By Gwyneth K. Shaw
Four Berkeley Law professors were recently awarded faculty chairs. Professors Khiara M. Bridges, Colleen V. Chien ’02, and Dhammika Dharmapala, alongside Assistant Professor Manisha Padi, were recognized for their accomplishments and contributions to scholarship, policy, and legal education.
“A chair is the highest honor a university bestows on a tenured professor. Professors Bridges, Chien, and Dharmapala are so very deserving of this recognition for their outstanding teaching and scholarship,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says. “Berkeley is unique in having chaired positions to support untenured faculty. Professor Padi is outstanding and I am delighted to see her receive this recognition.”
Here’s a look at each of these scholars and their specialties.
Earl Warren Professor of Public Law Khiara M. Bridges
Bridges is an expert on the intersection of race, class, and reproductive rights. She joined Berkeley Law’s faculty in 2019 and is the author of four books — including Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans, published earlier this year. Bridges has a J.D. and Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia.
Bridges was motivated to write Expecting Inequity after she learned that racial disparities in maternal mortality persist across income levels. She interviewed over 200 pregnant or recently postpartum people, often documenting harrowing tales of high-income Black patients who felt their symptoms and input were ignored by clinicians.
The book made Ms. magazine’s “Most Anticipated Feminist Books of 2026” list.
“I felt so many things when I found out that I was receiving this chair,” she says. “I felt seen. I knew that the chair meant that Erwin, the law school, and the university recognized the value of my scholarship and teaching.”
Bridges adds that it’s particularly gratifying because Professor Emeritus Ian Haney López held the Warren chair before her.
“I also felt humbled when I found out about the chair because I read White by Law when I was a 2L in law school. That book made me want to become a law professor,” she says. “So it was a bit surreal to inherit the chair from the person who inspired me to pursue the dream of a job in the legal academy. But most of all, I felt happy — giddy even.”
William G. Simon Professor of Law Colleen V. Chien ’02
Chien conducts cross-disciplinary research on innovation, intellectual property, artificial intelligence, and the criminal justice system, focusing on how technology, data, and innovation can be harnessed for social benefit.
She is a faculty co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, a faculty advisor to the Berkeley Criminal Law & Justice Center and Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice, and founded and directs two grant-funded research initiatives: the Innovator Diversity Pilots Initiative and the Paper Prisons Initiative. She joined the faculty in 2024.
While a law student, Chien was engaged in empirical research, social justice projects, and the emerging public interest tech law movement. Continuing to apply rigorous research approaches to social justice problems, the Paper Prisons team is currently partnering with the Santa Clara Public Defenders Office to carry out randomized controlled trials to notify people of their automated expungements.
They have also developed the Racial Justice Act (RJA) Tool, which reports on data provided by the California Department of Justice’s Criminal Offender Record Information database of arrests, court actions, convictions, and sentences to support motions for legal relief under the RJA.
“To return to Berkeley Law and be able to call the giants in the field my colleagues has been the honor of my career,” Chien says. “I’m gratified and humbled to receive this chair, though the real reward is, day to day, to be able to carry on the lessons taught to me at Berkeley Law and teach the next generation of lawyers leading in tech and public interest law.”
Robert and Joann Burch Distinguished Professor of Tax Law and Policy Dhammika Dharmapala
An expert on taxation and public finance, the economic analysis of law, and corporate finance and governance, Dharmapala moved to Berkeley Law in 2023 from the University of Chicago. Co-editor of the Journal of Law and Economics, president of the American Law and Economics Association (ALEA) in 2026-27, and a past co-president of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies, he’s also an International Research Fellow of the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation, a fellow of the CESifo Research Network, a research member of the European Corporate Governance Institute, and a member of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center advisory board.
Dharmapala, who earned his Ph.D. in economics at UC Berkeley, teaches undergraduate Legal Studies courses as well as classes within the Ph.D.-granting Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program.
The Burch chair has a strong personal resonance for him.
“This appointment is particularly meaningful for me,” Dharmapala says. “In the 1990s, a generous donation by Robert and Joann Burch established — in addition to this chair — the Robert D. Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance at Berkeley’s economics department and the law school. The center brought Professor Emeritus Alan Auerbach, who was later to be my dissertation advisor, to Berkeley as its director, and helped to make Berkeley a leading institution in the study of taxation and public finance. The Burch Center also partly funded my research as a Ph.D. student.
“I am thus particularly grateful to receive this chair.”
Class of 1965 Assistant Professor of Law Manisha Padi
Padi studies the law and economics of households and small businesses. Her work uses empirical methods to probe how regulation impacts mortgages, retirement products, and small businesses. She came to Berkeley Law in 2019 after getting her J.D. from Yale Law School and her Ph.D. in economics from MIT and teaches courses on contracts, financial regulation, and economic justice as well as law and economics.
Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including Econometrica, as well as law reviews, including the Michigan Law Review, the California Law Review, and the Harvard Law and Policy Review.
Padi is on the ALEA board and is a faculty advisor to the Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice. Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed her to the CalAccount Blue Ribbon Commission in 2022, and she was a senior policy advisor to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Financial Institutions Policy during the 2024-25 fiscal year.
“Berkeley Law has been an incredibly productive and supportive academic home, especially for junior scholars. There is no better institution in the country for studying how law can improve the lives of ordinary people,” she says “I’m delighted and honored to receive the Class of 1965 Chair.”