Constitutional Law

Dean Chemerinsky’s book Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism is included in David Lat’s spotlight of noteworthy new books about or related to the law.

Jeff Selbin, the director of the Policy Advocacy Clinic at the U.C. Berkeley School of Law discusses California’s new law that will automatically seal most criminal records for those who complete their sentences.

 Berkeley Law professor John Yoo  said, the enactment of Proposition 209 kept the goal of racial diversity on the university’s front burner. “In a way it became culturally more deeply rooted now at the university than it was back in 1996,” he said.

UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, who has argued cases before the Supreme Court, said its past rulings on health issues, particularly the 2012 decision upholding most of the federal health care law, probably wouldn’t weaken the legal case for abortion rights.

“Of all the potentially momentous cases on the Supreme Court’s docket this term, the one that frightens me most is Moore v. Harper. It is not hyperbole to say that the future of American democracy could be determined by this decision,” writes Dean Chemerinksy.

Dean Chemerinksy writes, “The great complexity of free speech issues on campus was revealed this semester at Berkeley Law. How are the free speech rights of a student group to not invite speakers with particular views to be balanced against the desire to have all viewpoints expressed and have no one feel excluded?”

Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school dean at UC Berkeley, said the court has dramatically changed its interpretation of language in the First Amendment that prohibits any law “respecting an establishment of religion.”

David Carrillo and Stephen M. Duvernay of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law write “There is one major disadvantage from making it difficult to remove judges, through rules or culture (or both): You can be stuck with a bad actor for life.” 

“The First Amendment may limit state regulation of projections, however,” Seth Davis, a professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, told SFGATE. “It may protect a right to project statements on buildings in some cases. For example, the First Amendment may protect a right to project a political statement on a building when that statement is connected to the building.” 

Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school dean at UC Berkeley who has argued a number of cases before the Supreme Court, said he doesn’t think Thomas needs to remove himself from cases in which his wife is part of an organization that supports one of the parties, unless that organization is actually a party to the case.