Press Highlights

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.

“He’s had an epic career, holding nearly every possible judicial seat in California,” said David Carrillo, a UC Berkeley law professor and executive director of the law school’s California Constitution Center.

“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.

Jeremy Fogel, executive director, Berkeley Judicial Institute joins Lawfare Daily to talk about how the courts are faring amidst the enormous stresses of the day: a huge number of legal challenges to Trump administration actions, a judiciary under constant attack from critics—including several instances of real violence—and serious intra-branch tensions. And to discuss why it is so crucial that judges retain their independence—and how to make sure they do.

“Google will need five votes to prevail regardless of [Ginsburg’s] absence on the court,” said Pamela Samuelson, a University of California, Berkeley law professor who filed a brief backing Google. “Intellectual property is a field of law in which the usual right-left splits don’t apply. Most of the IP cases in recent years have been unanimous or nearly so.”

“If court orders can be defied, then the president can violate the Constitution and any law with impunity knowing that there are unlikely to be any meaningful consequences,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “That means the president could then do anything — including locking up critics — knowing that the courts are powerless to stop it.”

“The crucial question will be whether it serves as a check on President Trump or just a rubber stamp approving his actions,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley Law School.

UC Berkeley Law makes National Jurist’s list of top law schools from criminal law.

“Like last year, this term the Supreme Court again will face issues that arise from the culture wars and the Trump presidency that deeply divide our country,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

The Supreme Court “has been a rubber stamp approving Trump’s actions,” said UC Berkeley law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “I hope very much that the court will be a check on Trump. There isn’t any other. But so far, it has not played that role.”

“Beyond the unconstitutional aspects of the compact, there is its odious demand to intrude on the autonomy of these schools,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “Every aspect of it seeks to dictate decisions that have traditionally been left to each university — a degree of control over higher education that is characteristic of authoritarian countries.”

“There’s always the impulse to punish speech we don’t like,” said Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “But the First Amendment protects all speech. Once you open this door, it could set a very dangerous precedent. What about teachers who criticize Donald Trump?”

“Judges are free to use their opinions to comment on the law and larger issues, as long as the focus of the opinion is right,” said Fogel, who now directs the Berkeley Judicial Institute at UC Berkeley Law. “Legal opinions are not usually that exciting. He was trying to say, this is really important.”

“I’m tremendously worried,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. “Using the military for domestic law enforcement is something that’s characteristic of authoritarian regimes.”

For Jeremy Fogel, a former federal trial judge in California and executive director, Berkeley Judicial Institute, increasing the focus on judicial well-being is a project decades in the making.

“In all my decades spent closely following Supreme Court decisions, I’ve never before felt one term had the potential to be so momentous in deciding the future of American democracy,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

“If there is a path toward authoritarianism for the United States, this is it,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinksy.

Former acting Labor Secretary Julie Su will be a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where she will focus her work at the university’s Center for Law and Work.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Berkeley’s law school, said “no one will object” if the White House simply requires universities to pledge compliance with existing law.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky joins Legal Face Off to discuss the latest on Gavin Newsom’s ban on ICE agents wearing face masks in California.