Press Highlights

Professor Claudia Polsky discusses taking on Trump in court.

Professor Khiara M. Bridges, author of Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans joins host Brittany Luse to talk through why wealth and status can’t outrun racism at the doctor’s office.

“We’re experiencing now an unprecedented assault on the Constitution, on the First Amendment, and of freedom of speech,” said Dean Chemerinsky at the 2026 Berkeley Art, Law, and Finance Symposium. “The closest analog that I can think of would be in the early 1950s during the McCarthy era, but that was not led by the president of the United States.”

Catherine Lhamon, who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights under President Joe Biden, a Democrat, said the barrage of investigations amounted to “performance art” that grabbed attention but had little impact. After pushback from schools, she said, the Trump administration is backing off. “It stopped putting itself in a position to lose,” said Lhamon, who now leads the Edley Center on Law and Democracy at the University of California, Berkeley.

Berkeley Law professor Tejas Narechania said that while the details of energy and telecom regulation might be different, the industries have “economic features” in common. “How do we think about affordability across all of these utilities, and how do we think about universal access across all of these utilities?” he asked. “That’s a common set of problems, … a common set of economic thinking, and that’s why we have this single-purpose public utility commission in so many states.”

“The idea is to protect the formation of first-year law students by requiring them to do the reading, analysis and argumentation that is constitutive of legal work,” said Professor Chris Hoofnagle. “Once that happens, Berkeley offers many courses explicitly about A.I. lawyering.”

“If elite universities are serious about admitting students from across the economic spectrum, they should end admissions preferences for legacies and athletes and reform their system of nonacademic ratings,” writes Professor Prasad Krishnamurthy.

“President Donald Trump’s deal with the Department of Justice raises corruption to a level never seen before in this county,” write Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Burt Neuborne, founding legal director of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. “It can — and must — be stopped.”

“On an almost daily basis, we are seeing the failure of the Constitution to provide adequate checks against a president determined to use the enormous powers of his office for the sake of retribution,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. 

“Our policy is about developing students with the fundamental skills required for AI lawyering,” UC Berkeley Law School professor Chris Hoofnagle told Business Insider.

“There is a federal crime that prohibits exactly what the president did, and for exactly this reason, to prevent a corrupt president from using the IRS to their own advantage,” according to UC Berkeley Law professor Brian Galle, a former federal prosecutor with the Justice Department’s Tax Division. “This is an episode that would have brought down any other presidency in American history.”

Catherine E. Lhamon, Executive Director of the Edley Center on Law & Democracy and Former Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, delivered the distinguished keynote address at the 132nd commencement for UC Berkeley’s School of Education on Thursday, May 21, 2026.

“The trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI—in which the jury on Monday decided in favor of OpenAI due to the statute of limitations—was about many things: a clash of egos, a governance dispute, and a morality play with few morals,” writes Professor Prasad Krishnamurthy. “But it may be remembered as the first antitrust case of the artificial intelligence era, even though antitrust appears nowhere in the complaint.”

“Much rightly has been written criticizing the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which effectively nullified Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “But one point that has not received sufficient attention is the decision’s blatant inconsistency with the principle that federal courts should not alter the conduct of elections soon before they are to occur.”

“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 MallikaKaur, director of the Domestic Violence and Gender-Based Violence Practicum at Berkeley Law, and Julia Weber.

“Corporations are writing the rules of AI,” writes Professor Stavros Gadinis. “The law’s job is to discipline how they write.”

Vincent Joralemon, a senior fellow at UC Berkeley law school, said statutes of limitation vary by state and in California there is a three-year limit for breech of charitable trust and a two-year limit for unjust enrichment – two of the key claims Musk brought. “I’m guessing the jurors got into their room and said, ‘does it seem like Musk knew about this in 2019?’ and everyone said ‘yes’ and then they go, ‘we’re done,’” Joralemon said.

Professor Khiara M. Bridges discusses her latest book Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans.

Regardless of the ultimate outcome, neither tech magnate is likely to win in the court of public opinion, said University of California at Berkeley Law School professor Stavros Gadinis. “After weeks of damaging testimony, the public is left choosing between two dueling billionaires, each convinced he is the rightful steward of transformative technology,” Gadinis said by email. “The answer most people will reach is: neither.”

“The impacts of climate change – the health impacts and the disasters – leave people in greater and greater precarity,” said B Helen Kerwin, clinical supervising attorney, Human Rights Clinic. “They leave them less able to be resilient in place, and migration is the viable option.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and David A. Carrillo, executive director of the California Constitution Center at the University of California Berkeley law school weigh in on Governor Newsom’s delay in filling California Supreme Court seat.

In this episode of Equity Leadership Now!, Catherine E. Lhamon joins host Jabari Mahiri to discuss her role as the inaugural Executive Director of the Christopher Edley Center on Law and Democracy and pressing issues surrounding democracy in the United States.

UC Berkeley School of Law Lecturer Andrea Crider called the bill unnecessary. “From my understanding, the people who have been touting this legislation are largely conservative district attorneys, and they have used what I would describe as ‘extreme outlier cases’,” Crider said.

“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 discusses her recent book Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans.

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.