Berkeley Law professors are prolific, insightful scholars with broad and significant influence felt well beyond the school’s walls through their research, legal advocacy, policymaking and commentary.
New Research
Analyzing the Administration’s Actions
UC Berkeley Law’s Edley Center on Law & Democracy has just released two white papers, the first in a series of accessible explainers about the principles of law and democracy. In one, Center Executive Director Catherine E. Lhamon and Senior Fellow Seth M. Galanter assert the administration has “repeatedly exercised an authority it does not have” in its moves to withhold federal funds from educational institutions without any formal process; in the other, Ph.D. student Matthew Hamilton examines how executive authority has been wielded during the first months of the second Trump presidency.Levine Testifies Before Senate About Consumer Privacy Online
Berkeley Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice Senior Fellow Samuel Levine testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law about the harms that emerging technologies pose to consumers’ privacy and personal information. Levine — former director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection — described the threat of practices like surveillance pricing and unchecked data harvesting to economic fairness, democratic freedoms, and the health and safety of kids and teens.California Constitution Center Scholars Weigh in On National Guard Mobilization
California Constitution Center Executive Director David A. Carrillo ’95 and Senior Research Fellow Brandon V. Stracener wrote amicus curiae briefs supporting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking a restraining order to return control of the state’s National Guard to the governor.Exposing the Flaws of ‘Excited Delirium’
In a new article in the Harvard Law Review, Professor Osagie K. Obasogie scrutinizes how the concept of “excited delirium” — characterized as a psychiatric response that produces such severe agitation that a person could spontaneously die — has become a problematic diagnosis that’s often used to absolve law enforcement officers from responsibility when suspects die in their custody.Albiston Cited in Supreme Court Opinion
A 2007 UCLA Law Review article by Professor Catherine Albiston J.D. ’93 Ph.D. ’01 was cited in a recent U.S. Supreme Court opinion. In a 7-2 decision in Lackey v. Stinnie, the Court held that plaintiffs who won preliminary injunctive relief in a civil rights enforcement action under Section 1983 that later became moot cannot obtain attorney fees as prevailing parties.
