Dear Alumni and Friends:
A new semester has begun, bringing a fresh 1L class whose enthusiasm and smarts bring so much energy to the hallways around here that summer seems a distant memory at best. Some faculty members invariably find the arrival each fall of new students (born in the middle of Reagan’s first term?) makes them feel older, while others find the open and eager minds rejuvenating. This is one of the defining forces in academic life, along with the joy of teaching versus the agony of grading. For me, with the arrival of the students, I mostly kick myself for failing to take a vacation.
For this academic year, my personal plan has three important dimensions. The first is to redouble my efforts at working with alumni and moving our capital campaign ahead. We have almost completed fully staffing our Alumni Center operation under the remarkable veteran leadership of Louise Epstein, and this past year set records for both alumni gatherings and for contributions, with still more success to come. If we can build critical mass with core campaign funding over the next 18 months, we can stay on schedule with our plans to construct a new building and expand the faculty by 40 percent.
My second priority is to continue nurturing the evolution of our multidisciplinary research centers. Take a look at the news in the following pages to see but a sample of the remarkable growth and output to date of these exciting ventures.
Finally, my third priority is to have more interaction with students. Because of my deanship and fundraising duties, I have not yet had a chance to teach. This year, however, I’ll play a supporting role in a new course on the law and policy of K-12 education reform. Along with other participating Boalt faculty, we have enlisted California’s secretary of education, Alan Bersin, as a lecturer. We expect to tackle some of the toughest issues facing educators, policymakers and advocates in this era of standards-based accountability and increasing bipartisan commitment to higher achievement and broader equity.
As we head into this new academic year, there is a sense of exhilaration throughout the law school. While that is usually the case with beginnings, it seems particularly true this fall. Our faculty is fully engaged on the front lines of issues that matter, our students are piercingly bright and more focused than ever, and your sustained support for our critical public mission means we can continue to build on the excellence that defines Boalt.
There are more details in the update below—take a moment to read about our latest news. I look forward to keeping you posted on the exciting developments at Boalt throughout the year.
Sincerely yours,
Christopher Edley, Jr.
Dean and Professor of Law
Fall 2006 Update
Incoming Class of 2009
If you take a close look at the new Class of 2009 (2009!), here’s what you’ll find: physicians, journalists, entrepreneurs, artists and athletes, an ostrich and emu caretaker, an artisan baker, a competitive break dancer, a foreign service officer specializing in Chinese and Mongolian affairs, the voice of Winnie the Pooh at Disneyland, and the youngest woman to backpack the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. And that’s just the first mod.
The newest 1Ls reported for orientation on August 17, and they are all dazzling. Of the 7,159 applicants for this year’s class, Boalt admitted 11 percent for a 1L class of 266. They bring distinguished academic credentials including a median GPA of 3.78 and LSAT score of 166. They come from 38 states and 108 undergraduate schools, with Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, Harvard, Yale and Brown leading the pack. They range in age from 20 to 42. Some 55 percent are women and 34 percent are people of color. (20 percent Asian, five percent African American, eight percent Hispanic/Latino and one percent Native American). We also have 73 new LL.M. students from eight countries, 17 percent of whom already have graduate degrees.
Faculty Developments: Achievements and Honors
Boalt faculty members continue to stretch the boundaries of scholarship and achievement as they engage the most challenging issues of this young century.
Dan Farber, Sho Sato Professor of Law and director of Boalt’s environmental law program, is leading the charge in the field of disaster planning and prevention. Farber pioneered an innovative course last spring, Disasters and the Law: The Legal Implications of Hurricane Katrina, in which students had an opportunity to think through the issues that emerged from the legal system’s response to large-scale catastrophes. In addition, Farber’s new book Disasters and the Law: Katrina and Beyond with University of Minnesota Law Professor Jim Chen, was published on September 11, 2006,in what the authors describe as an effort to convert a once “shared sense of helplessness in the wake of Katrina into a modest contribution toward improving the law’s approach to hurricanes, earthquakes, and other disasters.” The book incorporates knowledge and experience from the fields of urban planning, bankruptcy law, and wetlands law, and examines the role of the legal process in disaster response and reconstruction.
Frank Zimring , William G. Simon Professor of Law and Wolfen Distinguished Scholar, and renowned criminal justice and family law expert, is the author of The Great American Crime Decline ( Studies in Crime and Public Policy) due out in November, which examines the crime decline of the 1990 and crime rate expectations for the future. Kristin Luker, Elizabeth Josselyn Boalt Professor of Law and Professor of Sociology, is celebrating the publication of When Sex Goes to School: Warring Views on Sex—and Sex Education—Since the Sixties, a probing look at the competing ideas and values underlying the debate over sex education through the lives of parents. Leti Volpp, Professor of Law, is co-editor of Legal Borderlands: Law and the Construction of American Borders, a collection of writings exploring the role of law in setting American legal and territorial boundaries. David Caron ’83, C. William Maxeiner Distinguished Professor of Law, is co-author of The UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules: A Commentary, focusing on the U.N. Commission on International Trade Law and its role in international arbitrations, including the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal and NAFTA disputes. Also marking publication of new and updated casebooks and treatises are Alan Auerbach, Jesse Choper, Philip Frickey, James Gordley, Herma Hill Kay, Peter Menell, Robert Merges, Pam Samuelson, Paul Schwartz and Eleanor Swift.
Meanwhile, Boalt is celebrating three of its most distinguished scholars at conferences honoring their life’s work. In September, the Center for the Study of Law & Society recognized the contributions of Harry Scheiber, the Stefan A. Riesenfeld Professor of Law and History, who directs the Institute for Legal Research and the Sho Sato Program in Japanese and U.S. Law. Scheiber is one of Boalt’s most esteemed professors. An international group of his students and collaborators spent the day at sessions on law, economics and natural resources, civil rights and constitutional law, legal history and law, and society studies and comparative legal history—all disciplines that have benefited from Scheiber’s insight and achievements.
On October 21, legal information scholars will gather for a symposium honoring Bob Berring ’74, the Walter Perry Johnson Professor of Law and former interim dean. The event will focus on Berring’s work on the historical role of legal information and the impact of digital technology on the legal information environment. The conference—Legal Information and the Development of American Law: Further Thinking about the Thoughts of Bob Berring—is sponsored by Boalt, the Robbins Collection and Thomson West legal publishers.
The following week, the Boalt community will pay tribute to constitutional and federal courts scholar Paul Mishkin, the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, Emeritus, at a conference on federal courts jurisdiction. Mishkin joined the Boalt faculty in 1973 and is the co-author of On Law in Courts and The Federal Courts and the Federal System.
Research Centers: Engaged on Multiple Fronts
The drive to make a difference in meeting today’s most urgent challenges is stronger than ever this year throughout Boalt’s multidisciplinary research centers. From land use and climate change to conversations with attorneys for the world’s most successful corporations to voting rights, K-8 education and affirmative action, Boalt’s research centers continue to lead the way. Here is a sampling of the latest activity.
The Berkeley Center for Law and Business (BCLB) has begun its second year under the guidance of Executive Director Dana Welch ’87 and Faculty Directors Jesse Fried and Eric Talley. High on its fall agenda is a speaker series that will run through November. Topics include white collar crime in the current regulatory environment, how to tap capital markets, and dialogues with the general counsels of Volkswagen of America and Safeway corporations. A roundtable on executive compensation is scheduled for October 3, with Alan Murray, assistant managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, moderating.
The Berkeley Center for Law and Technology (BCLT) has received a $700,000 grant over two years from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The center, under the leadership of Executive Director Robert Barr, will use the funds to support a comprehensive program of research, policy analysis and dissemination exploring the relationship between patent policy and entrepreneurship. In addition, a fall speaker series is underway featuring attorneys from more than 30 of the leading national and global intellectual property and technology firms speaking on topics ranging from open source licensing to patent exhaustion. The center is also planning a major symposium on copyright, digital rights management technology and consumer protection for next March.
At the California Center for Environmental Law & Policy (CCELP), Rick Frank has assumed the helm as the center’s first executive director, following a 29-year career as attorney and chief deputy with the California Attorney General’s office. Frank joins Associate Director Cymie Payne ’97 and Faculty Director Dan Farber as a second year of programming gets underway. On October 26 and 27, CCELP will co-host Litigating Takings and Other Legal Challenges to Land Use and Environmental Regulation, a major conference featuring the country’s leading experts in the field of environmental and land-use law. The program will devote special attention to the controversial 2005 U.S. Supreme Court eminent domain decision in Kelo v. New London.
On February 22 and 23, CCELP’s Global Commons Project will host Cap and Trade as a Tool for Climate Change Policy: Design and Implementation, an international conference for law, business and policy practitioners. Panelists will explore the legal and economic issues associated with the development of policies for controlling greenhouse gas emissions and slowing climate change. Cymie Payne is leading the effort in partnership with the American Society for International Law, the Goldman School of Public Policy, the Energy and Resources Group, the Berkeley Institute of the Environment, and the California Climate Change Center.
The Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity continues to bring its considerable energy to bear on some of today’s most pressing societal challenges. The institute will host a research conference on October 27 and 28, marking the 10th anniversary of the California proposition that eliminated affirmative action from the state’s public education system. Equal Opportunity in Higher Education: Proposition 209, Past and Future will feature a presidents’ roundtable discussion among Robert Dynes, president of the University of California, and the chancellors of three UC campuses: France Cordova from UC Riverside, Michael Drake from UC Irvine and Robert Birgeneau from UC Berkeley. These leaders will examine how Proposition 209 has affected student and faculty diversity in California’s higher education system.
The Warren Institute’s fall schedule also calls for issuing a report on voting rights and hosting a November conference examining reform measures proposed for the No Child Left Behind law.
The Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice
As Boalt works to build bridges to the future, it is also grateful to those who have paved the road behind it. With appreciation in mind, a capacity crowd of more than 600 friends and supporters, including San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, filled the San Francisco City Hall Rotunda on September 15 to celebrate the naming of the Center for Social Justice at Boalt Hall in honor of Judge Thelton E. Henderson ’62 and to salute one of Boalt’s most esteemed graduates.Guests attending the gala dinner paid tribute to Henderson’s legendary career as a distinguished jurist, humanitarian and pioneer in the advancement of civil rights. Henderson, appointed to the federal bench in 1980, serves as chief judge emeritus of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Eva Paterson ’75, president of the Equal Justice Society, hosted the evening, which featured presentations from Dean Christopher Edley; Mary Louise Frampton, director of the Henderson Center; and Ed Chen ’75, U.S. Magistrate for the Northern District of California. Stephen Reinhardt, justice of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, introduced Judge Henderson who spoke movingly about many of the people and moments that have shaped his career. “We must never forget,” he observed, “that while battles are still being won, the struggle is not over.”
To mark the inauguration of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, the center awarded the first annual Judge Thelton E. Henderson Social Justice Prize to Tirien Steinbach ’99, director of the Decriminalization of Poverty Practice at the East Bay Community Law Center, the community-based component of Boalt’s clinical program and one of the foremost poverty law clinics in the country.
Connecting on Issues of the Day
Boalt has created a new online forum, Boalt Speaks About…designed to bring together the many voices of the Boalt community around critical topics. The effort, led by David Caron, began with a look at terrorism and its impact on law and governance. Alumni and faculty are invited to share knowledge and opinions on a range of timely topics. The website is located at www.law.berkeley.edu/news/boalt_speaks. Take a look.
A special in-house discussion on terrorism took center stage on September 8 and 9 when Boalt presented Governing and Living in a Time of Terror: Law Beyond 9/11, a conference for faculty, alumni, staff and students, together with UC Berkeley faculty. The event, organized by Caron and David Kaye ’95, launched a long-term research initiative examining the legal and public policy effects of the September 11 attacks. The program featured provocative discussions on the landscape of law and terrorism and the role of the academy in developing terrorism policy. Participants included leading policy makers—including former congressmen Mel Levine and Haas Business School Dean Tom Campbell—and some 20 Law Building faculty members. A comprehensive conference report setting forth research priorities is expected in December.
Planning the New, Reinvigorating the Old
Ambitious plans are proceeding for the new building Boalt will share with the Haas School of Business. The architectural firm Moore Ruble Yudell has finished the schematic design phase for the project and a model of the building is due later this fall.
Meanwhile, contractors created four new seminar rooms this summer by transforming the former Moot Court room and the old mail room. The new spaces feature enhanced audio and video capability, and newly installed cameras to tape moot court and evidence advocacy sessions. Remodeling also transformed the former faculty library on the third floor of the North Addition into new visitor and staff offices. Next up: installing electrical outlets for laptops in Booth Auditorium.
Alumni Participation: Robust and Record-Breaking
Boalt begins this new academic year inspired by alumni and friends who are responsible for the best fundraising year on record. More than 4,300 donors—including 670 contributing for the first time—pledged an unprecedented $12.1 million to the Campaign for Boalt Hall to initiate the most ambitious fundraising effort in the law school’s history. Boalt’s Partners in Leadership program registered its most successful year ever, raising almost $1.6 million from 58 participating law firms, home to 933 alumni.
All-Alumni Reunion
Reunion classes and alumni joined the celebration here at Boalt on September 30 for the All-Alumni Reunion. The agenda included a full program of social events and panel discussions on topics as diverse as the Roberts court and wine law. It was a wonderful opportunity to catch up with old friends and professors, and renew connections and commitments to Boalt. Even if you couldn’t make it to the reunion, it is not too late to participate in the reunion campaign. Please visit www.law.berkeley.edu/reunion to make a gift or pledge, if you haven’t already.