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Berkeley Law Professor Rebecca Wexler will help lead the center, which aims to help users gain more control of their data, democratize access to it, and ensure that it remains secure.

“It’s easy to believe that locking people up for longer periods of time makes us safer,” write Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, former Los Angeles County district attorney Gil Garcetti, and Miriam Aroni Krinsky, executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution. “But there is no evidence that extreme sentences improve public safety.”

David A. Carrillo, executive director of the California Constitution Center, says diversifying the court first became a priority under former Gov. Jerry Brown in the 1970s. “Doing so is crucial to both the perception and the reality that those who administer justice reflect the state’s diversity,” Carrillo says. “The judge in my case doesn’t have to look like me, but it shouldn’t be true that there are no judges who look like me.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and California Constitution Center Executive Director David Carrillo discuss the nomination. “This is two-sevenths of the California Supreme Court, and these are people who are going to be there for a long time,” Chemerinsky says. “They are historic and important appointments.” Guerrero’s appointment also makes sense politically, Carrillo says, as appointing the first Latina chief justice “speaks directly to the nearly 40% of the California population with Hispanic ancestry.”

Now a visiting scholar with Berkeley Law’s Human Rights Center, Qazizada is part of a unique program that brings threatened Afghan scholars to the Bay Area.

Mallika Kaur, lecturer and the executive director of the community outreach and advocacy organization Sikh Family Center, said there was a range of reactions from the Sikh community after the shooting, including anger and fear but also resilience. “There was absolutely the fear of being further victimized, what may happen next to our kids, what may happen to the male or female members who are wearing turbans in the community,” she said.

“The Electoral Count Reform Act is a major and necessary step forward. The perfect cannot be allowed to be the enemy of the good,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and co-authors Laurence H. Tribe and Dennis Aftergut write of the legislation now under consideration in Congress. “But given the reality of the election-denying officials and battleground state legislature majorities, Congress should not allow the good that the current reform measure achieves to potentially be swallowed by state representatives who would enact undemocratic power grabs that all of us, including our federal legislators, might wish we didn’t have to see.”

Fractional trading brokerages like Robinhood, meanwhile, are “a fly in the ointment,” to Buffett, says Professor Robert Bartlett, who co-authored a new study finding volumes of the most expensive stock in the U.S. have been artificially inflated by the way brokers like Robinhood report fractional trading. “Buffett wants to keep the price of his Class A shares high to attract long-term value investors. Those aren’t the people buying these fractional shares, and so they are undermining his main vision for the stock.”

“Senate Bill 1149 would create a presumption against secrecy in civil litigation in cases involving a defective product or environmental hazard that ‘has caused or is likely to cause significant or substantial bodily injury or illness or death,'” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes of legislation now under consideration in Sacramento. “This is a commonsense and long-overdue reform.”

Palmer’s work at the United Nations Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals helps prosecute war crimes committed within the former Yugoslavia.

“We had an extraordinary year in hiring,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says, including two senior scholars, three junior faculty, and a clinical professor.

“The proposal before the Senate represents an excellent beginning. It must be strengthened to protect democracy in the final stages of selecting a president. But it’s equally vital to remember that not even a perfect way of counting the electoral votes at the tail end of the process can overcome unfair and undemocratic obstacles to casting ballots at the front end,” write Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, Harvard Professor Emeritus Laurence Tribe, and former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut. “Our democracy will not be secure until we enact broader protection for voting rights.”

“One thing that might have triggered this wave of litigation is that cities have become aware in the past 15 years that climate change is costing them money,” Professor Holly Doremus says. “That’s especially true for coastal cities, counties and states, where a lot of these cases are coming from. I think just looking for any way to deal with this problem has sent them to the state courts.”

Titus founded the Whistleblower Anti-Bullying Resource Network (WARN), which helps whistleblowers, survivors of workplace bullying and harassment, and people who have experienced police abuse.

Lecturer Mallika Kaur’s book Faith, Gender and Activism in the Punjab conflict: The Wheat Fields Still Whisper is reviewed.

David A. Carrillo and Brandon V. Stracener of the California Constitution Center write that if proposed state laws copying the citizen enforcement mechanism of Texas’ S.B. 8 survive, one might eventually turn up on the ballot as an initiative, posing “a grave threat to a minority group, who will fail to defeat the proposition because (as a minority) they lack the votes.” 

Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, discusses the challenges for California’s planned route from San Francisco to Los Angeles. 

“If there is a stable source of funding both for wildfire and EVs, then you create the ability to plan in a more profound way,” says Ken Alex, director of Project Climate at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, of the debate over Proposition 30, which would  raise income taxes on people earning more than $2 million a year to fund zero-emission vehicle purchases and infrastructure.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky discusses Gorsuch’s role in closely-divided cases this term. 

“It’s ridiculous to think that we should look to the laws of 1791 and 1868 to ascertain whether there should be a right to public prayer or abortion.” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of the mindset governing the flurry of recent decisions from the conservative-dominated court. “It’s highly doubtful that we would even want to follow certain practices enshrined in the Constitution.”

California Constitution Center Executive Director David Carrillo is among those quoted to analyze Gov. Gavin Newsom’s next move. Elevating a sitting justice gives the governor “the appearance of making two appointments: one to elevate a new Chief Justice, and one to fill the vacated seat,” Carrillo says.

“In recent years the California Supreme Court has coalesced into a group of moderate justices who decide nearly 90% of their cases unanimously, and Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye’s retirement may be an inflection point for that dynamic,” California Constitution Center Executive Director David Carrillo says. “So one factor in choosing a new Chief Justice is how likely that person is to continue the court’s current consensus culture.”

Chair of the California Privacy Protection Agency, Urban illuminated the arc of privacy awareness — and importance — to Americans amid technology’s expanding reach.

Lecturer Mallika Kaur interviews Traci Feit Love, about pro bono organizing efforts and Lawyers for Good Government, a nonprofit that grew out of a popular Facebook group she started in 2016. 

Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, says it’s safe to assume that the historic commute patterns likely will never fully return to what they were before the pandemic, so transit providers will need to find other ways to attract more riders. “I think it’s going to be really hard to get back to that level of ridership unless you grow the overall pie,” he says. “Their best strategy is making sure there are more apartments and office buildings right next to transit. If people live really close to a transit stop they’re going to be much more likely to ride that to get where they want to go for recreational activities or for work.”

“The new California law, like the Texas law, limits how a defendant can challenge its provisions in court, but it is not immune from review in the courts,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes of new legislation which authorizes private citizens to file civil suits against gun makers and sellers in three circumstances and is based on Texas’ law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. “Once challenged, courts should uphold the regulations as reasonable and consistent with the Second Amendment.”

Wu’s externship with a U.S. district court’s patent program enriches her understanding of technology and intellectual property issues and enlightens her career path.

The authors of the Constitution “believed the Bill of Rights wasn’t creating rights but was recognizing rights that were already out there,” says Professor Daniel Farber, author of Retained by the People, a 2007 book about the Ninth Amendment. The current court’s majority “has basically ignored” that amendment, he says, most likely because “it looks like a wide-open invitation and it doesn’t really say anything about how you decide what’s covered.”

“It’s said that a society is measured by how we treat the worst among us, the most marginalized, the most despised,” Death Penalty Clinic Co-Director Elisabeth Semel tells columnist Nicholas Goldberg. “The law applies to everybody. We don’t get to pick and choose.” 

The best efforts standard is vague and can be difficult to gauge, Professor Adam Badawi says, and establishing that someone has breached a best efforts obligation requires pretty extreme conduct. “You can’t hook someone up to a machine and figure out how much they’re trying,” he says. 

“This data tracking is…it means that people who are pregnant and seeking access to medical care (are) extraordinarily vulnerable to having their data sold to vigilantes as well as provided voluntarily to law enforcement or obtained by law enforcement across state lines,” Professor Rebecca Wexler, a  co-faculty director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, told the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

California Constitution Center Executive Director David Carrillo and a co-author outline the dearth of even attempted recall of state judges, pointing out that then-Supreme Court Justice Rose Bird, ’65 didn’t face a recall, but was instead not retained by voters in the 1986 general election. “A once-cumbersome and ineffective judicial discipline resulted in a substantial constitutional reform, which produced a far-more-effective discipline system centralized in the Commission on Judicial Performance,” they write. “Although the voters have always had the option since 1911 to recall any bench officer, they have done so only rarely, and never at the appellate level. ” 

The Center for Law, Energy & the Environment brought together three experts for a recent webinar to discuss the implications of the ruling for climate policy.

On July 12, Professor Khiara M. Bridges testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee about the fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. Bridges’ exchanges with several senators, particularly Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, drew extensive media coverage. 

“It’s unclear where the court is going to draw the line,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says of states’ efforts to enact new regulations. “I think there’s a strong argument that all of these are constitutional. There’s also going to be an argument that they are unconstitutional. I think it’s important to adopt the laws and then see where the court is going to draw the line.”

With a modest approach and a client list full of industry giants, Edelman describes his unexpected rise in entertainment law and the movie-like moment that launched it.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky offers his analysis of the just-completed Supreme Court term, including the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. 

Professor John Yoo unpacks the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, as well as other recent Supreme Court rulings. 

“It’s up to states, really, as to how they want to go about making abortion unacceptable,” Professor Khiara M. Bridges says, predicting the argument over whether the federal government can protect access to abortion pills, particularly mifepristone, “a long-term battle.” 

“The argument for settling at something lower is that litigation is expensive,” Professor Adam Badawi says of Musk’s effort to back out of his $44 billion deal to buy the social media network. “And this thing is so messy that it might not be worth it.”

“The working class people have been pushed outside L.A. because the region hasn’t built enough housing for them,” says Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, and author of the book Railtown. He and other critics say that while the region has spent billions on rail, it has shot itself in the foot by not reforming its zoning laws and allowing high-density housing to be built near transit hubs while still requiring new apartment developments to build parking spaces for all residents. 

Having grown up “with a ball at my feet,” Abunaw helps athletes and coaches obtain visas to train and compete in the United States long term.

Adam Sterling, executive director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Business, predicts an eventual court settlement that allows both sides to save face. “Twitter has an obligation to fight Musk on this, which they’d need to do because they have a fiduciary duty to do what’s best for shareholders and salvage the deal,” he says. 

Lecturer Shanin Specter, who won many of the pre-pandemic verdicts against Johnson & Johnson, cautions against assuming jurors’ mindsets have shifted. “Our experience was that good cases were bringing good verdicts, and bad cases were bringing bad verdicts,” he says. “I see absolutely no between the juries now or during the pandemic, or before the pandemic.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Professor Daniel Farber discuss the potential impact of the West Virginia v. EPA ruling. The ruling “is very vague about what is a major question or what is sufficient specificity to meet it, the court has opened the door to challenges to countless agency actions,” Chemerinsky says. “I think his fundamental objection is, EPA is leveraging a tiny pedal (of regulatory authority) in the Clean Air Act and using it to take over the world,” Farber says of Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion. “It goes beyond the role that Congress gave them in dealing with emissions from specific sources into trying to change the whole energy system.”

Professor Jonathan Simon says there’s no easy way for Jenkins to make a quick impact on crime, or even to significantly affect the jail population. “I think most of the rapid change is what we’ve already gotten: a big change in tone and lots of reminders of the things her predecessor was alleged to have done wrong,” he says. 

“The conservatives on the court turned their ideological beliefs into constitutional doctrine,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes. “This is not the culmination of conservative judicial activism, this is a court that is just getting started.”

Participants in the executive education course Corporate Finance Fundamentals describe its far-reaching benefits and praise the school’s collaboration with Ukrainian Global University.

Professor Daniel Farber calls the Supreme Court’s ruling “more than a flesh wound” but not fatal. The majority opinion still allows the EPA other options to regulate coal-fired power plants, he adds. “Some people are portraying it as a huge disaster; I don’t think it’s as bad as that,” he says. “It’s a serious setback, but it’s one that we can move past.”