Press Highlights

“A.I. has nothing to do with tobacco and an algorithm has nothing to do with the way a cigarette is designed, but the law is built by analogy,” said Ted Mermin, the executive director of the Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice at the University of California, Berkeley. “What the plaintiffs’ firms are doing is utilizing well-established legal principles in a new product area.”

“Constitutional amendments that were adopted to protect the civil rights of Black individuals were used by the Supreme Court to deal a devastating blow to voting rights for people of color last month.” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

“One of the most important questions raised by the Musk vs Altman trial, where Elon Musk is claiming he was deceived into donating roughly $38mn to OpenAI, the company headed by Sam Altman, has little to do with courtroom strategy and a great deal to do with institutional design,” writes Professor Stavros Gadinis, faculty director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Business.

Judge Jeremey Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute joins Amicus with Dahlia Lithwick to discuss threats against American judges.

“The grantees were given near-zero information about what was problematic in the execution of their grant,” said Claudia Polsky, a professor at UC Berkeley School of Law who is representing Foreman and other researchers in a suit they filed last year contesting a previous round of grant cancellations by the Trump administration. Polsky said her legal team was seeking more information about the 18 suspensions, but was concerned that the freezing of Foreman’s grant may violate a court order a federal judge issued in that case restoring the defunded projects.

“This is the most densely populated corridor west of the Mississippi and it’s the most densely populated part of Los Angeles,” Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, said. “Generally speaking, rail lines are successful when they serve densely populated areas.”

“We must understand that what is too often minimized as isolated incidents stemming from a particular family’s so-called disputes is oftentimes a warning sign demanding evidence-based approaches to save lives,” write Mallika Kaur, the director of the Domestic Violence and Gender-Based Violence Practicum, at UC Berkeley School of Law and Julia Weber.

“For years, California courts ran an unconstitutional shadow detention system.” writes Chesa Boudin, executive director of the Criminal Law & Justice Center at Berkeley Law. “The mechanics were straightforward: Set bail at an amount the defendant cannot pay and the result is the same as ordering detention outright.”

“After all the court had done in its earlier decisions to limit the protection of voting rights, the one potent tool for protecting voting rights that remained was Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “But as Kagan said, the court’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter.”

Professor Khiara M. Bridges discusses the Supreme Court’s 6 to 3 decision in the landmark case, Louisiana v. Callais.

“Our view was that billionaires are not going to miss the money,” according to Professor Brian Galle of U.C. Berkeley law school.

Last year, Attorney General Rob Bonta — as well as Kathy Jennings, the attorney general of Delaware — signed off on OpenAI’s corporate restructuring, albeit with a list of conditions. As a result, it’s dubious whether Musk has the legal right — known as “standing” — to bring a case, some legal experts said. If he ends up winning the lawsuit, the case will likely be appealed on that basis, said Vince Joralemon, a senior fellow at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law and Technology.

Professor Khiara M. Bridges discusses her new book Expecting Inequity.

“Justice Thomas is the most radically conservative justice to serve on the Supreme Court in modern times,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. “I say this because ​in addition to being conservative he has taken positions that would dramatically change the law that the court never has accepted.”

“While there are similarities in the tribal and state cases regarding the facts and governmental policy interests, the legal questions at issue are fundamentally different,” writes Professor Kevin K. Washburn.

“The Voting Rights Act is, simply put, one of the most important federal laws adopted during my lifetime,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

Vincent Joralemon, Director of the Life Sciences Law & Policy Center Berkeley Center for Law & Technology comments on the Musk v. Altman trial.

“The Ten Commandments do not belong on the walls of public school classrooms. This was the conclusion of the Supreme Court in 1980, and that ruling is binding on every court in the country,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “But in a stunning decision on April 21, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, by a 9-8 vote, upheld a Texas law requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school classroom. For many reasons, this decision is wrong.”

Professor Khiara M. Bridges joins Michel Martin on Amanpour & Company to discuss her new book Expecting Inequity.

“In California, there are no laws that criminalize homelessness. But with policies such as the one Oakland has instituted, unhoused people are losing protections,” said Laura Riley, assistant dean of Clinical Education at Berkeley Law and a member of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Homelessness & Poverty.

“The courts should simply hold that the War Powers Resolution requires the president to end our involvement in the war with Iran unless and until Congress authorizes it,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “This shouldn’t be — and isn’t — different than any other injunction on any administration to comply with the law.”

“We all learned on the playground that if we give in to bullies, it only makes it worse, and that’s what those who capitulated have done,” said Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

“With employers hiring on different timelines, our approach this year was to offer multiple ways, i.e., interview programs, resume books, posting to our online jobs database, for employers to interview and hire our students,” said Eric Stern, assistant dean of career development at Berkeley Law.

According to Ethan Elkind, Climate Program Director at UC Berkeley Law, even California climate policy, reviled by the right for its supposed extremist quality, has predominately focused on promoting fossil fuel alternatives, like electric vehicles and carbon capture, rather than on confronting the fossil fuel corporations directly.

“The coming years will test which model of nonprofit control proves more sustainable in the AI economy: the socially oriented for-profit or the income-generating for-profit model,” write Professor Ofer Eldar and Mark Ørberg, assistant professor at Copenhagen Business School. That choice may shape how the next generation of AI companies balance safety, profit, and national power.

“If auto makers don’t comply with federal fuel economy standards, there’s no penalty for them. They can get away with it without any monetary damage,” said Ethan Elkind, Director of the Climate Program at UC Berkeley Law. “There’s now no incentive to comply with federal fuel economy standards and they no longer need to comply with California’s zero emission vehicle mandate.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinksy weighs in on a recent speech given by Justice Clarence Thomas in which he said that the rise of progressivism since the beginning of the 20th century has caused great harm. 

“The Supreme Court recognized in Roper v. Simmons, juvenile cognition means they are not as deterrable or as responsible as adults. With crime historically low today, it makes no sense to run the experiment again,” UC Berkeley Law Professor Jonathan Simon said.

“Federal courts should not be used for collusive litigation. They should not handle cases where there is a manifest conflict of interest, which certainly exists when Trump would be settling suits with his Justice Department,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Burt Neuborne, founding legal director of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.

“ICE really should proactively release this information instead of making us file FOIA requests to get it,” said David Hausman, a co-director of the project and an assistant professor of law at UC Berkeley Law. “But this isn’t a new problem,” he said.

Catherine Lhamon, who led the Education Department’s civil rights office under both Biden and Obama, said she found the Epstein correspondence stunning. “When I saw that text in the Epstein files, my jaw dropped,” said Lhamon, who now leads UC Berkeley Law’s Edley Center on Law and Democracy. “It is very surprising to me to see the crass and dismissive terminology, as reported, from the White House about survivors of discrimination … and the ugliness of the explicit planning and strategizing and which of our kids in school our federal government disdains.”

“If there’s a conflict between federal law on the one hand, and state or local (law) on the other, federal law wins out,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of UC Berkeley School of Law.

“This partnership recognizes the role journalists play in shaping public understanding of Native Nations and tribal sovereignty,” said Merri Lopez-Keifer, executive director of the Center for Indigenous Law & Justice. “Working together, we can help ensure coverage is grounded in legal accuracy, cultural respect, and a clearer understanding of tribal governance.”

“Most of all, I want to use this additional time as dean to encourage us all to think big about what we can do to position Berkeley Law to truly make a difference in legal education, the legal system and society,” Chemerinsky wrote in a message to the school community. 

“Reaction to this proposal has been mixed at best. Negative, I would say, perhaps is a more accurate description,” said University of California, Berkeley, law professor Andrew Bradt.

Vincent Joralemon, an AI law expert at UC Berkeley Law, said attorneys who fail to adopt such tools may eventually face scrutiny as well. “At some point, the general acceptance in the field will be that it is better to use these tools than not to use them,” Joralemon said.

“It is essential that Berkeley Law play a crucial role at this unprecedented moment in the history of our democracy,” he wrote in his email to the law community. The law school is “fighting to protect the climate, to safeguard immigrants, to reform the criminal justice system, to use AI constructively, to protect workers, to restore funding to University of California faculty and researchers, and so much more.” 

“Putting any industry above the law — especially one responsible for creating many of the greenhouse gas emissions that have helped fuel climate-related destruction of homes, businesses and whole communities — would be beyond dangerous,” writes Dave Jones, Director of the Climate Risk Initiative at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment. “If Big Oil gets its wish, it would be an injustice with lasting and cascading harm.”

A Q&A with Professor Khiara M. Bridges where she discusses her new book Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans.

“People have been educating us and have been incredibly warm and generous with their time and their experience, and we are trying to solve a national and a global problem of how to have affordable clean energy that gives everyone security and makes the planet more sustainable,” said Claudia Polsky, a law professor and director of the Environmental Law Clinic at UC Berkeley.

“Squeezing blood from a stone is really not an effective way to fund the system,” Gus Patel-Tupper, a clinical supervisor at UC Berkeley’s Policy Advocacy Clinic, told reporters at a Wednesday virtual news conference. “So not only are collections falling in raw terms, but the cost of collections is high, which reduces net revenue even further.”

“Chiles v. Salazar is not the first time the Supreme Court has had to deal with a First Amendment challenge to laws that regulate speech by professionals in advising clients and patients,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “What is striking about the decisions is their inconsistency.”

“It’s well known that ICE has been pursuing a campaign of indiscriminate arrests, but it’s less well known that even as ICE has arrested more people who likely could win their cases and stay in the United States, arrests have been ending more often in deportation,” report author David Hausman, co-director of the Deportation Data Project and assistant professor of law at UC Berkeley, said in a statement. “One big factor is that detention causes people to give up on their cases.”

Dozens of students from the UC Berkeley School of Law gathered April 7 to discuss the ways gender-based violence has shaped recent activity by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

“Senate Democrats are absolutely right in doing everything they can, including holding up funding for the Department of Homeland Security, to impose limits on behavior by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “But it is not enough.”

“There just is no constitutional power for the president to really get involved in the election process at all,” said Professor Dan Farber. “The framers of the Constitution clearly saw elections as a state function, and they’ve really only allowed these very limited exceptions.”

“The reason why there are so many cases involving Asian immigrants or the children of Asian immigrants,” said Amanda L. Tyler, a constitutional law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, “is because immigration law in this country for a very long time was incredibly unreceptive to Asian immigration and naturalization.”

“Fascism is hard to litigate, it turns out, when you have been in this mostly constitutional, mostly democracy for a long time,” said Professor Claudia Polsky.

In her new book, Professor Khiara M. Bridges found that healthcare provided through private markets leaves more room for discrimination and unequal care to take root than in a public program like Medicaid.