transfer and licensing, regulation of life sciences and pharmaceutical products, intellectual property litigation mechanics, and healthcare/access to medicine issues.

At Oregon Law, she will teach civil procedure, patent law, and health law, infusing practice-ready lessons into doctrinal classes. Schmitt plans to engage students by using the same research and writing skills they would as law firm junior associates focused on complex civil litigation. 

“I’m a big believer in practice-ready education,” Schmitt said. “It was important to me to find a place that really shared my values.” 

Prior to Oregon Law, Schmitt was a research fellow and the inaugural director at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology’s Life Sciences Law and Policy Center at UC Berkeley Law. She has also worked at the law firms Sidley Austin and Covington & Burling, where she focused on patent litigation, patent counseling and strategy, intellectual property diligence, and IP policy matters. She also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Kathleen M. O’Malley at the at the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and to the Honorable Stanley R. Chesler at the US District Court for the District of New Jersey. 

Schmitt hopes to collaborate with the university’s Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact, Lundquist College of Business, and the University of Oregon Industry, Innovation, and Translation team, on projects at the intersection of law, business, and science.

David P. Weber

As the area of sports law, and in particular Name, Image, Likeness, experience surging interest, Associate Professor David P. Weber is ready to lead Oregon Law’s comprehensive expansion into this space.

An expert on law regarding international collegiate athletes, Weber founded the sports law concentration at Creighton University School of Law, where he was also a professor for seventeen years. At Oregon Law, he will teach both amateur and professional sports law, contracts, and negotiations. Weber will also serve as the faculty director for the Sports Law Program.

“The reason I came to Oregon Law was for the opportunity to build out and grow the sports program. There’s so much opportunity here. It is already a mecca of college sports, and so it makes perfect sense to combine that with our academic offerings. And then, of course, you have some natural collaborations and partnerships already in place with some very well-known entities. I think that there is a tremendous amount of growth opportunity, and I saw that as a very worthy project,” Weber said. 

Professor Weber writes about both business and sports, with his more recent scholarship focusing on the NCAA and the evolution of its policy on Name, Image, Likeness. His additional scholarship focuses on contracts, immigration, sports law, secured transactions, mortgages, and real estate. He is an expert witness on matters involving international college athletes and has advised businesses, collegiate, and Olympic athletes on NIL transactions. He has also advised and assisted with federal NIL-related legislation on Capitol Hill. 

Professor Weber previously was an associate at the multinational firm Fredrikson & Byron, where he worked on cross-border transactions involving distributorships, intellectual property licensing, mergers and acquisitions, real estate development, domestic mergers, and franchisor-side representation. 

Weber has a JD from University of Minnesota Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude and is a member of the Order of the Coif, and a BA in economics, magna cum laude, from St. John’s University.