Press Highlights

“There are people in the judiciary who are afraid that judicial security for the lower courts and politics are getting played off each other, and no one wants to be in that position,” said Jeremy Fogel, a retired judge who served in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. “In the short term, I think that many in the judiciary will believe that their need for increased security because of threats against judges is being neglected,” Fogel said. “In the longer term, I think that problems with understaffing and aging infrastructure will increase the chances of a tragic incident.”

While Kelly could still be subject to military law as a retired U.S. Navy captain, the basis for any prosecution related to that video “is questionable at best,” says Saira Mohamed, professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. “I think it’s groundless,” Mohamed says of the department’s investigation. “Senator Kelly’s statement, again, is just restating the law and the obligations of members of the military and intelligence forces; it is not advising or urging insubordination or disloyalty or mutiny or refusal of duty.”

The fate of successful gerrymandering efforts in California and Texas now comes down to a slate of high-profile court cases. Dean Erwin Chemerinsky weighs in.

Catherine Crump, a clinical professor at Berkeley Law School in California who specializes in artificial intelligence and technology law, says that of course it’s not smart to Google or use ChatGPT to figure out how to further a crime or how to harm someone. Crump says it is important for people, especially children, to recognize that ChatGPT is a product and “not your friend.”

“Truthful speech is protected by the First Amendment and should not be the basis for accusing people of sedition, let alone threatening the death penalty,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

Thelton Henderson, as an attorney in the Department of Justice, was a witness to that segregated era in the Old South. Now, as a retired federal judge and a visiting professor at UC Berkeley Law, Henderson warns that powerful American forces are working again to restrict voting by people of color and by economically disadvantaged people.

“I do think the U.S. is starting to withdraw from the position that it played for much of the 20th century, as did the U.K. for much of the 19th, in enforcing international rules,” said John Yoo, who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel during the George W. Bush administration and is now at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Such enforcement “is costly, but it brings great benefits to everyone in the world,” Yoo added. “I think the American people are exhausted from it.”

“There is a long-term strategy that many big entities, government and private, subscribe to, which is, if we settle every case, then people will keep suing us with increasingly frivolous cases,” Boudin said. “Sometimes it is worth paying lawyers more than it would cost us to settle a case to fight and deter future copycat litigation.”

“The speech Trump is criticizing simply states the law: soldiers are not to follow unconstitutional or illegal orders,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of UC Berkeley Law. “The accusation is unfounded and unnecessarily chills criticism of the President’s actions.”

“I worry that people are getting too invested in this decision from Texas,” said UC Berkeley School of Law Professor Emily Rong Zhang. “It’s just an outcome along the way. And it doesn’t seem obvious to me that just because there’s a decision from a three-judge panel here, there’s any expectation that the Texas map is going to get struck down.”

“California has one of the most robust climate frameworks and has been quite successful in delivering on its goals,” said Louise Bedsworth, executive director of the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at the University of California at Berkeley. But she said the Trump administration poses “a major challenge that’s going to make continuing to reduce emissions harder.”

“Although many criticisms have been made of the Supreme Court’s rulings on its emergency docket, one that has not received enough attention is the court’s failure to follow well-established principles for staying a preliminary injunction, which – while it may sound technical – has enormous importance,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinksy. “This has been evident in many shadow docket decisions, but was particularly evident in the court’s Nov. 6 ruling in Trump v. Orr.”

“The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled against transgender individuals this year, allowing bans on military service, healthcare and identity recognition,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “With key cases on transgender athletes approaching, the Court shows little inclination to protect them from discrimination.” 

“Like the Trojan princess whose accurate prophesies were doomed to be disbelieved, dire warnings of the justices about American democracy are going unheeded,” write Dean Erwin Chemerinksy and Lisa Tucker, professor of law at Drexel University.

As multilateral cooperation is increasingly under attack, Professor Katerina Linos challenges certain misperceptions about the role of international institutions, particularly the European Union, and emphasizes their capacity for action in times of multiple crises.

Professor Khiara M. Bridges discusses the Supreme Court’s questioning whether to keep Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — which prohibits discrimination in voting practices and procedures.

“Ultimately, I believe the guardrail of our democracy has to be the courts and the Supreme Court,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky said. “If there is going to be a check on a president who has authoritarian impulses, it’s going to have to be from the restraints of the Constitution—and the only way we can enforce those is the courts.”

“The Supreme Court’s ruling allowing the Trump administration to require that passports reflect a person’s sex at birth is both mean-spirited and wrong as a matter of law,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at UC Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment discusses what the federal repeal of environmental laws could mean for California’s climate agenda. 

“He has the upside, in a sense, in terms of influence, if it all succeeds,” said Ofer Eldar, a corporate governance professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law. “He’s taking all this commitment knowing that he’s not going to actually face any consequences because he doesn’t have a financial stake.”

UC Berkeley law professor Daniel Farber and Ethan Elkind, who directs the climate program at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment weigh in whether or not California could go it alone if the federal government stops regulating greenhouse gases. 

Andrea Roth, a professor at University of California, Berkeley Law, who proposed some changes to the committee, warned that the use of the words “simple” and “scientific” could “create mischief and unnecessary litigation.” She also said the proposed phrase “machine-learning” was “both under and over inclusive,” as it may omit complex algorithms that merit scrutiny.

David Carrillo, executive director at Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center and Assistant Professor Emily Rong Zhang comment on California Republican’s constitutional challenge to the state’s newly approved congressional maps.

Emily Rong Zhang, an assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley’s law school, said redistricting has long been a “wild west” of the US democratic system. “It’s brute force politics where the fights are some of the dirtiest.”

“You can’t have access to legal services if you can’t receive legal information, share your story and have that honest, true, trusted communication with your attorney,” said Deborah Schlosberg, the executive director of the Pro Bono Program. “If that’s not possible, we can’t… (provide) access to justice. Language access is key to being able to access our justice system, and our students … are there to expand the reach that the attorneys in our community are able to provide.”

“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?”

David A. Carrillo, executive director of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law, said that if Proposition 50 passes, he expects a barrage of “see what sticks” lawsuits raising California constitutional claims. They stand little chance of success, he said. “Voters created the redistricting commission,” he said. “What the voters created they can change or abolish.”

“Many states, including California, consider the race of voters in drawing their political maps,” write David Carrillo, executive director and Stephen M. Duvernay, a senior research fellow at Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center. “They do this to prevent minority votes from being dispersed and diluted, as Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act forbids. In Louisiana v. Callais, the high court will decide whether a state’s intentional consideration of race to create these majority-minority voting districts violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.”

“We have a small number of students at federal government agencies, and each student is in a different situation,” Susan Schechter, director of the field placement program at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, told Law.com. She explained that some federal agencies are staying open and letting them work, while some agencies are not. “So, we are taking each student on an individual basis and working with them to ensure they meet their hourly requirements per the American Bar Association and Berkeley Law requirements with alternative but appropriate/relevant legal work.” 

“Disclosing can mitigate the appearance of impropriety,” said Jeremy Fogel, the executive director of the University of California, Berkeley Judicial Institute and a former federal judge. “I think people ought to disclose. That’s what I would have done.”

“Tribes are sovereign nations, and after decades of disrespect for their laws, one can understand why they might wish to have their own laws respected,” said Kevin Washburn, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law.

While law enforcement officers enjoy substantial legal protections for their conduct while on duty, Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law and a constitutional law expert, told us that federal officers can be criminally prosecuted for unreasonable conduct that violates the law.

“You have to be able to identify officers so you can vindicate your constitutional rights when they’re violated,” said Professor Catherine Crump. “And to the extent, this is yet another step ICE agents are taking to conceal their identities and avoid accountability.”

“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.

“Portland and Chicago have seen violent protests outside of federal buildings, attacks on ICE and DHS agents, and organized efforts to block the enforcement of immigration law,” said UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo. “Although local officials have raised cries of a federal ‘occupation’ and ‘dictatorship,’ the Constitution places on the president the duty to ‘take care that the laws are faithfully executed.’”

“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.”

“When you use works to train a model, you’re basically using them not for the expression […] but you’re using them as data,” said Pamela Samuelson, a UC Berkeley digital copyright professor who co-directs its law and technology center. When it comes to visual outputs, she said, “There’s something much more immediately expressive about graphical works, particularly characters.”

“My hope is that the United States Supreme Court will come to the same conclusion, and we have to expect that President Trump will comply with the court order because every president in history has done so,” Chemerinsky said. “On the other hand, what President Trump is doing and using the troops and so much else, is unprecedented in American history.”

“This is a really great opportunity to get different perspectives and collaborate on issues related to tribal justice systems and programs,” said Navajo Nation Supreme Court Associate Justice William Platero. The hearing coincided with a roundtable discussion between tribal, state and federal judges held the next day. The events marked the inauguration of what UC Berkeley’s Center for Indigenous Law and Justice plans to make an annual event. 

“If the NLRB is not functioning as Congress intended, as it hasn’t since January, then the NLRA cannot constitutionally preempt state law,” said UC Berkeley Law Professor Catherine Fisk.

The Navajo Nation Supreme Court hears oral arguments in a live case at Berkeley Law, showcasing Indigenous law in action.

“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.

The US Supreme Court had several opportunities to address the issue, but declined each time, said Holly Doremus, an environmental law professor at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law.

“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.