Berkeley Law assistant professor Melissa Murray recently received the 2010 Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Derrick A. Bell, Jr. Award. Every year, the Executive Committee of the AALS Minority Groups Section bestows the award on a junior faculty member who has made an extraordinary contribution to legal education, the legal system, or social justice through activism, mentoring, colleagueship, teaching, and scholarship. After graduating from Yale Law School in 2002, Murray clerked for Sonia Sotomayor—the newly appointed U.S. Supreme Court Justice—on the U.S 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. Murray, who teaches family law and criminal law, focuses her research on the roles that each play in articulating the legal parameters of intimate life.