Edley Center Faculty

“We are unlikely to ever know whether one or more of the amicus briefs changed any justices’ minds,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinksy. “But we also never can know in advance whether a merits brief or an oral argument made a difference. All lawyers can do is make the best arguments they can and hope they persuade the court.”

“The two tariff cases before the Supreme Court this week should thus be easy ones, including for the conservative justices,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “But will they follow the law and their traditional approaches to it, or are they just a rubber stamp for Team Trump?”

“In reading the briefs, there is a sense that the challengers of the tariffs are making arguments that usually appeal to the conservative justices: follow the plain text of the statute, eschew allowing broad delegations of congressional power, restrict the ability of the executive branch to rule on major questions without clear guidance from Congress,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinksy.

“If an ICE agent uses excessive force in apprehending or detaining a person, the agent can be sued under California tort law for battery and potentially even criminally prosecuted under state law,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

“I think the ICE agents can be sued, for battery, for excessive force, in state court, and I think they can be similarly prosecuted,” said UC Berkeley Law’s Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “If ICE agents act beyond their legal authority, and violate state law in doing so, they can be prosecuted.”

“It always should be troubling for the court to decide empirical questions without actual evidence,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “But it should be especially disturbing for the court to strike down or narrow a vital civil rights statute based on a group of justices’ intuition that race discrimination in voting is largely a thing of the past.”

“The Posse Comitatus Act limits what the military — or those engaged in federal military service — can do,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school dean at UC Berkeley. “It does not apply to state forces. That is governed by state law.”

“By opening investigations with accusatory quotations from department officials and their allies, the Trump administration is putting its thumb on the scale,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, UC Berkeley Law’s Executive Director of the Edley Center on Law & Democracy.

“Historically, over decades, families have been able to come to the federal government and get relief without hiring an attorney,” Catherine E. Lhamon, UC Berkeley Law’s Executive Director of the Edley Center on Law & Democracy told USA TODAY. “These cuts ensure that no family can rely on that.”

“OCR could not afford any cuts, period, and needed desperately to add staff because of the quantum of harm in schools with respect to civil rights and the many, many thousands of cases coming into the office,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, UC Berkeley Law’s Executive Director of the Edley Center on Law & Democracy. “Nothing has changed about that.”

“We don’t live under a king in this country. We don’t give unilateral authority to the President to make decisions about every walk of life for all Americans,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, UC Berkeley Law’s Executive Director of the Edley Center on Law & Democracy. “This President is operating as if we do.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky joins Law.com’s Supreme Court Brief podcast to discuss the stakes of the October 2025 Supreme Court term.

“If law enforcement personnel take somebody and arrest them, law enforcement personnel need to let them know that they have been arrested,” said Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “It’s the only way for somebody to know that they haven’t been kidnapped. And so when ICE agents in masks without identification are taking people into custody, that shouldn’t be deemed a lawful arrest.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Professor John Yoo weigh in on Illinois and California National Guard cases and Trump’s power to deploy troops.

“It’s unnecessary to do what the administration is doing now, unless one is operating like a mob boss,” said UC Berkeley Law’s Executive Director of the Edley Center on Law & Democracy, Catherine E. Lhamon.

Professor Daniel Farber joins podcast A Climate Change with Matt Martern to explore effective strategies for combating harmful environmental policies and maintaining progress on climate action despite federal opposition.

Professor Daniel Farber comments on the EPA’s potential rollback of one of its cornerstone climate change findings.

“Depending on how lower courts interpret it, the NEPA case may pose the greatest threat of a major change in the law,” University of California, Berkeley, law professor Daniel Farber said, referring to the court’s recent environmental rulings. 

Donald Trump’s abuse of emergency powers to impose antidemocratic measures—from sweeping tariffs and chaotic mass deportations to a so-called “national energy emergency”–represents a “quantum leap” from previous presidents, says UC Berkeley legal scholar Daniel Farber. “Trump is going further than his predecessors in really trying to weaponize the idea of emergency powers.”