Associate Professor D. Kapua‘ala Sproat ’98 has been named Associate Director of Ka Huli Ao Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law, a center headquartered at the William S. Richardson School of Law that specializes in teaching and producing scholarship about Hawaii’s unique culturally-based legal framework.
Sproat has won numerous awards as a teacher and scholar, with particular expertise in the complex realm of water rights. In 2014 she was a Regents’ Medalist for Excellence in Teaching, the University of Hawai‘i’s highest award for teaching, as well as the Richardson Law School’s Outstanding Professor of the year in 2013.
Last year Sproat was singled out for the Distinguished Environmental Law Education Award for Emerging Scholars by the Academy of Environmental Law of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. During the IUCN’s recent World Conservation Congress in Honolulu, she was tapped to offer her expertise as one of the speakers for the global conference that drew over 10,000 delegates to Hawai‘i from 192 nations.
With two other Law School faculty members, Sproat recently published an exhaustive 1,400-page research volume on Native Hawaiian law that touches on everything from traditional and customary rights to self-determination to securing land titles and water rights. The volume - Native Hawaiian Law: A Treatise – was co-edited and largely written by Ka Huli Ao Director Melody Kapilialoha MacKenzie ’76, editor-in-chief, with Sproat and Susan K. Serrano ’98, executive editors. The book offers a comprehensive overview as well as historical background for Native Hawaiian law as it relates to state, federal, and international law.
Dean Avi Soifer said that Prof. Sproat’s decision to help lead Ka Huli Ao is a very significant step in what is already a remarkable career. Soifer explained, “People tend to think that Kapua can do anything, and that may be accurate. She is a demanding teacher, a first rate scholar, and a terrific lawyer. She more than encourages her students and the many others whom she teaches; she actually inspires them.”
Prof. MacKenzie called Prof. Sproat an outstanding colleague who is wholly dedicated to her students and her community. “Kapua’s appointment as Associate Director recognizes the responsibilities that she has taken on to increase Ka Huli Ao’s administrative capacity and financial resources,” said MacKenzie. “She is not only an outstanding scholar and teacher, her advocacy work with rural and Neighbor Island communities speaks to the core of Ka Huli Ao’s mission. We are very fortunate to have her at the Law School and particularly at Ka Huli Ao.”
Prof. Sproat joined the Richardson Law School faculty in 2007 as an Assistant Professor with Ka Huli Ao and the Law School’s Environmental Law Program. She is Director of the Environmental Law Clinic and she teaches courses in Native Hawaiian and Environmental Law, as well as Legal Research and Writing. Before joining the faculty, she spent nine years as an attorney in the Hawai‘i office of Earthjustice, which is a national public interest environmental litigation firm.
Prof. Sproat has a BA from Mills College and a JD from the William S. Richardson School of Law. She is the mother of two young sons.