Ellen Yee

Biography

Ellen Yee is a Professor of Law and Director of International Programs at Drake University Law School. She teaches in the areas of domestic, comparative, and international criminal law; professional responsibility; law and psychiatry; and trial advocacy. Professor Yee has taught in Drake’s international programs in France, Spain, Egypt, South Africa, and China, and she leads the school’s partnerships and global initiatives. She is the recipient of Drake University’s Principal Financial Group Global Citizenship Award and the Madelyn M. Levitt Distinguished Community Service Award, recognizing her leadership in advancing global learning and community engagement.

Professor Yee’s scholarship focuses on criminal procedure and evidentiary doctrine, with work published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, the Florida State University Law Review, and the Drake Law Review. She has presented on comparative and international criminal law topics at institutions including the Université de Nantes, the T.M.C. Asser Instituut in The Hague, and the University of Kwazulu-Natal in South Africa. Her lectures have explored subjects ranging from international criminal procedure to the intersection of law, ethics, and mental health.

Committed to experiential learning and community engagement, Professor Yee founded Next Course: Food Recovery Network at Drake, a student-driven project that addresses food insecurity, waste, and recovery by developing sustainable food recovery systems and raising awareness of food justice issues on campus and in the broader Des Moines community.

Before joining the Drake Law faculty, Professor Yee served as a Deputy District Attorney in Marin County, California, and later as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Florida State University College of Law. She has also held research positions at the International Criminal Court and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. Professor Yee earned her J.D. cum laude from the University of Minnesota Law School and her B.A. cum laude in East Asian Studies from Yale University.

Areas of Expertise

Criminal Law, Evidence, Professional Responsibility, Psychiatry and the Law, Trial Advocacy

Education

• JD, University of Minnesota, Minnesota Law Review
• BA, Yale University, cum laude

Selected Publications

• Lawyer Advertising in Iowa After 2012, 62 Drake Law Review 549 (2014) (with Gregory C. Sisk).
• Forfeiture of the Confrontation Right In Giles: Justice Scalia’s Faint-Hearted Fidelity to the Common Law, 100 Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 1495 (2010).
• Confronting the “Ongoing Emergency”: A Pragmatic Approach to Hearsay Evidence in the Context of the Sixth Amendment, 35 Florida State University Law Review 729 (2008).
• Ohio v. Roberts, in David S. Tanenhaus, editor Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States (Macmillan Reference USA, 2008).

Significant Accomplishments

• Inaugural Principal Financial Group Global Citizenship Award (2015)
• Presenter: Intercultural Negotiations Workshop: Strategies and Tactics for Effective Negotiations and Communications in Global Business, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) Vietnam, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City campuses, Vietnam (July 2018)
• Speaker: Next Course: An Academic and Service-Learning Approach to Campus Food Waste & Recovery, 5th Annual Yale Food Systems Symposium: Centering Resilience, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, New Haven, CT (February 2018)
• Speaker: The Life of a Juvenile Offender: And 8th Amendment Analysis of Juvenile Sentencing, University of Kwazulu-Natal, Pietermartizburg, South Africa (June 2016)
• Speaker: Le Régime d’Exception Terroriste aux Etats-Unis, Journée d’Étude de Droit Pénal Comparé, Université de Nantes Faculté de Droit et des Sciences Politiques, Nantes, France (May 2016)
• Speaker: The Right of Confrontation: A Comparative Conundrum, T.M.C. Asser Instituut, The Hague, The Netherlands (March 2013)