By Gwyneth K. Shaw
In the opening weeks of the second Trump administration, as federal agencies abruptly slashed grant funding for research — jeopardizing critical scholarship and striking at a crucial funding source for colleges and universities — Clinical Professor Claudia Polsky ’96 waited for someone to step up and fight back.
From her perspective, the terminations were clearly arbitrary and a blatant violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. And some, such as diversity, equity, and inclusion- (DEI) related grant cancellations, also seemed to violate the First Amendment. But as the spring went on, and several universities and multiple law firms signed big-dollar settlements with the administration, there was no large-scale action to force the federal government to resume the grant funding.
Polsky, the founding director of Berkeley Law’s Environmental Law Clinic, has been a litigator for 30 years. The solution was obvious, she reasoned — and if nobody else would do it, she would.
“I could see that the only way we were going to get any action was for researchers to self-organize,” she says. “And the way to do that, if you don’t have an institution’s backing, is through a class action.”
At the beginning, Polsky thought she would just do some preliminary work, then hand the case off. Instead, she’s spent months toiling alongside a legal team that includes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and several alumni, including powerhouse plaintiff’s lawyer Elisabeth Cabraser ’78. Three researchers from Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment — Ken Alex and Nell Green Nylen, along with Executive Director Louise Bedsworth — are among the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
Cabraser’s firm, Lieff Cabraser, and Farella Braun + Martel have taken the case pro bono and supplied numerous lawyers to the team. The majority are also graduates of Berkeley Law or other University of California schools.
The lawsuit, which is ongoing in both district court and the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, has made a significant impact: So far, more than 1,000 grants estimated at more than $700 million across the 10-campus UC system have been restored, and six federal agencies are barred from terminating additional financial awards to UC researchers.
“What started as a loner effort has evolved into an incredible experience of extended teamwork for justice,” Polsky says. Her motivation, she adds, is as simple as something an aspiring law school student might write on their admissions essay: a belief in a fair and ordered society.
“If you’re a lawyer who’s not interested in upholding the rule of law, it’s kind of like a doctor who’s not interested in protecting health. It’s a self-contradiction,” she says.
Discussing the reluctance of many law firms, universities, and other institutions to push back against what she calls “fast fascism,” Polsky says: “I’ve been horrified at the level of fear among people who have more resources and more structural power than almost anyone in the history of the universe, anywhere.”
But, she adds, it’s inspiring to work with the researcher plaintiffs, “whose passion for knowledge creation to benefit society is infectious.”
With the rule of law under unprecedented pressure, Polsky is far from alone in the galaxy of Berkeley Law faculty, students, staff, and alumni. In courtrooms, classrooms, lecture halls, the media, and even internationally, they’re standing up for the bedrock principles of justice, democracy, and fairness.
Chemerinsky, who has emphasized the school’s public mission-oriented culture during his time as dean, says this work sends a critical message.
“I believe that our country is experiencing the most significant challenge to the rule of law in its history. As a law school, we have a special obligation to support and fight for the rule of law and for the principles in our Constitution,” he says. “As a dean, I think it important to articulate our values and commitments, to support the work for our faculty and students in upholding the rule of law, and to do what I can to be part of these efforts.”
Quick and timely responses
Some of that work is new, and in direct response to Trump’s election and the fallout from the many of his campaign promises coming to fruition — particularly the vow to begin mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
Shortly after the November 2024 election, alumni who defend undocumented immigrants approached Criminal Law & Justice Center (CLJC) Executive Director Chesa Boudin about building a way for the law school to respond to the expected increase in detentions. Within months, the Immigration Liberation Practicum was on the fall course schedule and Sophia Wang was hired as its supervising attorney.
After “unprecedented interest” from students, 10 were selected for the first semester and seven continued through the spring.
The group immediately got to work, partnering with local immigration rights activists to connect with people who had been detained. Quickly, they realized that habeas corpus petitions were the best — perhaps only — route to getting their clients released.
Sandhya Nadadur ’24 had previously worked on deportation defense cases and spent her second year in the CLJC’s postgraduate Larsen Justice Fellowship Program supporting Wang in the practicum. She says that it is much more challenging for immigrants to assert their rights and fight their immigration cases from detention. They are isolated from their community, held in remote facilities, and pressured to give up their cases.
“It was pretty clear right away that habeas is the only vehicle available for people to get out of detention,” Nadadur says. “While I’m sad this work is available at this moment because of what the administration is doing, it’s also a really powerful moment to be able to use this tool.”
In just two semesters, the practicum helped four immigrants win their release from detention, secured an order to prevent the arrest and re-detention of a long-time Bay Area resident, and gained the right for an asylum-seeker to have a bond hearing to challenge his detention after he’d been waiting over a year in detention for his case to be heard by an immigration judge.
The depth of the need for representation can be demoralizing at times, but Wang is encouraged by the national network emerging to share strategies and adaptations to the rapidly changing legal landscape.
“Even in California, where there’s so many nonprofits and so many resources relative to other parts of the country, it’s still not enough, and we are grateful that the school and CLJC can contribute these resources. But it’s a drop in the bucket,” Wang says. “At the same time, the advocacy community has been huge. And our clients’ resilience and spirit is really remarkable. They put so much trust in us and we can see how they’ve been working together to keep the spirit alive, keep hope alive, and to look out for each other, advocate for one another, helping people who don’t have attorneys file cases themselves, and to speak up for their rights.
“We’re finding there’s a ripple effect. When we’re working with someone, they feel more empowered to share the knowledge they’re learning from their case and advocate for other people and be a leader within the community they have inside.”
A deep bench
Other efforts emerged from existing sectors of the law school.
When Trump sent the National Guard to Los Angeles last summer, California Constitution Center Executive Director David A. Carrillo (J.D. ’95, LL.M. ’07, J.S.D. ’11) and Senior Research Fellow Brandon V. Stracener ’16 wrote an amicus curiae brief supporting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lawsuit against the administration seeking a restraining order to return control of the state’s National Guard to the governor.
Professor David Hausman’s leadership in the Deportation Data Project, which tracks immigration enforcement by analyzing the government’s own records, helped journalists and policymakers understand what U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is doing.
In January, the project released an analysis finding that deportations away from the border increased by a factor of 4.6 in the first nine months of the administration’s crackdown. During that period, ICE arrests quadrupled, and street arrests spiked by a factor of over 11 — with a sevenfold increase in arrests of people without criminal convictions. Voluntary departures by immigrants, typically rare compared to removals, increased by 21 times.
The analysis was widely covered by the news media, bringing hard numbers to a story that can get bogged down in anecdotes and funding debates.
“It’s been great to be able to test the government’s claims against its own data — and what we’ve found is that, as ICE has arrested more people, those arrests have become more and more random,” Hausman says.
Berkeley Law’s Edley Center on Law & Democracy, established in 2024 to honor the late former dean Christopher Edley Jr., works to defend and strengthen democratic institutions in the U.S. with research and public leadership.
Within months of Executive Director Catherine E. Lhamon’s arrival at the law school, she says the Trump administration was barreling through constitutional safeguards and asserting power the executive doesn’t have. In response, the center published a series of white papers outlining the law on multiple topics, including the president’s power to enact tariffs, the assault on higher education funding, and the movement to stamp out DEI initiatives.
The center also sponsors and hosts a steady stream of events centering the fight to protect democracy, including a March event on combating public corruption featuring former federal prosecutors and Watergate Special Prosecution Force member and Berkeley Law Herma Hill Kay Senior Continuing Lecturer in Residence Emeritus Henry Hecht.
Lhamon, who worked in the Biden administration and within California’s government, says law schools are an ideal place for this kind of center — and the kind of advocacy that’s at the core of being a lawyer.
“There are lots of places where someone can use legal skills to practice protecting democracy, protecting the public good, and protecting our communities,” she says. “But everybody, lawyer or no, has a responsibility to be an effective community member, to speak up when they see someone harmed, to speak up when something is not right and not righteous, and to help build a norm and a practice of treating people fairly and equally. That’s ultimately what our democracy is for.
“I think it’s really important for lawyers who have that training to go use it. Because even if you’re not a public servant or not working all the time for public justice, there will be opportunities — in your pro bono work, in a dinner table conversation, in walking down the street — for knowing what the law is, knowing what the guardrails are, and speaking to them.”
Accountability around the globe
Berkeley Law’s reach extends beyond the U.S. borders, and to issues that predate the current administration. The school’s Human Rights Clinic has long worked with international clients, and Clinical Professor and Director Roxanna Altholz ’99 was part of an unprecedented investigation that unearthed a massive conspiracy in January.
Last year, Altholz was one of three experts named to a special commission to investigate the 2016 assassination of Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres. The panel found that a criminal network diverted 67% of the more than $18.5 million provided by development banks for the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project — the very thing Cáceres tried to stop — to fund illegal surveillance operations, and ultimately her murder.
The report also implicates the powerful Honduran family that managed the dam project and says shell companies helped mask the illegal payments.
Altholz, who worked with clinic Supervising Attorney Helen Kerwin and multiple students on the investigation, says the law school’s support made it possible for her to participate and has been crucial in ways that are both practical and deeply meaningful.
For example, the investigators relied heavily on the law school’s IT team to develop the capacity to securely compile and analyze a massive amount of information. The clinical students’ “commitment, judgment, and stamina” made the report achievable, Altholz adds.
“At a deeper level, the clinic exists because the institution believes this work matters and belongs in legal education,” she says. “The law school’s sustained commitment to clinical teaching gave us the support to take on an ambitious project and the confidence to tell the truth we found.”
A critical part of the team’s report was a set of recommendations for reparations to Cáceres’ community, Altholz says — an element that was particularly important to her.
“Standing up for the rule of law right now isn’t enough if what we’re really doing is hoping to return to a ‘normal’ that has meant exclusion, exploitation, and impunity for many,” she says. “This moment calls on us to reimagine, to reform, and even to transform the law so it offers stronger protections, deeper commitments to justice, and greater accountability.”
Students in the Human Rights Center’s (HRC) Investigations Lab also helped pull the curtain back on the treatment of Venezuelans deported from the U.S. to El Salvador’s infamous Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT). Using open-source techniques developed at the center, the students used publicly-available videos — including those from influencers and public officials who visited the prison — to discover details about the prison’s architecture, sources of light, and access to water, and corroborate testimonials from prisoners.
They also used satellite imagery from the period when the prison was built to map out the facility. The students’ work, which was part of a report by Human Rights Watch and Cristosal, was also featured in a “60 Minutes” segment on CECOT.
“If there is ever going to be legal accountability for the abuses faced by the men deported to CECOT, it’s critical that there be a reliable basis of facts from which cases can be built. The gold standard for evidence collection is to bring together physical, documentary, and testimonial evidence,” HRC Co-Faculty Director Alexa Koenig Ph.D. ’13 says. “In this case, Human Rights Watch had powerful testimonies from the people who were impacted. Our students’ open source investigation produced additional documentary information that could be used to independently corroborate many of their allegations, strengthening faith in the facts to potentially bolster the testimonies’ use as evidence.
“This type of work is essential in order to strengthen the possibilities for legal justice, and in the process, assert the importance of adhering to the rule of law as people are deported from the United States.”
Public service, redefined
Since Trump took office, the U.S. court system has been the main lever to slow down or reverse some of his policies. Polsky says she’s disappointed that more institutions, particularly universities, haven’t fought harder.
“It’s been exhausting and emotionally consuming, but every single person — including me, including Erwin — who is working on this is working in a climate-controlled environment, in a private office with health benefits and a retirement plan,” she says. “Many people have exaggerated their level of personal and institutional risk to absolve themselves of the need to act when it’s socially uncomfortable. I don’t feel I’m putting myself at risk, and I did feel the need to do something.”
She’s also found the work gratifying, if grueling, in part because she’s received so much help and support from her Berkeley Law colleagues and alumni.
Chemerinsky, who has been a vociferous advocate for the Constitution and the rule of law, particularly through a torrent of columns and op-eds and the popular web series “It’s the Law,” says it’s imperative for lawyers and legal scholars to speak up.
“Berkeley Law’s public mission was crucial to my wanting to be dean here,” he says. “It is about a commitment to use the law to make our community, our society, and our world better. Especially at this moment, the work of Berkeley Law’s faculty, students, staff, and alumni are tremendously important.
“I am so proud to be dean at a school where there is such a deep commitment to a public mission.”