Profile

Kiyoko Kamio, J.D., LL.M, is an attorney who received her legal training in the U.S.  Her legal experiences include drafting judicial opinions for federal and state judges in numerous areas of law, from the First Amendment to environmental law.

Kamio is a former community newspaper reporter with an undergraduate degree in Literature and Professional Writing.  She has published more than eighty articles in academic journals, magazines, newspapers, and an online publication, such as: Harvard Women's Law Journal; Columbia Gender Law Journal; Constitutional Law Journal; Georgetown Immigration Law Journal; Denver Journal of International Law; Woman's World; Northwest Baby and Child; Parent Map.

She has written on the following topics:

               Legal articles: estate tax; employment law; constitutional law; immigration law; legal history; crime victims' rights.

                General articles: terminally ill patients and informed consent; parenting; bilingual education; international marriage; lifelong education.

Originally published in Harvard Women's Law Journal, her article, “Still Office Flowers: Japanese Women Betrayed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Law,” was subsequently incorporated into a legal textbook: GLOBAL CRITICAL RACE FEMINISM: AN INTERNATIONAL READER (2000, New York University Press).  It has been used at various universities and law schools including University of Pennsylvania, University of Hawaii, Syracuse University, and Peking University.

Moreover, her article, “Disdain of Alien Lawyers: History of Exclusion,” which appeared in Constitutional Law Journal, was cited in a brief submitted by the American Bar Association in a 2003 Supreme Court case.

Kamio presented her research on employment discrimination at the International and Comparative Law Conference in 1996. 

Most of her writings are in English.  However, as a native of Japan, she writes in her mother tongue as well.  Depicting her personal life as a “mommy-track lawyer,” she authors a monthly column, "Oyako Diary," in Soy Source, a Japanese-language newspaper in the Pacific Northwest.  She also writes a column on employment law and human resources for Junglecity.com.  She earned a "Best Nonfiction Award" for her article on informed consent, which appeared in Fujin Koron, a national magazine in Japan.

She is currently working on her first novel, Warriors and Flowers: Girlhood in Contemporary Japan.