By Andrew Cohen
Berkeley Law scholars who published new books in 2012-2013 were honored at the law school’s annual “Authors’ Prandium” last week. The reception showcased an intriguing mix of topics, ranging from a murder mystery to a scholarly study of Japan’s legal system.
For the second straight year, Professor Kenneth Bamberger played a humorous and musical role as master of ceremonies. Bamberger cajoled audience members to sing along to “We Lift a Glass,” with original lyrics adapted to the “Matchmaker” from Fiddler on the Roof. Each author was feted in the song parody and its celebratory chorus:
So we lift a glass in their honor today.
In one voice we say: “hip hip hooray!”
By your scholarship our community grew,
So now let us all toast you.
The year’s 11 books included legal casebooks and scholarly analyses, along with a sobering account of the human cost of climate change. In the fiction mix: a murder mystery about a Honolulu cop who receives anonymous haikus as clues.
The more prolific authors—professors Andrew Guzman, Neil Levy, and Harry Scheiber—each had two books published in 2012.
Bamberger praised Assistant Professor Rachel Stern’s book on environmental litigation in China for “turning on its head commonplace notions of how law works in the world’s largest country.” Professor Katerina Linos’s book on the spread of legal reforms across nations was endorsed on its back cover as “path breaking” by Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow.
The full list of faculty books:
David Caron. The UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules (2nd edition), co-editor Lee Caplan.
Andrew Guzman. International Trade Law (casebook, 2nd edition), co-author Joost Pauwelyn; Overheated: The Human Cost of Climate Change.
Robert Kagan. Consequential Courts: Judicial Roles in Global Perspective, co-editors Diana Kapiszewski, Gordon Silverstein.
Neil Levy. The Haiku Murders: A Lieutenant Liebes in Honolulu Mystery; Short Stuff: Flash Fiction, Haiku, and Aphorisms.
Katerina Linos. The Democratic Foundations of Policy Diffusion: How Health, Family and Employment Laws Spread Across Countries.
David Oppenheimer. Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law (casebook and teacher’s manual), co-authors Sheila Foster, Sora Han.
Harry Scheiber. The Japanese Legal System: An Era of Transition, co-editor Tom Ginsburg; The Wilson Administration and Civil Liberties: 1917-1921.
Rachel Stern. Environmental Litigation in China: A Study in Political Ambivalence.