Constitutional Law

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Professor John A. Powell discuss the passage of the “Respect for Marriage Act” in Congress.

“Does a state supreme court have the power to find that an act of the state legislature violates the state constitution? The answer to that question should be clear and obvious, but the conservative justices of the Supreme Court expressed doubt about it at oral arguments in Moore vs. Harper on Wednesday,” writes Dean Chemerinsky. “It is not hyperbole to say that the future of American democracy may turn on the court’s answer.”

“The Constitution and American democracy would not survive another four years of Trump being president,” writes Erwin Chemerinsky, dean and professor of law at the UC Berkeley School of Law. “We now have Trump’s own words to prove it.”

“There is always a tension between liberty and equality. Any law that prohibits discrimination limits the freedom to discriminate.” writes Dean Chemerinksy.

Dean Chemerinsky writes about two arguments in the Supreme Court.

Dean Chemerinksy discusses originalism and the Supreme Court.

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.