Articles

From political upheaval and racial tensions to natural disasters and a global pandemic, the Class of 2021 overcame a daunting set of challenges.

Professor Frank Partnoy discusses fads – such as bitcoin, dogecoin and NFTs – and says we we might be surprised, when we look back at this time, at what turned out to be valuable, and what didn’t

Students, faculty, and alumni reflect on the remarkable life of Reynoso, the first Latinx justice on the California Supreme Court and a revered civil rights advocate.

Professor Emeritus Jesse Choper and Dean Erwin Chemerinsky agree that a proposal to allow paramedics, not just police, to order mental health holds raises no immediate civil liberties concerns 

Professor Chuck Weisselberg says the oldest and most vulnerable cohort of people within the federal prison system are at the mercy of the parole commission, an agency that’s been dying for decades

Professor Robert Bartlett discusses a new study he co-authored, which analyzed almost 10 million home loans and found blatant racial discrimination

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky urges Justice Breyer to retire and make way for a successor who would protect his Supreme Court legacy

Professor Kinch Hoekstra discusses the methodology of the history of political thought, the relationship between philosophy and history, the classical foundation of Western thought and the distinction between ancient and modern in Western philosophy

Professor Catherine Fisk discusses the PRO Act and says it would change is whether independent contractors have the right to form a union and bargain collectively

Her herculean efforts to help the law school make Zoom learning work earned her UC Berkeley’s new Extraordinary Teaching in Extraordinary Times award.  

Professor Elisabeth Semel, Director of the Death Penalty Clinic, says race is, and it has always been, the most salient feature of the American death penalty

Lecturer Shanin Specter discusses the suit he’s filed alleging 16 people contracted cancer from exposure to toxic gas emissions from a medical device facility in Allentown, PA

Professor Catherine Fisk discusses Amazon’s controlling Delivery Service Provider contract and policies 

A recent event and a special tribute issue of the California Law Review celebrate Sugarman’s indelible mark on the school and his fields. 

Professor Tejas Narechania says Apple v Epic Games is going to tell us a lot about how we structure industries and the technology industry going forward

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says a lawsuit asking California to permit more telemedicine for animals even after the pandemic ends may succeed on free speech grounds

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky examines a recent Supreme Court ruling that potentially changes the famous Civ Pro “International Shoe” precedent that out-of-state defendants can not be sued without their consent

Ken Alex, director of Project Climate at CLEE, says Berkeley Law’s Grizzly Corps could provide a transformative model, as President Biden’s Infrastructure Plan includes a $10 billion proposal to create a Civilian Climate Corps

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky urges Justice Breyer to retire in coming months while Democrats still have the power to confirm his replacement

Ethan Elkind, Director of the Climate Program at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, appears on “Air Talk” to break down how politicians and businesses can look to minimize their carbon footprint without starting any beef with the people they serve

Mark Cohen, senior fellow and director of the Asia IP Project at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, says local protectionism is often apparent in Chinese court rulings

Professor Amanda Tyler appears on Above the Law’s podcast, The Jabot, to discuss co-authoring Justice, Justice, Thou Shalt Pursue: A Life’s Work Fighting for a More Perfect Union with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Professor Jonathan Simon says President Biden’s executive order ending Justice Department contracts with private prisons is “mostly symbolic”

Professor Ian Haney Lopez calls attacks on critical race theory “part of the right’s longstanding practice of dog whistle politics”

Berkeley Law second-year students Rachel Wilson, Karnik Hajjar, and Emily Roberts best more than 50 other teams at the annual U.S. Patent and Trademark Office event.

Professor Jonathan Simon says rehabilitative measures should be offered to all prisoners and are an effective means of addressing the underlying reasons individuals commit crimes, particularly violent offenses

Professor Ian Haney Lopez critiques a new paper that advises Democrats to avoid racial justice frames

Lecturer Shanin Specter weighs the pros and cons of vaccine passes

Megan Graham, Clinical Supervising Attorney at the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic, discusses concerns that Cellebrite’s cellphone data extraction software – used by law enforcement agencies the world over – has severe cybersecurity flaws that could make it vulnerable to hacking 

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky moderated a discussion with Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón and civil rights lawyer Connie Rice about what needs reform. 

Professor Elisabeth Semel, Director of the Death Penalty Clinic, appears on “State of The Bay” to discuss the Derek Chauvin verdict and and how it fits into the context of a criminal justice system that has long been plagued by racial bias

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says the Supreme Court and the courts of appeals have been very restrictive with regard to finding state-created danger, as Los Angeles seeks to overturn a sweeping federal judicial order requiring them to offer shelter to everyone on skid row

Professor Jonathan Simon says he is he is skeptical of claims that the Chauvin verdict will be overturned on the grounds that remarks from Maxine Waters prejudiced the jury

The Berkeley Center for Law and Technology hosted a webinar to analyze Google’s Supreme Court advocate and amici curiae  in Google v. Oracle

Experts including Professors Peter Menell and Pamela Samuelson discussed the recent ruling’s impact on software and beyond.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky explains why there is clearly a need for additional federal legislation to reform policing

Ken Alex, director of Project Climate at CLEE, discusses carbon vacuums: giant vacuums that can suck up carbon from the air and store it underground

Professor Claudia Polsky and the Environmental Law Clinic are representing several groups filing suit to force the EPA to upgrade its quarter-century-old plan for responding to oil spills that allows harmful oil dispersants to be used copiously

That evidence helped overwhelm the advantages police typically hold when officers are accused of committing a crime in the line of duty, Simon said. 

Professor Jonathan Simon discusses how the guilty verdict in the Chauvin case could be a turning point in the culture of policing and race relations in America

Six determined groups of students participated in this year’s Berkeley Law Alternative Service Trips, working with grassroots groups from Appalachia to Hawai’i.

Professor Jonathan Simon explains what it will take to convict Officer Derek Chauvin

Ethan Elkind, Director of the Climate Program at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, discusses President Biden’s push for electric cars

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky discusses the wait for a verdict in the trial of Officer Derek Chauvin

Nancy Lemon says there needs to be less punishment and more rehabilitation for victims of domestic violence who are charged with crimes against their abusers

Kay, a Berkeley Law icon, began work on the book telling the story of the 14 women who preceded her as law professors at ABA-accredited schools in 1989.

Professor Bertrall Ross is appointed to serve on President Biden’s newly formed Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States

Professor Roxanna Altholz, co-director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic, discusses her 2020 report, “Living with Impunity: Unsolved Murders in Oakland and the Human Rights Impact on Victims’ Family Members” and the systemic violence affecting Black Oakland residents  

Judge Jeremy Fogel, Executive Director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute, says some form of virtual court is here to stay

Judge Jeremy Fogel, Executive Director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute, discusses a recent opinion by federal judge Laurence Silberman, which suggested the Supreme Court to overrule New York Times vs. Sullivan, its unanimous 1964 decision that required government officials suing for libel to prove that the writer knowingly lied about them or recklessly disregarded the truth