Press Highlights

Minnesota should investigate and prosecute the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. State and local governments have the authority to prosecute federal officials who violate state law when their conduct is “objectively unreasonable.”

“The Chief Privacy Officer Program reflects that commitment, offering rigorous, practice-informed training for the peopleresponsible for privacy and AI governance at the highest levels of decision-making, in California and beyond,” said Eric Askins, assistant dean for innovation at Berkeley Law.

Historically, ICE made relatively few arrests at homes, worksites, and other public places. Instead, “the vast majority of arrests that ICE used to conduct were really transfers of custody from a state or local authority to the federal government,” said David Hausman, a UC Berkeley Law assistant professor and the faculty director of the Deportation Data Project. As Hausman recently explained to my colleague Christian Paz, however, that norm has changed — and radically — under President Donald Trump. ICE now carries out thousands of “at-large” arrests in public.

“Protecting youths online will be the defining internet policy battle of 2026,” writes Professor Catherine Crump.

Brian Galle is not looking to ban billionaires. In fact, the tax law expert and key architect behind California’s controversial wealth tax proposal described himself as an “enthusiastic capitalist.” “I think capitalism is a great system that probably has, you know, enriched the lives of billions of people,” he told Fortune from his office in Berkeley, where he teaches courses on tax and nonprofit law. “But I’m not sure that our system is a functioning capitalist system right now.

“Someone with a pending charge who is not convicted is not usually called a ‘criminal’ in our criminal system,” said David Hausman, an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law who directs the Deportation Data Project.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky offers his perspective on the two Fourth Amendment cases before the Supreme Court.

“The Supreme Court has made a mess of the law concerning the Second Amendment,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

University of California, Berkeley, School of Law is leading the way on the AI front. One year after launching the world’s first LL.M. Certificate in AI Law and Regulation, the school has expanded its curriculum with new courses in biotechnology, business and corporate strategy.

“The crackdown is bigger than what it would seem,” David Hausman, a University of California, Berkeley, assistant professor of law and codirector of the Deportation Data Project, a repository of federal immigration enforcement data, told USA TODAY. He pointed to large increases in arrests within the United States, which often get conflated with arrests at the border that have dwindled dramatically under Trump.

“What we find, which is at first a little puzzling, is actually the opposite — that deportations went up even more quickly than arrests,” said David Hausman, a co-director of the Deportation Data Project.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Professor Christopher Kutz offer opposing perspectives on the suspension of a UC Berkeley lecturer over his pro-Palestinian advocacy. 

Colleen Chien, a professor of law at U.C. Berkeley School of Law, told Mashable that companies can be more careful when licensing their technology by creating a “vetted partner” program that places key restrictions on the licensee. This process could include requiring licensees to complete certification or training to ensure they’re using the technology safely and appropriately.

“If he carries out his threat to cut off funds to jurisdictions that resist his immigration policies, President Donald Trump will violate the Constitution,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

Ethan Elkind, a rail expert and director of the climate program at UC Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, said that a variety of political and logistical factors slowed attention to it: a focus on downtown transit; opposition to high-capacity transit in the San Fernando Valley; and geological challenges in the Sepulveda Pass. “It’s a lot of land. And the more land you have to go through, the more expensive it is, the more logistically challenging it is,” Elkind said.

“There is a strong tradition of not using the military for policing in the United States. The image of soldiers roving the streets is something we see in countries with authoritarian governments, not this country,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “Police — and not soldiers — are trained to respect constitutional rights in policing and to use deadly force only if necessary.”

“When politicians, not instructors, control what is taught, academic freedom is dead,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

In holding the startup to account for these tragedies, the families were testing a legal argument that hasn’t yet won in court. But the mere prospect of the families winning likely pushed Google to settle, according to Vincent Joralemon, the director of the Berkeley Law Life Sciences Law & Policy Center. Joralemon said a single wrongful death lawsuit can result in a $20 million to $100 million judgment because the damages are meant to punish the companies, not just pay the wronged plaintiffs. Joralemon said that level of legal risk extends to the entire AI industry.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Professor John Yoo weigh in on Presidential power over the economy in fight over Fed’s Lisa Cook.

“We see a lot of cheap talk from billionaires,” said UC Berkeley law professor Brian Galle, who helped write the proposal. “Some people do actually leave and change their behavior, but the vast bulk of wealthy people don’t, because it doesn’t make sense.”

Those prosecutors would “have a strong obligation to act,” given interest by their constituents here in the Bay Area, said Jonathan Simon, a law professor at UC Berkeley. Yet any such local effort would likely run headlong into a growing reality that “Trump and his underlings in the homeland security sector are just kind of openly suggesting the law doesn’t apply to them.”

UC Berkeley law professor Brian Galle, who is advising the campaign, argues the tax could help offset California’s budget deficit and rising health care costs, in part fueled by federal government cuts. “The bigger hit to California’s economy is if we can’t cover that sharp spike in health care costs. That’s what’s going to stop the next generation of startups.”

Should disputes over the images wind up in court, Vincent Joralemon, director of the Life Sciences Law & Policy Center and UC Berkeley’s law school, said he wouldn’t want to be charged with defending them. That’s because the victims of such images were likely to find sympathetic judges and jurors, he said.

“Freedom of speech by instructors must be protected, but it is not absolute and the 9th Circuit here misapplied the law in finding constitutional protection for expression where none was warranted,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

“What will be the fate of Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, the Supreme Court’s 2020 landmark ruling protecting gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals from employment discrimination?” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky in his Courtly Observations column. “Over the last year, the court has failed to follow the logic of Bostock in upholding discrimination against transgender individuals.”

“If Renee Good had been killed by a state or local police officer rather than an ICE agent, her family could sue the shooter for excessive force and violating her rights,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “But there is no law that allows federal officers to be sued for their constitutional violations.”

Catherine Lhamon, executive director of the Edley Center and CLEE Executive Director Louise Bedsworth hosted a panel  entitled “Science, Democracy, and the Environment: Developing a Community of Practice for Strategy and Action,” which  highlighted what might be the path to a more scientifically informed democratic future.

“In times of financial abundance, universities are often willing to support innovative, interdisciplinary programs that align with their goals,” write Berkeley Law Professor Alexa Koenig and Utrect University Professor Brianne McGonigle Leyh. “But during periods of austerity, such as the severe budget cuts currently affecting Dutch higher education or the United States’ open hostility to university-based research—especially on human rights and humanitarian issues— these initiatives are among the first to lose funding.”

David Hausman, a UC Berkeley School of Law assistant professor and the faculty director of the Deportation Data Project, discusses how ICE is operating in a completely different way to how it has historically worked.

“Development funds intended to improve Honduras were instead funneled to an already wealthy family with no experience building hydroelectric dams and were ultimately used to finance violence and tear apart the social fabric,” said Professor Roxanna Altholz, an international human rights lawyer and one of the report’s lead investigators.

Professor Katerina Linos discusses the role social media and smugglers play in migrants dangerous journeys.

A groundbreaking investigation by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has exposed the financial web behind the 2016 assassination of Honduran activist Berta Cáceres. The report, co-authored by Professor Roxanna Altholz, reveals how her murder was a calculated “business decision” intended to safeguard the interests of a major hydroelectric project against her environmental advocacy. 

“It is rare for an administration to veto a bill for reasons wholly unrelated to the merits of the bill,” said Kevin Washburn, a law professor at University of California Berkeley Law and former assistant secretary of Indian affairs for the Department of the Interior. Washburn added that while denying land return to a tribe is a political act, Trump’s move is “highly unusual.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Professor John Yoo debate the legal and constitutional issues surrounding President Trump’s military operation to capture Nicolás Maduro.

“The most important question for our democracy in 2026 is whether there will be meaningful checks on President Donald Trump,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

Alexa Koenig, Berkeley Law co-faculty director, Human Rights Center, shares findings into the deportations of Venezuelan’s to El Salvador’s CECOT prison.

It remains a legally thorny question about “whether prohibiting schools, including teachers and staff, from informing parents violates the right of parents to control the upbringing of their children,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. Chemerinsky criticized the ruling and said it should be vulnerable to an appeal. All the same, “the question is how to balance the parents’ rights against the speech interests and autonomy of the children.”

“The invasion of Venezuela shows how far we have come from being a nation under a Constitution based on checks and balances,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “It is imperative that Congress reassert its constitutional powers.” 

“Ultimately, the question is whether the Supreme Court will check a president who, in the words of his chief of staff, feels he can do anything,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “Nothing was more important in 2025, or is likely to be more important in 2026, than this.”

John Yoo, professor at UC Berkeley Law, said the “constitution does not require Congress to declare war before the president initiates hostilities.” “Congress has the check, before war, of funding to reduce the size and shape of the military available to the president,” he said, adding that Congress has the power of impeachment to challenge a president’s actions.

John Yoo, a Berkeley law school professor and veteran of the George W. Bush Justice Department who is a critic of post-Watergate constraints on the presidency, nonetheless acknowledges that weakening those protections can cut two ways.

“Every time you pull down one of them, you pull down one of those meant to control presidential morality.” 

“We’ve has this notion that California is not as blatantly racist as ‘them folks’ in the South,” said Elisabeth A. Semel, the co-director of the Death Penalty Clinic at Berkeley Law. “Because there it was not a secret, it was the very structure of Jim Crow. But that is a superficial difference. Here we have more covert practices–but with the same consequences that cause fatal harm.”

“In one of its most consequential rulings of the year, just before breaking for the holidays last week the Supreme Court held that President Trump acted improperly in federalizing the National Guard in Illinois and in activating troops across the state,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “Although the case centered on the administration’s deployments in Chicago, the court’s ruling suggests that Trump’s actions in Los Angeles and Portland were likewise illegal.”

“I and others have extensively written about the assault on the rule of law,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “But we have not spoken enough about the war on compassion. We are better than this as a country and must demand better from the president.”

“It’s unfortunate that this story hasn’t had a chance to be seen by the American people,” said Alexa Koenig, director of UC Berkeley Law’s Human Rights Center, adding that it is important for citizens to understand actions taken by the U.S. government “in their name.”

The jurisdiction, which faces competition from Texas and Nevada, still offers more investor protections than its rivals. But the forces buffeting Delaware aren’t going anywhere, and molding corporate law to the idiosyncrasies of moguls is yielding rules ill-suited to ordinary shareholders, said Berkeley Law professor Stavros Gadinis.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, said the issue may not be as cut-and-dried as one or two Supreme Court cases. He pointed to a 2001 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that allowed the case of a federal sniper who killed a woman during the 1992 Ruby Ridge, Idaho, standoff to go to trial. “It basically says that a federal officer can be criminally prosecuted for unreasonable actions,” Chemerinsky said. “Federal officers, by virtue of being federal officers, do not get immunity from all state civil and criminal laws.”

American presidents have broad discretion to deploy U.S. forces abroad, but Trump’s asserted blockade marks a new test of presidential authority, said international law scholar Elena Chachko of UC Berkeley Law School.

Blockades have traditionally been treated as permissible “instruments of war,” but only under strict conditions, Chachko said. “There are serious questions on both the domestic law front and international law front,” she added.

Savala Nolan, executive director, Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, Berkeley Law joins a panel of thinkers and leaders on Forum to talk about how misogyny has become mainstream and what can be done about it.

Samuel A.A. Levine, senior fellow, Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice, UC Berkeley Law School joins Forum to discuss how loyalty programs exploit consumers, how California is fighting back and to stay alert to the pitfalls.