Constitutional Law

“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.”

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. 

“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.

“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.

“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. 

“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.”

“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.