By Gwyneth K. Shaw
When Joan Donoghue ’81 was a student, she took a seminar course from UC Berkeley Law Professor Richard Buxbaum ’53 with a mix of J.D. and LL.M. students.
The experience had a profound impact on Donoghue, who went on to a storied career in international law — capped by a 14-year stint on the International Court of Justice, the last three as its president.
“I found that I learned a great deal from the students who had been trained outside the United States,” she says. “As a judge, I saw how the variations in national legal traditions influenced the work of other judges. I wanted to share with the students what I have learned working with judges and arbitrators from diverse backgrounds.”
Now, Donoghue is imparting her own wisdom on UC Berkeley Law students, through her Global Dispute Resolution course — one of six new classes this spring. The classes, taught by stellar faculty and prominent practitioners, cover a wide swath of timely topics.
For example, Orrick Chair and Chief Executive Mitch Zuklie ’96 is teaching The Business of Law and How Not to Think Like a Lawyer, using case studies and interactive modeling to introduce students to the practical fundamentals of the legal industry and how to thrive as a practitioner. Lecturer Ioana Tchoukleva ’14, senior impact manager at Impact Justice, leads the Introduction to Restorative Justice Diversion course.
Death Penalty Clinic Deputy Director Mridula Raman’s Pregnancy Criminalization course examines the growing number of laws and enforcement efforts bringing criminal consequences based on pregnancy status — from misdemeanor charges to murder convictions.
“Once again, our instructors have put together an incredible buffet of course offerings,” says Professor Jonathan D. Glater, the law school’s associate dean for teaching. “I’ll risk pushing the food analogy, because we’ve got a variety of highly seasonal classes reflecting what is fresh: how universities, the states, and the federal government deal with campus protests, for example, and how global disputes really are resolved.
“And of course we continue to offer the range of foundational courses we always offer to help students understand what the law is and what it does.”
Living history
Students in The Legal Politics of Campus Protests, taught by Professor Jonathan Simon J.D. ’87 Ph.D. ’90 and Anthony Platt, a Distinguished Affiliated Scholar at UC Berkeley Law’s Center for the Study of Law and Society, are exploring a particularly ripe issue on the UC Berkeley campus — both in recent years and over many previous decades.
Platt, who earned his Ph.D. at what was then the school’s criminology department, says he and Simon created the course in response to events of the last two years: “the rise of student protests against genocide in Gaza and the mostly authoritarian response from universities, including our own.”
It’s a research course designed to teach students about movements, debates, and policies they probably know little to nothing about, Platt adds. They include the Berkeley protests that predated the vaunted Free Speech Movement in the 1960s; the role of the University of California’s regents and president in governing the campus during protests; the application of traditional “time, place, and manner” restrictions; the role of campus police and private security agencies hired to help; and the use of trespass laws to regulate protests.
Platt says the course has been a welcome opportunity to partner with Simon, share their experiences and viewpoints in a cooperative way, and to model for students the importance of speaking truth to power.
Teaching the course this spring in particular has opened new avenues of discussion, Simon says.
“When we conceived of the course we wanted to understand how the university was reacting to the Gaza protests of 2024,” he says. “At least for me, I never thought we would be seeing an all out onslaught against universities by the Trump administration.”
3L Washakie Tibbetts was drawn to the course because he wanted to learn more about the history of campus protests and the protections afforded by the First Amendment, and because of the opportunity to write a relatively open-ended research paper about college activism.
“I have enjoyed reading about the history of college campus protests as well as hearing about my classmates’ interesting research topics,” he says. “What I appreciate about the class is the emphasis on creating practical research that strives to fill holes in our understanding of college protests as well as further social justice.”
Platt and Simon say the learning is going both ways as students discuss their own projects.
“I hope students learn to treat the university they have spent their adult lives in so far as an important site of research and legal and historical analysis,” Simon says.
As the semester has progressed, Donoghue — whose course draws on her own experiences as she outlines the major structural, logical, and stylistic differences in common law and civil law decisions — says she’s been pleased to see the students sharing insights from their varied backgrounds.
“I would like them to be self-aware of the ways in which their own legal training is likely to influence their ideas about the best procedures and practices in international adjudication and arbitration,” she says. “I also want them to appreciate some of the ways in which an adjudicator’s legal tradition is likely to influence the adjudicator’s reaction to various styles of advocacy, and the manner in which the adjudicator sets out reasons for decisions.”