Constitutional Law

  • State Court Report logo

    Commentary: State Court Takeaways from Dobbs (04/26/2023)

    “The ultimate liberty is the right to be left alone, and Dobbs established a clear mandate for state courts to define that right under their state constitutions,” write David Carrillo and Brandon V. Stracener of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law. “This is an opportunity for states to abandon their flawed lockstep doctrines, reassert themselves as the primary guarantors of individual liberty, and restore the state–federal balance of power in this area of the law.”

  • My Newspaper Sued Florida for the Same First-Amendment Abuses DeSantis Is Committing Now. And we won. (04/26/2023)

    In a piece by Edward Wasserman, professor and former dean of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, Dean Chemerinsky said “The law is clear that retaliation against a person—that includes a corporation—for its speech violates the First Amendment. Gov. DeSantis and the Florida legislature have done exactly that, and said that is what they were doing, in its reprisal against Disney.”

  • LA TImes icon

    Opinion: Why one judge in Amarillo got to decide whether any American could use the abortion pill (04/25/2023)

    “Litigants should not be able to handpick a judge who then can issue a nationwide injunction throwing the entire country into chaos,” writes Dean Chemerinsky.

  • The Hill logo

    Opinion: A dangerous new low: Supreme Court must reform — or be reformed (04/17/2023)

    “Ideally, the court, on its own, would adopt an ethics code for its members, writes Dean Chemerinsky and Dennis Aftergut. “The absence of ethical rules is an unnecessary self-inflicted wound. Absent the court reforming itself, Congress must act and impose one on the justices. One would hope that the court would not be so foolish as to declare unconstitutional a law that is meant to regulate it.”

  • npr-minute logo

    Death and grief in ‘Succession’; plus, privacy and the abortion pill (04/14/2023)

    Host Brittany Luse is joined by UC Berkeley Law professor Khiara M. Bridges to connect the dots between the recent legal battles over the abortion pill mifepristone and our constitutional right to privacy.

  • Sacramento Bee icon

    Opinion: With mifepristone at risk, we should all be gravely concerned about abortion rights (04/14/2023)

    “This is an issue for the FDA – not the courts – to decide,” writes Dean Chemerinsky. “One would hope that even the conservative Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade would recognize this and want to keep the federal judiciary out of the abortion issue. But given the anti-abortion views of a majority of justices, there is every reason to be very worried.”

  • Wired logo

    The Abortion Pill Legal Standoff Endangers Access to All Drugs (04/13/2023)

    “We had accepted that federal law would preempt state law, that it would be preposterous that one federal judge in one district in Texas—or in any other state—would be able to affect the availability of a drug that had had FDA approval for 20 years,” says Khiara M. Bridges, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. “Now the things that we thought we knew about the relationship between federal law and state law, and the FDA’s ability to regulate, have been called into question.”

  • DC logo

    A sit-down with Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky (04/13/2023)

    The Daily Californian sat down with Chemerinsky for a conversation about his career as a scholar and advocate, as well as why free speech — specifically on college campuses — matters.

  • nbc news icon

    What the Supreme Court’s decision in the legal fight over abortion pills means for access to mifepristone (04/12/2023)

    “It sort of puts the fire under all courts in the country to resolve the conflict as soon as possible,” said Professor Khiara M. Bridges.

  • The Hill logo

    Opinion: Abortion pill issue will show us what this Supreme Court is really made of (04/11/2023)

    “The Supreme Court has its lowest approval ratings in history,” writes Dean Chemerinksy and Dennis Aftergut. “Now, as much as ever, it is crucial that the justices make clear that they are not partisan hacks who just follow the Republican platform, but instead are committed jurists who follow the law. The recent decisions concerning mifepristone will give them just that opportunity.”