Media Highlights

“One of the most important themes of the term will be the Supreme Court having to deal with the internet and social media more than ever before,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of Berkeley Law.

Ethan Elkind,director of the climate program at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, UC Berkeley School of Law discusses how California is addressing pedestrian safety issues.

Dean Erwin Chemerinky discusses DA Thien Ho’s lawsuit against the City of Sacramento for not adequately solving the problem of encampments of unhoused individuals. He writes: “The court can’t build more housing or more shelters or provide more social services. It is impossible to see how Ho’s suit will do anything to help.”

Chris Hoofnagle, faculty director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology and Professor of Law in Residence at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law discusses Berkeley Law’s policy and use of generative AI in the classroom.

Berkeley Law’s Criminal Law and Justice Center, or CLJC, held its inaugural event Tuesday, hosting UC Santa Cruz professor Angela Davis in conversation with Chesa Boudin, the center’s executive director.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky discusses ethics at the Supreme Court.

“Other than the occasional fatal admission, with respect to his criminal cases, there is no public interest in putting this man on television. The lies and distortions are nearly constant. Media who give him a platform are failing the public,” said Herman F. Selvin Professor of Law at UC Berkeley Jonah B. Gelbach.

To understand slavery in all its cruelty, writes historian and Berkeley Law professor Dylan C. Penningroth, we have to grasp what sounds like an oxymoron: the legal lives of slaves.

“Since 2016, the Investigations Lab we founded at the Human Rights Center, a multidisciplinary research institution on the UC Berkeley campus, has trained hundreds of students how to search social media for information about possible human rights violations,” write Alexa Koenig and AndreaLampros, co-founders of the Investigations Lab at UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center. “We founded the Lab to create a pipeline of professionals with the latest research skills, but also to support the work of journalists, human rights researchers, and lawyers who may not have the training or time to find reliable data online to strengthen their investigations.”

“The court opened the door to arguments like Whole Foods’,” said University of California at Berkeley law professor Catherine Fisk. “I expect we will see a lot more.”

Funding for hydrogen stations is “largely a waste of money” for an “industry that has not proved itself after well over a decade of subsidy in California,” said Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at UC Berkeley Law.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law and a 1st Amendment scholar, said it would be easy to cast the decision as another conservative panel ruling against guns, but the decision really wasn’t about guns, but speech — and the decision was “consistent with Supreme Court decisions with regard to commercial speech.”

“There’s very little attention paid to careers on the plaintiff’s side,” said Kate Walford, PLA co-president and third year law student. “(We) really wanted to provide students with resources about this career path and make it a more obvious career path to students within the school, because that wasn’t something that they were seeing coming from the law school (and) legal community at large.”

“It’s kind of like a zero sum type of game in the sense that the more rights you give to fetuses, the fewer rights you give to the people that actually gestate them,” said Professor Khiara M. Bridges.

The social media claim is “blatantly false,” said Chesa Boudin executive director of the Criminal Law and Justice Center at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

“The challenge is to find ways to combat the spread of false information that can harm public safety without jeopardizing freedom of expression,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “The government identifying false speech and notifying social media companies is a sensible way to address this problem.”

“All of the things that the California insurers are asking for, the Florida insurers are allowed to do and then some,” said Dave Jones, a former California insurance commissioner who now directs the University of California, Berkeley law school’s Climate Risk Initiative. “I do believe we’re steadily marching towards an uninsurable future, not only in California, but throughout the United States.”

The bill doesn’t actually give water regulators new powers, but it adds specificity to what was previously a vague section of the state’s water law, said Nell Green Nylen, a senior research fellow at the UC Berkeley School of Law’s Wheeler Water Institute.

Berkeley Law Professor Diana Reddy discusses what is behind this “hot labor summer” and whether the promising trends are here to stay.

“California’s government became more accessible during the pandemic,” writes Professor Jennifer M. Urban, director of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic, co-director of Berkeley Center for Law & Technology and chair of the California Privacy Protection Agency’s board. “The state has a chance to maintain and grow accessibility for the public and for those who serve the public on boards, bureaus and commissions – but it requires prompt action.”

Mark Cohen from Berkeley Law offers a US perspective on lesser-known aspects of the challenging relationship that exists between the global powers of China and the United States in a new IAM special report – ‘The World’s Rising Patent Powerhouse: A window into the key drivers and developments shaping the Asia-Pacific IP landscape.’ 

Lecturer and co-director of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law’s trial competition program, Spencer Pahlke and Justin Bernstein write about three lessons from mock trial that can be incorporated into trial work regardless of practice area.

“We have seen climate-related, and certainly fire-related, impacts on jails and prisons across the globe with an increasing level and severity as climate change has picked up pace,” said Chesa Boudin, executive director of Berkeley Law’s Criminal Law & Justice Center.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes about the recent Supreme Court decisions that are leading to a great deal of litigation.

This past July, Berkeley Law Human Rights Center, or HRC, partnered with the International Center for Transitional Justice, or ICTJ, to train Yemeni field monitors and investigators seeking to address human rights violations in Yemen’s civil war.

The quandary of how to balance innovation and risk is discussed on Coffee Break with Irene Liu, a Berkeley Boosts webinar series from Berkeley Law Executive Education.

Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment at the UC Berkeley School of Law are leading a project to explore the creation of a Direct Air Capture (DAC) facility that uses cutting-edge technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in California’s Southern San Joaquin Valley.

“No judge will get targeted for issuing too harsh of a sentence, but they will get targeted if they’re perceived as too lenient,” said Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

“The law on this is unclear, because it is a new issue,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. “The students being minors does make the legal questions more difficult, but even as minors they have privacy rights.”

Author Tony Platt worked with Berkeley Law professors Nazune Menka and Seth Davis, and students from Menka’s “Decolonizing UC Berkeley” class, and many other on his book “The Scandal of Cal: Land Grabs, White Supremacy and Miseducation at UC Berkeley.” 

Jonathan Simon, a criminal justice professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, said businesses probably do have relatively accurate estimates of how much their inventory is shrinking due to theft. And that it’s possible retail theft has increased partially because of online resale platforms, which serve as a conduit for organized theft for profit.

Berkeley Law is named one of three law schools that offer a legal education relevant in today’s digital age.

“If designed well, deployment of a DAC hub in this region could provide important economic and environmental benefits to communities that have been affected by the impacts of climate disruption on the agricultural economy, and which are likely to experience negative impacts as a result of the transition from the reliance on fossil fuels,” said Louise Bedsworth, executive director of Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment. 

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky comments on Vivek Ramaswamy’s proposal to amend the Constitution to take away rights to vote.

“We feel this is just a really opportune time, especially in Sacramento where we have strong policy frameworks,” Executive Director of CLEE Louise Bedsworth said. “We have a lot of political support for taking action on climate and the environment. This seems like a really good time to be building this out.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky analyzes the Georgia indictments.

“If Trump is convicted in federal or state court of the crimes with which he has been charged, he should be deemed ineligible to run for president,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “Even if he is not convicted, there is a compelling case that the Constitution bars him from ever holding office again.”

Civil rights activist and Berkeley Law alum Pauli Murray LL.M. ’45, will be memorialized on a special U.S. quarter starting early next year.

“We felt strongly that her life was as precious to her family as it would have been had she been younger, and that we shouldn’t let the formalistic aspects of wage loss or medical expenses control the resolution,” said lecturer Shanin Specter.

“We think of crime and youth violence and youth crime as a systemic societal issue that’s the responsibility of society to correct,” said Rachel Wallace, interim deputy director at the advocacy clinic. “If we’re not giving youth the opportunities to succeed and they’re turning to cycles of violence or cycles of crime, that’s something that is a societal problem that we should all be investing in.”

Chesa Boudin speaks with In These Times about his new job at Berkeley’s Criminal Law and Justice Center and how he thinks abolitionists can win in San Francisco, California, and the nation.

“I do believe we’re steadily marching towards an uninsurable future, not only in California, but throughout the United States,” said Dave Jones, Director of Berkeley Law’s Climate Risk Initiative.

Mark Cohen, an expert on Chinese IP at Berkeley Law discusses the Agreement of Cooperation on Science and Technology between the United States and China. 

Louise Bedsworth, executive director of the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment discusses the $2,999,999 feasibility study awaiting final approval by the U.S. Department of Energy to be led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment.

“Ten years ago there was a reasonable argument that hydrogen could make up a pretty significant percentage of our zero emission transportation needs,” said Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at UC Berkeley Law. “But at this point battery electric has completely dominated the light duty sector, and is looking to dominate on heavy duty, as well.”

The court is making decisions based on the GOP platform, not the Constitution, says Professor Khiara M. Bridges.

“It’s important for schools to clearly state that the disruption of speakers is not tolerated, and if students do that, they will face academic discipline,” says Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law and an ABA Journal contributor.

Negotiating collectively could help boxers reap the benefits that other professional sports players have long enjoyed, said Catherine Fisk, an employment and labor law professor at the University of California Berkeley School of Law

“This isn’t binding precedent, just a ruling by one trial judge in one state,” said Berkeley Law professor Daniel Farber. “But it will certainly encourage other litigation and give other judges a little more comfort about ruling this way.”

Legal expert Daniel Farber, a law professor at UC Berkeley, says, although the charges are in Georgia, they have broad implications nationwide.

Dean Chemerinsky writes about the many legal actions against Trump and explains the potential consequences for each.

Berkeley law Professor Kathryn Abrams discusses efforts by Republicans in Ohio and Missouri to undermine a push by pro-choice advocates for more reproductive rights.

Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment and Berkeley Law discusses congestion pricing and LA Metro’s study examining which parts of the city could benefit most from adopting the practice, and the environmental and public health benefits it could bring.

Ted Mermin, executive director of the Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice at Berkeley Law writes about the effects of the practice of  ‘poverty tows’ in California cities.

“Today, the CCPA no longer reflects the reality of consumer debt in America, and its approach to wage garnishment is in need of reform,” writes Berkeley Law Professor Prasad Krishnamurthy. 

“What is clear is that cities cannot make it a crime or a public nuisance for people to be homeless when there is not adequate shelter space,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

“In my career I don’t remember ever seeing this degree of largesse given to anybody,” said Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge who served for years on the judicial committee that reviews judges’ financial disclosures and executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute.

Berkeley Law’s Dean Erwin Chemerinsky discusses the Trump indictment.

“Officials targeted with a recall, the most personal of the direct democracy devices, are unsurprisingly unhappy about having to defend against it,” write Joshua Spivak and David Carrillo of Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center. “But voters should not be fooled when their targets complain about risks to democracy.”

Professor Kathryn Abrams writes about the defeat of Ohio’s abortion vote and Republicans implementation of other strategies to oppose pro-abortion citizen initiatives.

“It’s one thing for courts to review individual government actions, but [another] for courts to take on the general operation of the government and say, ‘no you’ve got to change your whole overall policy,’” Daniel Farber, a climate law expert and University of California Berkeley Law School professor, told CNN.

UC Berkeley law professor Orin Kerr explains how Fourth Amendment jurisprudence applies to a digital age.

What’s significant about the Hawaii and Montana cases is how far they’ve gotten, said Dan Farber, a law professor and expert in climate litigation at the University of California at Berkeley. The Hawaii case would be only the second to see a trial. 

Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge who leads the Berkeley Judicial Institute in California, said Cannon made “two fairly significant mistakes” during jury selection in the June trial, but said it’s hard to gauge their consequences because the trial did not move forward.

It’s “nothing short of astounding” how attitudes toward the law have changed, largely because few realized at first how far it would reach, said Holly Doremus, a University of California, Berkeley law professor.

Assistant professor at Berkeley Law Diana Reddy said that allegations that fall outside legally protected categories could undermine Lizzo’s body-positive message and “could certainly encourage a settlement.”

Professor Khiara M. Bridges joins host Jonquilyn Hill to discuss the over-the-counter birth control pill on the podcast The Weeds.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes about what the SCOTUS decision to eliminate affirmative action means for California schools.

Professor Orin Kerr writes about Fourth Amendment limits on the government’s power to order Internet providers to run off copies of people’s online accounts and save them for possible later government access.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes about unanswered questions following the Supreme Court rulings on labor and employment law.

“I applaud what the Department of Education is doing, but I think it’s going to be legally much harder to challenge legacy preferences,” said Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. 

Jonathan Simon, a professor of criminal justice at UC Berkeley’s law school, said incarcerating people over minor property crimes makes little sense. “Jail does real harm and makes it more likely the person will be arrested again,” Simon said.

“Streaming has given the studios one more way to exploit writers—and the writers are pushing back,” writes Catherine L. Fisk, faculty director of Berkeley Law’s Center for Law and Work.

“I think it’s going to lead to a great deal of litigation and will take a lot of time to clarify the standard,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley Law.

David Nahmias, an attorney with the Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice at UC Berkeley School of Law discusses deceptive techniques businesses use to make it difficult for consumers to cancel subscriptions. 

“As schools strive to have a diverse student body after the court’s decision, much can be learned from the experience of states where affirmative action already had been eliminated,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. 

Angeli Patel, executive director at the Berkeley Center for Law and Business discusses BlackRock’s ESG policies.

“Due to the failure to substantially reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in the U.S. and globally, we are marching steadily to an uninsurable future,” writes Dave Jones, director of the Climate Risk Initiative at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment.

Judge Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute discusses ethics at the Supreme Court.

Highly technical benefits like tax credits have always been hard for any administration to tell the public about, according to Holly Doremus, an environmental regulation professor at the University of California Berkeley School of Law. 

The University of California, Berkeley School of Law was the first to adopt a formal policy on the use of artificial intelligence in the classroom, but for now the school has decided not to specifically ban ChatGPT from the application process, said assistant dean of admissions Kristin Theis-Alvarez.

Kristin Theis-Alvarez, the assistant dean of admissions and financial aid at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, estimates that a third of the applicant pool discusses their race or ethnicity in narrative statements. “Almost always this is raised in relation to a broader discussion of points of intersection between their racial and ethnic identity, their lived experience, and their interest in law school or specific career goal,” said Kristin Theis-Alvarez.

“Traditional law enforcement approaches have largely failed to disrupt sideshows and so we are seeing a proliferation of new strategies to respond,” said Chesa Boudin, executive director of Berkeley Law’s Criminal Law & Justice Center. 

“If city council members want to express their views — either in support for striking workers or in opposition — that is their constitutional right and part of the normal political process,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

Professor Pamela Samuelson discusses a study she conducted examining recent lawsuits initiated by artists and writers that highlight the controversial nature of generative AI. 

“More and more, we’re hearing from students wanting to play a positive role in the future wellbeing of our planet, as the impacts of climate change increase all over the world,” says Daniel Farber, Faculty Director of the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment at Berkeley.

Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, UC Berkeley School of Law discusses what it would take to make cycling safer in California, and how can we improve the state’s biking infrastructure to encourage more riders?

Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial institute discusses ethics at the Supreme Court with Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus.

Professor Andrea Roth discusses new evidence in the Menendez brothers’ case. “If the trials were held today and included Erik Menendez’s letter to Cano and Rosselló’s allegations against Jose Menendez, the second trial may have played out differently,” said Roth.

“There is a huge difference between the city, as an entity, taking the coercive action of not renewing a contract, and individual city officials expressing their views,” said Dean Erwin Chemerinksy.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky discusses the recent SCOTUS term. 

Lecturer Spencer Pahlke discusses how advocacy skills transfer from law school to law practice to life; the forgotten lessons of mock trial that you should resurrect; and how learning, practicing, and teaching are part of a career-long cycle for the skilled advocate.

“The lawsuits raise some very interesting questions,” said UC Berkeley law school professor Pamela Samuelson. “The courts will take them really seriously, but it’s a little bit early to know how the court’s going to look at it.”

“Organizations that take on the public function of protecting at-risk children must be held publicly accountable when they don’t do their job,” said Shanin Specter with the Law Firm Kline & Specter.

“California Gov. Gavin Newsom made the right choice on Friday, July 7, in announcing that he would not continue to fight for parole for Leslie Van Houten,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “Since 2016, parole boards have recommended her release from custody five separate times. Each time, the governor — twice Jerry Brown and three times Newsom — overruled that decision.”

Professor Khiara M. Bridges discusses the U.S. Supreme Court’s latest term and credibility.

“The majority opinion stressed that race can’t be used as a factor in admissions decisions,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky said. “I think that that would also lead to the conclusion it can’t be used in financial-aid decisions, either.”

“It’s vitally important to hold responsible the child welfare services agencies, and when they don’t do so, it’s important for there to be accountability through the court system on those failings,” said Shanin Specter with the Law Firm Kline & Specter.

“The Supreme Court should have ruled, like the lower courts, that the state has a compelling interest in stopping discrimination,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

Professor Khiara M. Bridges discusses Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s first term.

“I read the America First message as their trying to pressure law schools to read the decision very broadly and to curtail efforts to pursue diversity in all areas,” said Dean Chemerinsky.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky discusses the recent SCOTUS ruling on the Indian Child Welfare Act. 

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley’s law school and one of the country’s top constitutional scholars, said he thinks a constitutional convention is “very unlikely” but warned that it’s an untested and dangerous plan.

In an interview with Professor Khiara M. Bridges, she says “It really is hard to reconcile these decisions with one another in terms of an overarching theory of law.” 

While the revelation cannot change the decision, “it’s something that should’ve come up in the litigation,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of Berkeley Law, “because then what the court should have done is say we have doubts about this, we can’t resolve it, we send it back to the federal district court.”

“There’s a desire in both professions to get at the truth and figure out what the evidence points to and that kind of thing, but I think journalists and judges go about it differently,” said Judge Jeremy Fogel, Executive Director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute.

“In striking down the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness program, the Supreme Court ignored one of the most basic principles of law: When the text of a law is clear, it must be followed unless it is unconstitutional,” writes Dean Erwin Chemeninsky.

Professor Daniel Farber writes about what the SCOTUS affirmative action ruling means for California.

Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Sharon Inkelas, a distinguished professor of linguistics, associate vice provost for the faculty and special faculty to the chancellor on campus welfare at UC Berkeley, write about the attack on considerations of diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education. 

“It is time for a powerful new approach that creates possibilities for students with perspectives and experiences across race and ethnicity; across socio economic status; across gender; and across rural and city centers alike,” write Berkeley Law Professor John Powell and Yasmin Cader, deputy legal director and the director of The Tone Center for Justice and Equality at the American Civil Liberties Union.   

“The term will be most remembered for the decisions of the last couple of days that moved the law in a dramatically conservative direction,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley Law School, referring to the affirmative action, web designer and student loans rulings.

Professor Khiara M. Bridges discusses the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky discusses the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action in college admissions.

“Public schools in California — and in other states like Washington and Michigan — where affirmative action has been eliminated, must now be leaders and show how to achieve diversity without engaging in affirmative action,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinksy.

Berkeley Law’s Dean Emeritus Christopher Edley, Jr., comments on the affirmative action debate.

“I think that had the cards been dealt some other way, it very well could have come out a different way for me had I gone to Harvard, UNC, or the University of Texas at Austin for law school, because these schools do use race-conscience admissions,” said Traelon Rodgers, a third year law student at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

“Law firms will have to develop some expertise around these new rules, that’s going to take time,” said Adam Badawi, a UC Berkeley Law professor. “If these rules do become final, it will take a year or two for them to start feeling comfortable with them and it’s going to slow the deal process down.”

“Many people active in open source reporting will be playing close attention to whether the BBC succeeds,” said Alexa Koenig, executive director of the Human Rights Center at the University of California at Berkeley’s law school. 

Dean Erwin Chemerinksy discusses how this session’s Supreme Court rulings on voting rights have broken with recent trends.

The Honorable Jeremy Fogel, Executive Director of Berkeley Law’s Berkeley Judicial Institute comments on controversies over perks accepted by Supreme Court justices.

“A state government should not be able to sue the federal government just because it disagrees with a federal policy, writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

“Why don’t the Supreme Court justices understand that they would benefit greatly from an ethics code and an independent office to assess their ethical issues?,” writes Dean Chemerinsky.

“I’ve always marveled at the fact that a lot of people think that courts are like ‘Judge Judy,’ or that [they are like] some other show they see on TV,” said Judge Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute. “When I was a young lawyer, they expected you to do what Perry Mason did: produce the guilty person.”

“Most big firms, I think they’d say they’re busier again,” said Adam Sterling, the assistant dean for executive education and revenue generation at Berkeley Law. “But law firms aren’t great about managing their head count on a regular basis. Often, they take action in response to crises. Either there’s too much work and attorneys are complaining about how much they’re billing, or the market is slowing, and some firms are laying off people, so others say we should do it as well.”

“We’re so far removed from anything that’s ever happened,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law expert at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s just guessing.”

Musk’s takeover sparked a “reprioritization of what Twitter means to the world,” said Alexa Koenig, the co-director of the Berkeley School of Law’s Human Rights Center. “I think right now, any responsibility to respect, protect and remedy human rights violations that the company may be causing or contributing to is very clearly taking a back seat to the financial interests.” 

“Many of us are watching to see how visual and other forms of digital evidence become useful or are challenged, what the judges think,” said Alexa Koenig, a co-director of the University of California, Berkeley’s Human Rights Center and a leading expert on the use of emerging technologies in human rights practice.

“All of this evidence that we’ve seen is that any harm to the states is so weak, it’s way too hypothetical,” said David Nahmias, a staff attorney at the Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice at UC Berkeley School of Law. “For a party to have standing to sue they need to indicate they’ll be directly injured by a policy and that a court could redress the harm.”  

“Escalations of assaults and shootings can have ripple effects for years,” said UC Berkeley law Professor Jonathan Simon, noting that friends or family members often feel compelled to retaliate. “Disrupting that cycle is complex and challenging. Traditionally, the onus has been on law enforcement to intervene, though in recent years many cities have shifted resources from police to civilian interrupters, whose work is still “an imperfect art form.” 

“Like affordable housing, mobility and transportation are a basic human right,” said Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program for the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at University of California Berkeley law school.

Retired U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, who presided in the Northern District of California, said judges are “uniquely situated” to educate the public as neutral parties. And they’re encouraged by most codes of conduct to do so, said Fogel, who now serves as executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute.

“The Economic Inclusion Civil Rights Act would be the most important legislative advance for civil rights in over a quarter century,” explains the Dean of UC Berkeley School of Law, Professor Erwin Chemerinsky. “It would restore the law to what it was before unfortunate Supreme Court decisions that very restrictively interpreted landmark civil rights statutes. The new Act would be a vital protection against discrimination and achieving economic justice.” 

“If I’m a lawyer sitting in court, week after week, watching juries come in and I’m not seeing Black people, I’m not seeing Latinx people, and I know what their population is in my county, I know something is wrong,” said Elizabeth Semel, an expert on discriminatory jury practices and co-director of the Death Penalty Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. “But how can I figure it out without the data? I can’t.”

Berkeley Law, which has an acceptance rate of under 13%, collects detailed financial data from accepted students through need-based scholarship applications in order to direct financial aid to them in hopes they will enroll. But bolstering economic diversity does not yield the same level of racial diversity as considering race directly, Chemerinsky said.

Chesa Boudin discusses his new role as the founding director of Berkeley Law’s new Criminal Law & Justice Center.

David Nahmias, a staff attorney with the UC Berkeley Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice, discusses the parens patriae legal theory. 

By offering this support, Berkeley Law Executive Education hopes not only to “mitigate the disruption caused by job loss, but also to foster a vibrant, interconnected community of lifelong learners, ready to adapt to and shape the future of the legal profession,” said Adam Sterling assistant dean of Berkeley Law’s Executive Education and Revenue Generation, and the executive director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Business at Berkeley Law.

Three Jewish students at Berkeley Law received a standing ovation in a Tel Aviv ballroom while receiving an award for Campus Advocacy from the American Jewish Committee.

“Just as cities don’t wait for rush hour to erect traffic lights, the state shouldn’t wait until widespread water scarcity strikes again to empower the Water Board to respond effectively,” write Nell Green Nylen, senior research fellow at the Wheeler Water Institute in the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at Berkeley Law, Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute and Dave Owen, professor at UC College of the Law San Francisco. 

“Gadfly, provocateur, contrarian,” said Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment at UC Berkeley, after being asked to describe the group. “They present themselves as, ‘We’re basically liberals, just ones who arrive at different conclusions.’ ”

“The Biden administration crossed a constitutional Rubicon this week,” write Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo and Washington Fellow of the Claremont Institute Center for the American Way of Life, Robert Delahunty. “For the first time in our history, federal prosecutors have charged a former president.”

“All other judges in the country — state and federal — are bound by ethical rules,” writes Dean Chemerinsky. “It is inexcusable that the most important and powerful judges are not.”

Professor Orin Kerr comments on some the investigative steps taken in search for the Idaho killer.

“The fish don’t care if the lawyers are trying to figure out who’s right or wrong if they’re dead,” said Michael Kiparsky, water program director at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at UC Berkeley School of Law.

Dean Chemerinsky writes about the Supreme Court’s decision on voting rights.

“We’re not advocating a vote for or against any of the educational quality measures, but we are in favor of clear constitutional commands,” write David A. Carrillo and Stephen M. Duvernay of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law.

“I am thrilled to be joining a phenomenal group of scholars and students whose work and ideas inspire me everyday,” Boudin said. “Their creativity, their energy, their vision — I am excited to be part of this team and am excited for all of the work we will do together.”

Professor Adam Badawi comments on the PGA Tour and LIV Golf deal.

Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at the UC Berkeley School of Law, said it’s vital that state officials look ahead now to improve how the system functions to respond to the next drought.

Professor Sarah Song’s book “Immigration and Democracy” (Oxford) is discussed in Idrees Kahloon’s piece.

“Descriptively speaking, it’s not a doctrine, because there is no case law behind it,” Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, told me. “Normatively speaking, I hope it doesn’t become a doctrine, because it’s incredibly frightening.”

“The National Labor Relations Act was intended to provide clarity and solid ground on which employees and employers could resolve their differences,” write Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Professor Catherine Fisk. “With Thursday’s ruling, the justices have done the opposite, and workers will pay the price.”

“It’s going to bring relief to a lot of vulnerable families,” said Devan Shea, who helps run the Berkeley Law clinic that studied Arizona’s juvenile court fees.

“The long-term task and responsibility of those who believe in a more just criminal legal system are to educate the public to see these issues with greater clarity — and to mobilize that public to build institutions and infrastructure capable of supporting a society that is safe and just for all,” writes Chesa Boudin, executive director of Berkeley Law’s Criminal Law and Justice Center. “That work is now more important than ever. I look forward to the challenge of taking it on.”

Boudin, who has largely stayed quiet since the recall, steps into a new role this week, as the founding executive director of the new Criminal Law and Justice Center at the U.C. Berkeley School of Law. 

“Make no mistake, deposits in the United States are insured whether the law says so or not,” writes Professor Krishnamurthy. “It is time to recognize this reality and adopt explicit and progressive insurance for large deposits.”

Professor John Yoo with Robert Delahunty, a Washington fellow of the Claremont Center for the American Way of Life, says ethics war on the Supreme Court is a warning for 2024.

“What makes the Fifth Circuit so stunning is not only that it’s dominated by Republican appointees but how conservative they are,” Dean Chemerinsky said.

Berkeley Law Professor Kristen Holmquist discusses how lawyers and law schools are grappling with cultural competency.

Professor of Law Khiara M. Bridges joins hosts Lori Adelman and Leila Durabi for a conversation about reproductive rights.

“There are still some open questions about the extent to which states can issue rules like this,” said Tejas Narechania, faculty director at the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology. “I think the decision here maybe points toward the states being able to do more of that. I think that’ll be true in the tech space, in particular.”

Law enforcement prosecutions are inherently difficult, UC Berkeley law Professor Jonathan Simon allowed. State law enables police to use deadly force when they reasonably believe they are threatened; juries bring a set of presumptions into the courtroom and historically they have been swayed by testimony of police officers. Considering all these hurdles, “it’s inevitably rare that officers are charged for using force in the course of their jobs,” Simon said, let alone convicted.

“The decision is not remarkable in that it follows decades of precedent,” writes Dean Chemerinsky. “Its significance is that it did not impose significant new restrictions on states’ regulatory power. But given how readily the Roberts court has abandoned precedents and ruled in favor of business and against regulation, it is notable and welcome.”

State law mandates that California switch to clean energy and achieve carbon neutrality by 2045. Offshore wind could play an important role, said Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, because the power it generates is somewhat more constant than land-based wind or solar.

“If charges are filed, defense counsel will ask for discovery of all evidence known to the D.A. at the time that she expressed her initial opinion, on the basis that the evidence is reasonably likely to be exculpatory,” said Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge and now executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute at UC Berkeley Law School

“It is the responsibility of those who know her and that she respects to ask her to do a final act of great public service for California and the country: resign,” writes Dean Chemerinsky.

The community action group Clean Cape Fear in North Carolina, US, has joined forces with the University of California Berkeley Environmental Law Clinic to formally request that the United Nations investigate multiple alleged human rights violations related to chemical manufacturer Chemours’ release of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from its Fayetteville plant along the lower Cape Fear river.

The erosion of the court’s public esteem is not due entirely to the tenor of its recent decisions, UC Berkeley law professor Jeremy Fogel, a former federal and California state judge and currently executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute, told the committee. Among other important factors, Fogel mentioned “a persistently hyperpartisan political environment … and the pervasiveness of social media as a source of misinformation and disinformation about the law, the judicial process and the judges and justices to whom that process is entrusted.”

“Millions of Americans live one purchase away from emptying their bank account, and they pay a steep price for oversights in account management,” writes Berkeley Law Professor Prasad Krishnamurthy. “Better regulation can stop banks from preying on consumer inattention so that overdrafts and NSF can truly function as a means of emergency credit, at least until better options emerge.”

Former federal judge Jeremy Fogel, now executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute at UC-Berkeley Law School, said in prepared remarks it was “awkward” for him to testify because he admires Roberts and understands the complications of adopting a code of ethics for the justices.

Coverage of the hearing on Supreme Court Ethics in which The Honorable Jeremy Fogel, Berkeley Judicial Institute Executive Director participated.

Joshua Spivak, senior research fellow at Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center discusses third parties.

Jeremy Fogel, a former federal district judge and the executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute at the University of California, Berkeley Law School, said other federal judges on the lower courts would benefit alongside the public from the Supreme Court’s taking a more active stance on ethics.

“Part of this story is about how the system they created was vulnerable and all this information was available to someone else.”said Orin Kerr, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley who specializes in criminal procedure and privacy. 

“There should be no First Amendment right to use speech to cause a reasonable person to fear for their safety,” writes Dean Chemerinsky. “Based on oral arguments in the Supreme Court on April 19 in Counterman v. Colorado, however, it appears that the justices are likely to make it much harder to prove that speech is a threat.”

“I think the court is slower this year, but it has been pretty slow in recent years, too,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. “It does mean that there again will be a flurry of blockbuster decisions in June,” he added.

If the UN human rights commission chooses to investigate, a special rapporteur would fact-check the allegations in the communication, then issue “pointed” allegation letters to regulators, Chemours and other culpable parties detailing problems and posing questions, said Claudia Polsky, director of UC Berkley Law Clinic.

“The Special Rapporteur can’t compel any action,” said Claudia Polsky, director of UC Berkeley’s Environmental Law Clinic. “But if he decides to investigate the allegations and recommends the companies or agencies take any of the requested actions, the public attention often spurs alleged offenders to respond publicly.”

“They’re the most aggressive (regulations) of their kind,” said UC Berkeley environmental law Professor Ethan Elkind. “There are previous (federal) regulations on locomotive emissions, but these will be the first to really push for zero-emission locomotives.”

Dean Chemerinsky discusses a few of the United State Supreme Court’s most high profile cases to be decided this year.

“The key is to separate the social insurance from the employer’s control and from employment entirely, because that gives employers that are unwilling to comply with the law a lot of leverage over their employees,” said Catherine Albiston,  professor of law and sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

“The ultimate liberty is the right to be left alone, and Dobbs established a clear mandate for state courts to define that right under their state constitutions,” write David Carrillo and Brandon V. Stracener of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law. “This is an opportunity for states to abandon their flawed lockstep doctrines, reassert themselves as the primary guarantors of individual liberty, and restore the state–federal balance of power in this area of the law.”

In a piece by Edward Wasserman, professor and former dean of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, Dean Chemerinsky said “The law is clear that retaliation against a person—that includes a corporation—for its speech violates the First Amendment. Gov. DeSantis and the Florida legislature have done exactly that, and said that is what they were doing, in its reprisal against Disney.”

Stephanie Campos-Bui, an assistant clinical professor of law at Berkeley Law and Policy Advocacy Clinic, said California law previously authorized the criminal legal system to charge people with over 90 different fees.

“Litigants should not be able to handpick a judge who then can issue a nationwide injunction throwing the entire country into chaos,” writes Dean Chemerinsky.

The court’s decision “is not obviously wrong,” said Dan Farber, an environmental law professor at UC Berkeley, who disagreed with the decision. “But I don’t think it’s crystal clear.”

“Many students come to Berkeley Law with the clear intention of positively impacting communities — whether it be here in the East Bay or globally,” said Laura Riley, director of Berkeley Law’s Clinical Program. “Clinics provide an opportunity to do that while growing advocacy skills that students take with them as they become attorneys.” 

“The approach of finals made us realize that we had to say something,” said professor Chris Hoofnagle. “We want to make sure we have clear guidelines so that students don’t inadvertently attract an honor code violation.”

David Nahmias, staff attorney with UC Berkeley Law’s Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice discusses student debt forgiveness.

Mark Cohen, the Asia IP Project Director at the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, told the Subcommittee that “China’s rise did not occur overnight. Rather, we have made profound mistakes in not identifying China’s increasing innovative capacity and we need to proceed now without the bureaucratic myopia, antique organizational structures and indifference to data that have haunted prior administrations.”

“Ideally, the court, on its own, would adopt an ethics code for its members, writes Dean Chemerinsky and Dennis Aftergut. “The absence of ethical rules is an unnecessary self-inflicted wound. Absent the court reforming itself, Congress must act and impose one on the justices. One would hope that the court would not be so foolish as to declare unconstitutional a law that is meant to regulate it.”

Prasad Krishnamurthy, a professor at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, favors raising the $250,000 cap to an unspecified amount. Recent decisions by regulators to cushion uninsured depositors from losses effectively render the $250,000 limit moot anyway, he argued.

Host Brittany Luse is joined by UC Berkeley Law professor Khiara M. Bridges to connect the dots between the recent legal battles over the abortion pill mifepristone and our constitutional right to privacy.

“This is an issue for the FDA – not the courts – to decide,” writes Dean Chemerinsky. “One would hope that even the conservative Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade would recognize this and want to keep the federal judiciary out of the abortion issue. But given the anti-abortion views of a majority of justices, there is every reason to be very worried.”

“We had accepted that federal law would preempt state law, that it would be preposterous that one federal judge in one district in Texas—or in any other state—would be able to affect the availability of a drug that had had FDA approval for 20 years,” says Khiara M. Bridges, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. “Now the things that we thought we knew about the relationship between federal law and state law, and the FDA’s ability to regulate, have been called into question.”

The Daily Californian sat down with Chemerinsky for a conversation about his career as a scholar and advocate, as well as why free speech — specifically on college campuses — matters.

“It sort of puts the fire under all courts in the country to resolve the conflict as soon as possible,” said Professor Khiara M. Bridges.

“The Supreme Court has its lowest approval ratings in history,” writes Dean Chemerinksy and Dennis Aftergut. “Now, as much as ever, it is crucial that the justices make clear that they are not partisan hacks who just follow the Republican platform, but instead are committed jurists who follow the law. The recent decisions concerning mifepristone will give them just that opportunity.”

“The internet and social media provide instantaneous access to infinite information,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “My hope is that the Supreme Court will not step in to this enormously complicated landscape.”

“Judges like to exercise control and Merchan is undoubtedly upset at Trump blatantly disobeying him,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “But the better course in this situation is to do nothing and let Trump speak.”

“I am thrilled at the gift from Tom Clark to create a chair in constitutional law,” Dean Chemerinsky said in a statement. “This is obviously such a core area of our curriculum and scholarship; it is law that affects everyone in the most important and intimate aspects of our lives.”

Dean Chemerinsky said the law “is clearly established that when the press lawfully obtains something, they’re allowed to truthfully report it,” and Camacho obviously obtained the images lawfully here.

“Auto companies don’t want EV batteries associated with more destruction than they already have been,” said Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment. “There has already been a lot of negative publicity around the mining for these metals: human rights abuses, child labor, deaths from mines collapsing. You can imagine the risk with the deep sea. If ecological damage of these sensitive undersea areas comes to light after mining begins, they don’t want to be a part of it.”

“Few thought the failure of a midsize regional bank posed a risk to the entire U.S. economy until last month, and it would be reasonable to expect that regulators in the future may lean on the systemic-risk exception in the law to once again justify bailouts,” said Berkeley Law professor Prasad Krishnamurthy.

Dean Erwin Chemerinksy writes about two cases to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court concerning the First Amendment and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. 

Berkeley Law Professor Daniel Farber, discusses the Trump indictment.

Bragg “has fired a strong opening shot,” said Daniel Farber, a professor at the UC Berkeley Law School who studies presidential power. “But it’s only the beginning of the battle.”

“The prosecutor’s statement of facts tells a powerful story about a conspiracy to falsify business records for political gain,” said Daniel Farber, a UC Berkeley law professor. “But serious political misconduct doesn’t necessarily equate to a criminal offense, let alone a felony. The prosecutor’s challenge will be to prove fraudulent intent … and to connect this conduct to a separate crime.”

Host Bakari Sellers is joined by Amanda Tyler, author and professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, to discuss Donald Trump’s unprecedented legal troubles, co-authoring Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s final book, Justice, Justice Thou Shalt Pursue, and life lessons learned during the final months of Ginsburg’s life.

“With coordinated global reform, we can fight climate change while mining as sustainably as possible,” writes Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment. “We simply do not have an alternative if we are serious about tackling the climate crisis in an equitable and humane way.”

“The indictment of a former president of the United States is unprecedented,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “But Donald Trump is unprecedented. There is much to be worried about in setting a precedent for the criminal prosecution of a former president. But it would be much worse to conclude that anyone, including the president, is above the law.”

Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, UC Berkeley School of Law discusses autonomous vehicles.

“I know some disagree and claim a right to shout down speakers, writes Dean Chemerinsky. “But the only way my speech can be free tomorrow is to support protection for speech that I dislike today. I also am hopeful that there is a benefit in hearing views different from our own, though it can be unsettling and even painful.”

UC Berkley School of Law’s Dean Erwin Chemerinsky joins Morning Joe to discuss a recent protest at Stanford University when Trump-appointed judge Kyle Duncan spoke at the school.

Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, UC Berkeley School of Law discusses plans for more solar in California’s San Joaquin Valley and the key barrier to building in the region.

Erik Stallman, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, noted that Judge Gregory Katsas seemed to want to bifurcate the standards into different groups: Incorporated standards that impose a clear legal duty are more likely to be fair use, while those that are just explanatory may fall on the side of stronger copyright protection.

“No question there are a lot of minimum labor law standards in California, and I understand why employers find them onerous to comply with, not to mention expensive,” said UC Berkeley law professor Catherine Fisk, who wrote a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of a group of California labor and employment law professors opposed to Prop. 22. She added that she’s “disappointed” by the appeals court decision.

“The ruling means pregnant people no longer have to wait until “their life is literally on the line” to legally qualify for an abortion,” said Khiara M. Bridges, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. “But it’s a narrow win because people trying to avoid a potentially life-threatening pregnancy make up a small proportion of those seeking abortions.”

“Banks and regulators will make mistakes, and banks should be allowed to fail, writes Prasad Krishnamurthy, professor at Berkeley Law.” “We need a system in which shareholders and debtholders bear the cost of failure, depositors are made whole and don’t panic, and banks and depositors pay for the insurance they receive at rates that are proportional to their risk.” 

Professor of Law Khiara M. Bridges joins host Lindsay Langholz for a conversation about forced birth in America and what it means for pregnant people, families, and the law when forced birth becomes a banality.

Professor of Law Catherine Fisk discusses California’s Prop. 22 and Assembly Bill No. 5.

“For decades, conservatives have preached judicial restraint and deference to the political process, write Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Professor Catherine Fisk of Berkeley Law. “But that doesn’t seem to apply when they don’t like government regulation of business. They will surely use the 9th Circuit’s new decision and its fallacious reasoning to challenge a myriad of essential regulations needed to protect workers and consumers.”

“L.A. and other local governments should be required to loosen development and zoning restrictions near rail stops, eliminating nitpicky requirements and endless hearings,” writes Ethan N. Elkind, director of the climate program at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment. “With the region experiencing a major housing shortfall and sky-high prices that have pushed lower-income residents to other regions and states or, in too many cases, the streets, allowing more dense, accessible housing is a humanitarian need as much as a transit one.”

Dean Chemerinsky discusses the continued conservative attacks on abortion rights.

David Carrillo and David A. Kaiser of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law write, “Supporters of increased affordable housing think a recently proposed initiative constitutional amendment will generate increased state power to impose building mandates on local governments. That’s unlikely to happen, because a new constitutional right to adequate housing has dim prospects in the courts.” 

2L Berkeley Law student Drake Goodson is named one of National Jurist Magazine’s Law Students of the Year.

Host Savala Nolan, director of Berkeley Law’s Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, interviews Nazune Menka, lecturer at Berkeley Law and a supervising attorney for the campus’s Environmental Law Clinic. They talk about how to bring a decolonial lens to education, and about the joys and challenges of being a trailblazer who is pushing against the inherited wisdom and mythology surrounding UC Berkeley.

Catherine Fisk, University of California, Berkeley Law professor, and Christina Chung, UC Berkeley Center for Law and Work executive director, argue that the US Supreme Court “simply misunderstood California law on PAGA standing; California law is clear that a plaintiff may litigate a PAGA action as a representative of the state for the labor law violations suffered by others regardless of whether the plaintiff must arbitrate her own claim.”

Berkeley Law professor, Catherine Fisk comments on the decision of the California Court of appeals to uphold Prop. 22.

“This month, the leaders of Los Angeles have the opportunity to join other jurisdictions that have reformed or eliminated the deeply troubling cash bail system,” Dean Chemerinsky and co-authors Miriam Arony Krinsky and Anthony Kline write. ” If they don’t, the courts should act to address a flawed and disturbing bail system that simply keeps those without resources in jail without any public safety benefit.”

“One-ninth of the country’s population is in California, so I understand why (antiabortion activists) would want to bring the fight here,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. “But given the law in this state, and given the politics of the state, it’s hard to imagine them making much inroads here. I don’t think anyone really regards California as a battleground state with regards to abortion rights.”

Host Savala Nolan, director of Berkeley Law’s Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, interviews professor Khiara M. Bridges, a powerful public intellectual who speaks and writes about race, class, reproductive justice and the intersection of the three.

Ethan Elkind, who watches California transportation issues as director of the climate change program at UC Berkeley’s law school, said the mounting problems cloud the project’s future. “It is in jeopardy,” Elkind said. “It is dicey. There is no path forward for the full Los Angeles to San Francisco system. It is important that they get something done.”

“The agreement of the North Carolina Supreme Court to rehear the case doesn’t change the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. “But if the North Carolina Supreme Court were to overrule the earlier decision, and so that the earlier decision no longer stands, then the Supreme Court could say this controversy is moot and wouldn’t have jurisdiction.” 

Dean Chemerinsky said he believes there is a strong legal argument that assault weapons, as defined by California, are particularly dangerous and subject to regulation, and he hopes the higher courts will see it that way too.

Ken Alex, director of Project Climate at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment discusses some of the issues for EV infrastructure and possible solutions.

The International Human Rights Law Clinic’s 2020 Living with Impunity report is cited in the article. 

David Nahmias, a staff attorney with the UC Berkeley Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice, told Insider following the arguments that he was “pleased to see that standing figured prominently in the oral arguments.”

“It’s a serious complaint, but whether the suit is viable depends on whether TikTok is intercepting the communications,” Orin Kerr, a well-known law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told Forbes. “It’s not a wiretap violation to have the capacity to intercept.”

“We’ve worked on a number of issues particularly relating to student loans,” said David Nahmias, staff attorney at Berkeley Law’s Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice. “Specifically we’ve filed an amicus brief in the Biden v. Nebraska case, that is challenging President Biden’s plan to cancel student debt for 40 million Americans.”. 

No matter what the U.S. Supreme Court does in the cases involving the Biden administration’s student loan relief plan, there is sure to be a major effect on many people’s lives and on the law, writes Dean Chemerinsky.

David Carrillo and David A. Kaiser of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law write, “if the U.S. Supreme Court abrogates Obergefell, as it did Roe, then the now-dormant Proposition 8 text in the California constitution will once again ban same-sex marriage in California.”

Berkeley Law Professor Jonathan Glater discusses Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan and the Supreme Court.

Professor Chris Hoofnagle discusses the capabilities and limitations of ChatGPT.

David Nahmias, a staff attorney with the Berkeley Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice discusses the case before the U.S. Supreme Court taking on Biden administrations student loan forgiveness program. 

David Nahmias, a staff attorney with the UC Berkeley Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice discusses the Supreme Court cases challenging Biden’s student-debt-relief plan. 

Lecturer Mallika Kaur writes, survivors of sexual assault face tremendous power imbalances in the legal system. A new California law helps rebalance the scales.

Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, UC Berkeley School of Law discusses new efforts by the state to decarbonize its trucking industry.

“I don’t want my critique of class-based affirmative action to be understood as a critique of poor people,” Khiara M. Bridges, a law professor at UC Berkeley School of Law tells Teen Vogue. “That being said, I do not like the narrative of class-based affirmative action, where it tells a story that race or racial problems are over… and that we are living in a world where race doesn’t matter, only class does.”

Professor Jonathan Glater writes about the pair of cases challenging the Biden administration’s student-debt relief program.

In potential capital cases, local prosecutors often follow the requests of a victim’s family when it suits their purposes, said Elisabeth Semel, a UC Berkeley law professor and co-director of the school’s Death Penalty Clinic.

“The issue about targeted recommendations that promote access to dangerous things, whether it’s illegal drugs or child sexual abuse material or things about eating disorders — all of those things about algorithms — that’s actually at stake right now before the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Pamela Samuelson, a UC Berkeley law professor and co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.

“If the state would create a program that was to benefit Black students, that would be a preference based on race and would clearly violate the state Constitution,” Chemerinsky said. “However much I agree it’s desirable, it would surely get struck down by the courts, and you’re losing time to come up with ways to benefit that group that does have a chance of succeeding.”

The Asian American Law Journal, in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Fred Korematsu’s coram nobis case, hosted its annual symposium, entitled “Let’s Get Going!: Lessons from the Young Lawyers Who Overturned Korematsu, Hirabayashi, and Yasui” at Berkeley Law. The symposium featured a panel with Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law discussing the continued impact the coram nobis cases have today.

Ethan Elkind, director of Berkeley Law’s  Climate Program at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, UC Berkeley School of Law discusses lawsuits surrounding self-driving mode on cars and the recent Tesla recall.

Berkeley Law Professor Holly Doremus discusses the State of Alaska’s lawsuit to reverse the National Marine Fisheries Service’s designation of critical habitat for threatened ringed and bearded seals.

Chemerinsky believes the government will be able to continue to require licenses for weapons and prohibit those convicted of felonies from having them, though even that is facing legal challenges. We may also be able to keep guns out of “sensitive places,” such as airports, schools and courthouses.

John Yoo, the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, and Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute discusses the many legal issues such as civil liberties, censorship, and freedom that have been exposed by the pandemic and management of the pandemic.

“The forum-shopping — filing in federal court in Amarillo where this is the only judge — is really outrageous,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school dean at UC Berkeley and a supporter of abortion rights.

“Other potential complicating factors include the fact that the episodes investigators presumably want to question Pence about — such as Trump’s efforts to influence the counting of the votes — don’t concern conventional presidential duties typically thought to be shielded by executive privilege,” said Daniel Farber, a presidential powers expert and UC Berkeley Law professor.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Dennis Aftergut, former federal prosecutor and currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy, write “The failure of the framers to recognize the problem of domestic violence or the related danger of allowing abusers access to guns should not be permitted to prevent public protection from gun violence today. Women will needlessly die because of the Fifth Circuit’s misguided decision.”

Berkeley Law Professor Tejas Narechania discusses a study he co-authored which found that judges in the Western District of Texas, Eastern District of Texas and the District of Delaware have higher appeals and reversal rates across the board when their dockets are crowded with patent cases.

Dean of Berkeley Law Erwin Chemerinsky makes the case for diversity statements, while NYU’s Jonathan Haidt argues against them.

“Why must we wait for the next death of another unarmed Black man to galvanize the public?” writes Dean Chermerinsky. “The problems are well-documented and many solutions are apparent. If the courts and the legislatures continue to do nothing, nothing will change.”

Dean Chemerinsky writes about the question of when state governments have standing to sue the United States.

“Slang amongst Black people is a love language and I am frustrated when that slang becomes appropriated and used by others and the meaning morphs,” said Khiara M. Bridges, author and professor of law at UC Berkeley School of Law. “There’s something really sinister about this term not only being taken from us but also deployed against us. It’s a double violation.”

Mark Cohen, senior fellow and director of the Asia IP Project at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, says while the measure is warranted in some cases, it could undermine US standing in global trade rules and lead to retaliation against US companies from other governments.

“It’s clear that Biden is going to have a lasting influence on the 9th Circuit by virtue of who he has picked. He certainly has enhanced the diversity,” said UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

Dean Chemerinsky discusses the history of policing powers and his book Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights.

UC Berkeley law professor Robert Bartlett said Musk’s way of disseminating corporate news is so far out of the norm that it’s hard to see his tweets as not being very intentional.

Mark Cohen, senior fellow and director of the Asia IP Project at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology writes about the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed ban of non-compete agreements in America and argues non-compete agreements are critical in protecting US trade secrets.

Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, UC Berkeley School of Law discusses the hope and limitations of green aviation technology and how we can reduce our carbon footprint when we fly.

“Some students have come to do their LL.M. here because their country is in an earlier phase of developing their technology-related laws and find it helpful to see how the U.S. has approached similar issues,” says Wayne Stacy, executive director at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law and Technology in California. “Other students come from countries where the body of technology law has gone in a different direction than the U.S. and they appreciate learning about the contrast.”

David Nahmias, a staff attorney with the UC Berkeley Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice discusses the case to block Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.

Michael Kiparsky, water program director at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law discusses groundwater recharge projects.

“Professor Bradt is ideally suited for this role,” Dean Chemerinsky said in an email. “It is a terrific honor to be chosen and a great opportunity for him.”

Berkeley Law professor Kenneth Ayotte discusses the way controversial out-of-court deals are influencing Chapter 11 transactions.

“Lower-wage earners and people from minority and economically disadvantaged backgrounds largely don’t have the experience, time, money or access to counsel to challenge noncompetes,” said Des Lafleur, a clinical teaching fellow at UC Berkeley School of Law.

“The need for a special prosecutor was of course magnified by the earlier appointment of another one, Jack Smith, to look into Trump’s improper possession and handling of classified documents,” writes Dean Chemerinksy. “But there are crucial differences between the cases.”

It’s also easier for companies and the public to blame theft for store closures and retail struggles than admit stores’ over-expansion, strategy mistakes and customers abandoning stores for online shopping, said Jonathan Simon, a criminal justice professor at UC Berkeley School of Law. “It’s much more convenient if we can blame it on people we already consider reprehensible,” he said.

In conversation with Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of UC Berkeley School of Law, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar discussed soaking up every Supreme Court argument during the two years she clerked for Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan.

Holly Doremus, a water rights expert and professor of environmental regulation at the Berkeley School Law discusses the cut backs on water imported to growers in California’s Imperial Valley from the Colorado River.

Thanks to climate change, “we have and will continue to have too much water when we don’t want it and not enough when we do, and so storage is the key,” said Michael Kiparsky, water program director at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at University of California, Berkeley School of Law. “The fact that we’ve created this massive space underground holds the key to that problem.” 

Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Law, Energy & the Environment discusses the recent controversy over gas vs. electric cooktops.

The report’s findings could potentially help support climate litigation against Exxon, Daniel Farber, professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, told CNN. “The more we learn about industry deception, the stronger the legal claims will be.” 

Dean Chemerinsky discusses his recent book Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism.

The Chronicle’s Bob Egelko reviews Dean Chemerinsky’s latest book, “A Momentous Year in the Supreme Court.”

The Supreme Court’s focus on the major questions doctrine could make the FTC’s clear power to issue the rule irrelevant, said Catherine Fisk, a workplace law professor at the University of California-Berkeley.

“Sometimes an especially momentous U.S. Supreme Court term is followed by a quieter year with fewer blockbuster decisions,” writes Dean Chemerinsky. “But that is not what we should expect when the court hands down its rulings for this term in spring 2023.”

“It’s long past time for all Supreme Court proceedings to be livestreamed over video and archived, as is done in many federal appellate courts around the country,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “Yet the high court has traditionally refused to allow any broadcasting of audio or video of its proceedings.”

Lecturer Mallika Kaur talks to Judge Abby Abinante about about negotiating trauma and the law.

“The five conservative justices based their decision not on the purpose of Title 42, which is to stop the spread of a communicable disease, but on their partisan agreement with conservatives on immigration issues,” writes Dean Chemerinksy. “We should expect better of the court than that.”

Berkeley Law Professor Khiara M. Bridges discusses the biggest takeaways from 2022 and what to expect in 2023.

“Affordable housing, not handcuffs, is the only humane, effective and lawful solution to homelessness,” writes Jeffrey Selbin the Chancellor’s Clinical Professor of Law and co-director of the Policy Advocacy Clinic at the UC Berkeley School of Law.

“This will allow us to strengthen our already outstanding criminal justice faculty, which are widely regarded as among the very best in the country,” said Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “Barry Tarlow was an eminent criminal defense attorney, and I am thrilled that we will honor his legacy by having a permanent chair named in his memory.”

“We know that the vast majority of people in pretrial detention in California are people of color, particularly Black and brown individuals,” said Rachel Wallace, clinical supervisor at UC Berkeley Law’s Policy Advocacy Clinic. “And so we know that this is not only an economic issue, but a racial justice issue as well.”

“The Roberts court, more than any other court in history, uses its docket-setting discretion to select cases that allow it to revisit and overrule precedent,” Berkeley Law Professor Tejas Narechania found in the study, which will be published in the St. Louis University Law Journal and built on an earlier one in the Columbia Law Review.

Savala Nolan, Executive Director of the Henderson Center for Social Justice, reviews three books covering personal reflections by three women about art and adversity, fat-phobia and diaspora.

“Revising the Electoral Count Act will not remedy other problems in our electoral system, especially the many state laws designed to disenfranchise minority voters,” writes Dean Chemerinsky. “Congress must also pass legislation to further protect voting rights, but that seems unlikely given the likelihood that Senate Republicans would filibuster such a bill.”

Dean Chemerinsky said the appellate court should uphold the decision because “the 1929 statute was the basis for the 1952 reenactment, and it’s the basis of the law that exists today.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Professor John A. Powell discuss the passage of the “Respect for Marriage Act” in Congress.

UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, who chaired the city’s elected charter reform commission in 1999, said he thought the new proposal was a great idea, noting his commission had initially proposed an independent redistricting panel before the current structure was created.

“Does a state supreme court have the power to find that an act of the state legislature violates the state constitution? The answer to that question should be clear and obvious, but the conservative justices of the Supreme Court expressed doubt about it at oral arguments in Moore vs. Harper on Wednesday,” writes Dean Chemerinsky. “It is not hyperbole to say that the future of American democracy may turn on the court’s answer.”

“The Constitution and American democracy would not survive another four years of Trump being president,” writes Erwin Chemerinsky, dean and professor of law at the UC Berkeley School of Law. “We now have Trump’s own words to prove it.”

A study from Berkeley Judicial Institute on law clerk selection and diversity is discussed. 

Dean Chemerinsky discusses rankings at US News.

Des Lafleur, a business attorney and lecturer at the UC Berkeley School of Law who consults with companies on minimizing risk, said cybersecurity is something companies should be thinking about well before employees depart the company.

“There is always a tension between liberty and equality. Any law that prohibits discrimination limits the freedom to discriminate.” writes Dean Chemerinksy.

“The system is not set up to deal with the underlying problems. It’s set up to deal with the legal problems,” said Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge in San Jose who now heads the Berkeley Judicial Institute at UC Berkeley School of Law. “The system is in some ways rigid and inflexible.”

“The judges we interviewed were thoughtful, sincere, and serious about their commitment to law clerk diversity as each of them defines it,” said the study’s co-author, former California federal Judge and head of the Berkeley Judicial Institute at UC Berkeley School of Law Jeremy Fogel. “The challenge for many of them is translating that commitment into specific practices that actually achieve the outcomes they seek.” 

“Boosting public transit could also have the added environmental benefit of limiting the production of new electric vehicles,” said Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment. “Cars take a lot of energy to manufacture and dispose of, and while electricity is a much cleaner fuel than petroleum, it’s far better to avoid buying a car in the first place,” he said. 

The Berkeley Judicial Institute’s new study on law clerk diversity is featured.

“It is much too soon to know what the impact of these developments will be on law schools and legal education,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean at UC Berkeley’s law school.

Dean Chemerinsky writes about two arguments in the Supreme Court.

Dean Chemerinksy discusses originalism and the Supreme Court.

“It came as no surprise in 2015 when the Department of Justice decided to close the criminal investigation in the United States and decided not to pursue charges against the agents,” said Berkeley Law’s International Human Rights Law Clinic co-director Roxanna Altholz.

The Humphrey Report from UC Berkeley School of Law’s Policy Advocacy Clinic is cited in an editorial on bail in California.

Dean Chemerinsky’s book Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism is included in David Lat’s spotlight of noteworthy new books about or related to the law.

Jeff Selbin, the director of the Policy Advocacy Clinic at the U.C. Berkeley School of Law discusses California’s new law that will automatically seal most criminal records for those who complete their sentences.

 Berkeley Law professor John Yoo  said, the enactment of Proposition 209 kept the goal of racial diversity on the university’s front burner. “In a way it became culturally more deeply rooted now at the university than it was back in 1996,” he said.

“For years, CBP has also struggled with fully investigating and disciplining  its own agents for using excessive force on the job,” said Roxanna Altholz, co-director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. “Federal law prohibits victims from successfully filing civil lawsuits against Border Patrol agents, making accountability of them even more difficult.”

UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, who has argued cases before the Supreme Court, said its past rulings on health issues, particularly the 2012 decision upholding most of the federal health care law, probably wouldn’t weaken the legal case for abortion rights.

“Sometimes rankings can do more harm than good,” said Dean Chemerinsky. “If the rankings are measuring the wrong things, then they’re not providing the right information.” 

“In Silicon Valley, there has historically been a don’t follow the rules mentality, because that’s how you get ahead,” said Steven Davidoff Solomon of the U.C. Berkeley School of Law. “Holmes may be the first, but I suspect there are going to be more.”

Berkeley Law’s dean Erwin Chemerinsky, along with University of Wisconsin’s Law School dean Daniel Tokaji, write about the ABA’s proposal to eliminate standardized tests for law school admissions. “At a minimum, we need more study and more data on the potential impact of such a radical change in admissions standards to avoid potential consequences to diversity, equity, and inclusion that are the opposite of what is intended,” write Chemerinsky and Tokaji.

Lecturer Shanin Specter discusses US Rep. Conor Lamb joining his firm Kline & Specter.

“Of all the potentially momentous cases on the Supreme Court’s docket this term, the one that frightens me most is Moore v. Harper. It is not hyperbole to say that the future of American democracy could be determined by this decision,” writes Dean Chemerinksy.

Dean Chemerinksy writes, “The great complexity of free speech issues on campus was revealed this semester at Berkeley Law. How are the free speech rights of a student group to not invite speakers with particular views to be balanced against the desire to have all viewpoints expressed and have no one feel excluded?”

“Nothing about Berkeley Law is fundamentally changed by this decision,” Dean Chemerinsky said. “We will be the law school we’ve always been, and we will strive to improve in accordance with our values.”

Dean Chemerinsky said the decision is not “railing against rankings” or complaining that it’s “hurt” Berkeley Law’s standing, but that the school has issues with U.S. News’ process, which has remained unchanged in the face of the law school’s complaints.

“Although rankings are inevitable and inevitably have some arbitrary features, there are aspects of the U.S. News rankings that are profoundly inconsistent with our values and public mission,” UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky said in a statement. “Now is a moment when law schools need to express to U.S. News that they have created undesirable incentives for legal education.”

“Although rankings are inevitable and inevitably have some arbitrary features, there are aspects of the U.S. News rankings that are profoundly inconsistent with our values and public mission,” Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky said in a note to the school community.

“What we found is that no one had really done a city-specific, CAP-specific analysis, so we were kind of starting from scratch,” said Ted Lamm, a senior research fellow at Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment. “You can set as ambitious targets as you want. But if you don’t provide them the budget and the funds and the actual implementation tools to do it, it’s going to be a plan and nothing else.”

“We have one of the most vibrant urban squash programs for youth in the world at the Specter Center in West Philadelphia, combined with the Lenfest Center in North Philadelphia,” said Lecturer Shanin Specter. “This comes at a time when we Philadelphians are desperately trying to save the youth of our city. The Specter Center is a shining light of hope against desperation.”

“We are seeing a tremendous wave of worker organizing efforts across the country and this is another way I think that workers can raise their voices and be directly involved in raising standards in industry,” said Christina Chung, executive director of the Center for Law and Work at U.C. Berkeley Law School. “It’s really exciting, and I think other states will follow suit.”

“There is a longstanding history of the military not being held accountable for sexual assaults that take place under its watch,” said Rose Carmen Goldberg, a veterans law lecturer at the University of California School of Law.

“The governor has standing,” said Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at the UC Berkeley School of Law. “And it’s confusing to the voters when you see him saying ‘vote no’ on something that otherwise seems like Democrats, who make up the majority of registered voters, would want to support.”

Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school dean at UC Berkeley, said the court has dramatically changed its interpretation of language in the First Amendment that prohibits any law “respecting an establishment of religion.”

“It’s a complicated and unique area of the law with its own statutes and regulations,” said Lecturer Rose Carmen Goldberg.

Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at the UC Berkeley School of Law discusses COP 27 in Egypt.

It’s “clear” that the cost of carbon emissions isn’t zero, according to University of California Berkeley law professor Dan Farber.

David Carrillo and Stephen M. Duvernay of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law write “There is one major disadvantage from making it difficult to remove judges, through rules or culture (or both): You can be stuck with a bad actor for life.” 

“The number one thing they’re going to worry about is the ability to pay back the loans,” said Berkeley Law professor Adam Badawi “Twitter misses a debt payment, that trips a covenant, and the loanholders can come in and say the debt is due right now.”

“The First Amendment may limit state regulation of projections, however,” Seth Davis, a professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, told SFGATE. “It may protect a right to project statements on buildings in some cases. For example, the First Amendment may protect a right to project a political statement on a building when that statement is connected to the building.” 

“This will reinforce concerns that the banking industry already has, and also concerns that major investors have, about the fossil-fuel industry and whether it’s a good investment,” Berkeley Law professor Dan Farber told Al Jazeera. “So I think this definitely puts pressure on them, the longer these cases stick around.”

“There are lots of cases involving workers who work somewhat autonomously who have nevertheless successfully unionized,” said Catherine Fisk, professor of labor law at UC Berkeley School of Law.

UC Berkeley law Professor Emily Zhang believes that many people impacted by Prop. 17 are unaware that they are newly eligible to vote. “A law changing can only do so much. There’s the second part, which is to make sure people know about the law,” Zhang said. 

“I’ve looked at some of the language in the executive agreements. It’s totally baseless for [Musk] to seek termination with cause,” said Adam Badawi, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. “To get terminated with cause, the circumstances have to be extreme, they have to kind of be malfeasance or someone did something illegal. 

University of California at Berkeley law professor Catherine Fisk discusses how the WARN Act may apply to the layoffs at Twitter.

Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school dean at UC Berkeley who has argued a number of cases before the Supreme Court, said he doesn’t think Thomas needs to remove himself from cases in which his wife is part of an organization that supports one of the parties, unless that organization is actually a party to the case. 

Megan Graham, supervising attorney at the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at University of California Berkeley School of Law comments on the affidavit Santa Rosa Police used to secure a search warrant on Vice Mayor Eddie Alvarez.

David A. Carrillo, executive director of the California Constitution Center at UC Berkeley School of Law discusses the California’s Proposition 1.

“What provokes the case is long-standing community dissatisfaction with BAAQMD which has not listened to the community,” said Steve Castleman, a clinical supervising attorney for Berkeley’s Environmental Law Clinic. “This is a long-standing problem with especially low-income and minority communities like those around AB&I in East Oakland.”

University of California, Berkeley law professor John Yoo discusses The U.S. Supreme Court’s race related cases.

“Lowell claimed 1920s Jewish quota was intended to increase diversity by avoiding concentrations of Northeastern city dwellers,” writes David B. Oppenheimer, law professor at Berkeley Law and James N. Bierman, a former assistant dean of admissions at Harvard Law School and a lawyer in the District of Columbia. “As the Supreme Court plans to take up affirmative action, his policies are being cited in an effort to keep Black and Latino students out of Harvard.”

“Either Harvard needs to take a hard look at cultural bias in its admissions process, or Asian applicants to Harvard need to spend less of their scarce time on academics and more on personality development,” writes Prasad Krishnamurthy, professor of law at U.C. Berkeley School of Law.

“The long history of racial discrimination in America and current inequalities in educational opportunity make affirmative action essential,” writes Dean Chemerinsky. “Affirmative action works.”

“The last 3 years have been the driest 3 year period on record,” said Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute.

David A. Carrillo, executive director of the California Constitution Center at UC Berkeley School of Law discusses the California Supreme Court.

Dean Chemerinsky discusses the Supreme Court’s six Republican-appointed justices and weighs in on who is the conservative wing’s true leader.

Lecturer Shanin Specter discusses Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman.

Dean Chemerinsky’s opinion on Propostion 1 is cited in an article on the California gubernatorial debate. UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky told The Chronicle in September, “ I think that the clear intent is to protect current law, which protects abortions until viability. It does not create an absolute right to abortion; just as other rights in the state Constitution are not absolute.”

Dean Chemerinsky discusses whether the Interstate Commerce Clause restricts states from regulating in-state conduct that has a substantial impact on mostly out-of-state producers.

“It is now necessary for us to consider options that would, in previous generations, be considered unthinkable,” said Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute.

“Where once there were forests and fields and wetlands that would soak up the rain, these have been paved over and replaced with surfaces that do not absorb rain,” says Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute. Those are hard materials like concrete sidewalks, asphalt roads, and roofs, which funnel runoff into gutters, storm drains, and sewers. 

“I can understand why smaller players wouldn’t want to be grouped with Meta,” said Andrew Bradt, professor of law at UC Berkeley School of Law. “Meta is the 800-pound gorilla, and the fear of guilt by association is understandable. On the other hand, I didn’t find their argument [about] the individualized nature of the applications persuasive at all. There are obvious efficiencies to be gained through centralized pretrial proceedings here, and I think the panel did the right thing.” 

Dean Chemerinsky discusses California’s Proposition 1, the ballot measure to add abortion rights directly into the state Constitution.

UC Berkeley law professor Ian Haney López’s comment to the New York Times about the current political and partisan state of play among Hispanic voters going into the 2022 elections is cited in Harold Meyerson’s OpEd.

Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment and Daniel Farber, law professor at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment discuss a proposal by the Biden administration to require all states to track and reduce on-road vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.

“Not remotely a surprise,” tweeted Orin Kerr, a criminal law professor at the University of California’s Berkeley Law and former Supreme Court law clerk. “Still, it’s good not to be surprised.”

“It was stunning that it was her second day of oral arguments as a justice,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of Berkeley Law. “No one was more active in questioning. I also had the sense in that case that she was very conscious of her role as a Black justice and the importance of being a voice against discrimination and for remedies.”

“As with white voters, the most important predictors of support for Republicans track racial resentment as well as anxiety over racial status, Ian Haney López, law professor at the University of California, Berkeley tells columnist Thomas B. Edsall. “Rather than an ideological sorting, we are witnessing a racial sorting among Latinos — not in terms of anything so simple as skin color, but rather, in terms of those who seek a higher status for themselves by more closely identifying on racial grounds with the white mainstream, versus those who give less priority to race, or even see Latinos as a nonwhite racial group.”

UC Berkeley law professor Khiara Bridges was a guest speaker at the inaugural Berkeleyside Idea Makers event where she spoke about the movement for reproductive justice and the consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson.

“Last term showed six conservative justices who have a very conservative agenda for the law and are aggressively implementing it,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. “I think we’ll see that again this year.”

Lecturer Shanin Specter and attorney Robert A. Clifford write in their OpEd, “Now, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has imposed $201 million in fines against Boeing and its CEO for misleading investors about the safety of the planes involved. However, there is still a need for criminal investigations into Boeing CEOs Dennis Muilenburg and David Calhoun.”

“If Hastings’ family had a contract with the state, as shown in a document from 1878 with signatures from both sides, it might still be a binding agreement that could not be changed by future legislation,”said David A. Carrillo, executive director of the California Constitution Center at UC Berkeley School of Law and is not involved in the court case. “But if there is no such document, Carrillo said, the Legislature that passed the 1878 law ‘cannot bind the hands of a future Legislature.'”

“The absence of drama around the California court arguably shows that it better reflects California society, and the rancor on the U.S. Supreme Court and political arguments about reforming that court suggest that it is misaligned with society at large,” said David Carrillo, executive director of the California Constitution Center at UC Berkeley Law School.

UC Berkeley law professor Khiara Bridges discusses what’s at stake for Black communities following the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. 

Dean Chemerinsky joins host Kimberly Atkins Stohr to discuss the Supreme Court’s new term.

“If you trespass on a football field, with huge men who tackle people for a living,” said Andrew Bradt, professor of law at UC Berkeley, “it’s probably foreseeable that you’re gonna get tackled by a huge person.”

“Generally, I think these sort of subnational statements are important, politically and symbolically, because they can help push national governments to more on climate action,” said Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the UC Berkeley School of Law.

“It’s clear that the conservative justices regard race discrimination in voting as a thing of the past and therefore seek to limit or eliminate the Voting Rights Act,” said Dean Chemerinsky. “If the court follows this path, it will further limit protections against race discrimination in our electoral system.”

“The court is not going to save us. It is going to let Trump do whatever he wants to do. And it’s going to help him get away with it,” said Professor Khiara M. Bridges in response to the court’s decision on Trump v. Hawaii.

“As the Supreme Court begins its new term on Monday, it’s clear that the court’s majority is determined to move the law much further to the right.” writes Dean Chemerinsky.

Dean Chemerinsky discusses the Supreme Court.

“The October 2021 term was one of the most momentous in history: The court overruled Roe v. Wade, greatly expanded gun rights, aggressively protected free exercise of religion and significantly limited administrative agency power”, Dean Chemerinsky writes. “There is no doubt that the coming term, too, will be filled with blockbuster decisions.”  

Dean Chemerinsky discusses the Supreme Court’s upcoming term.

“Ideally, you’d see … the Public Utilities Commission, the Air Resources Board and the Energy Commission having a real unified strategy on this, with a clear end date” for natural gas use, said Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. That hasn’t happened, at least not publicly, he said, but “you’re starting to see it piecemeal.”

“California state law might be more amenable to facts that suggest a business who put products on Amazon felt that they couldn’t offer their products on rival platforms,” said UC Berkeley School of Law professor Prasad Krishnamurthy.

Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment discusses regulations to
ban the sale of diesel trucks by 2040. 

Dean Chemerinsky discusses the impact of the recent Supreme Court rulings. “At this point in time, the court is ideologically divided the same way our society is divided,” said Chemerinsky. 

Jonathan Glater, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said that the government’s options for dealing with schools’ misconduct had never been “prophylactic — they operate after the fact.”

“If Congress adopts a law prohibiting abortions, that would pre-empt state laws to the contrary,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the UC Berkeley law school dean.

Lecturer Shanin Specter answers medical malpractice questions.

Professor Khiara M. Bridges discusses the “period pill.”

Lecturer Shanin Specter commented “The recent indication of agreement to one debate in late October may be seen by voters as too little and too late, especially for those who vote by mail,” said Mr. Specter, who donates to candidates in both parties.

“Once you say that it is an ‘unborn human being,’ then it’s a short step to saying that laws allowing abortion are unconstitutional because they deny equal protection to those persons that are unborn human beings,” said Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. 

David A. Carrillo, executive director of Berkeley Law’s California Constitution center, said adding abortion rights to California’s constitution would give Attorney General Rob Bonta a “major new weapon to combat Congressional overreach.”

Interview with Dean Erwin Chemerinsky on his new book, “Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism.”  

Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, discusses how California will manage an increased demand on the electric grid with persistent heat waves and increased sales of EVs.

Andrea Roth, a Berkeley Law professor whose research focuses on the use of forensic science in criminal trials notes that some “biometric” techniques had their beginnings in racism or eugenics to try to identify “criminal” or “abnormal” biological attributes. The man sometimes called the father of fingerprinting, Sir Francis Galton, is known for being an unapologetic racist, among other examples, Roth added.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law discusses his new book “Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism.”

Dean Chemerinsky writes, originalism is in its ascendancy on the Supreme Court. In case after case in the last term, the conservative justices based their decisions on their cramped reading of American history.

Originalism is primarily about how courts should interpret the Constitution, writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. That leads to an obvious threshold question: How did the Framers intend the courts to do this?

“If a judge can tell a different branch of government, ‘I’m taking over your job,’ then how does the executive branch function?” said Orin Kerr, a University of California, Berkeley law professor and an expert on criminal procedure.

Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, discusses how to manage an increased demand on the electric grid as sales of EVs increases.

Voters should see through the “reform” sham to the truth: Recalls have little to do with hyperpartisanship, and under cover of reforming the recall, the Legislature is stripping power from voters, write David A. Carrillo and Joshua Spivak of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law.

Alexa Koenig, executive director of Berkeley’s Human Rights Center and a lecturer at the law and journalism schools along with three other Berkeley experts discuss the consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and what it reveals about the changing nature of the court, and what lawmakers are likely to do next.

The legislature is trying to say “look, we did reform the recall,” but what this really means is “sucks to be you, general law cities,” say Stephen M. Duvernay and Joshua Spivak of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law

“Housing policy often gets lost in climate discussions, but this is actually one of the best ways that we can reduce emissions,” said Ethan Elkind, a law professor and climate expert at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, discusses California’s plans to phase out sales of new gas-powered cars by 2035.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes The California Legislature should strengthen the Racial Justice Act, passed two years ago to discourage racial bias in sentencing. He says a bill on the Senate floor would do just that, but it still needs work.

“This legislation will show that you can actually do this without causing the economy to collapse,” said Catherine Fisk, faculty director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Work and the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology. “And so I think there’s nowhere to go but up from here.”

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, said that at this point, almost any new gun control law is subject to a constitutional challenge.

“There is much to celebrate,” write Professor Jonathan D. Glater and co-author UC Irvine School of Law Professor Dalié Jiménez. “And then there is the big picture, which remains grim. This mass cancellation – politically unimaginable just five years ago – is not the end of the student loan crisis.”

Savala Nolan, executive director of the Center for Social Justice writes that Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan doesn’t do enough for black Americans. “I don’t begrudge anybody having their loans forgiven under this new policy even if I won’t get relief; I do, however, lament the administration’s failure to properly weigh the role that wealth plays, or should play, in student loan forgiveness. I mean wealth as distinct from income–wealth meaning assets that can be passed from generation to generation.”

California historically leads the way regarding emissions due to a carve-out in the US Clean Air Act, according to Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at UC Berkeley Law. It is the only state in the US that can make emissions standard mandates beyond the federal government’s. But the law also permits other US states to adopt California’s standards without the federal government’s approval, Elkind said.

“The danger of this type of case is that a court might be drawn, by the artistic nature of the product at issue, to favor 1st Amendment and artistic expression concerns over consumer protection concerns,” said Ted Mermin, executive director of the Berkeley Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice. “But on a common sense level, [we] know that if we are buying an album that is marketed as being the songs of Michael Jackson, it had better have the songs of Michael Jackson.”

“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.”

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.”

“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.”

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.”

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.”

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. ” 

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.”

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. 

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.”

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.”

“It’s so disingenuous to say that we’re just going to allow political majorities in the state to determine the legality of abortion when not everybody in the state is going to be able to vote because of what Republicans are doing and because of what the Court is allowing them to do,” Professor Khiara M. Bridges says. “Our democracy is undeserving of that label.”

Megan Graham, of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic, says any battle between the tech companies and governments about data collection should be done in public, so that regular people and privacy advocates can have their say. “Google’s voice is obviously important in the discussion because they have the data and they are the ones running he searches but their interests are not necessarily the same as the general public, or people who are concerned about privacy rights,” she says. 

Professor Daniel Farber says the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA, which holds that the agency doesn’t have broad authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, is a hit to the fight against climate change but doesn’t completely tie the Biden administration’s hands. California’s strong laws will shield the state from much of the ruling’s impact, although the state does get electricity from affected states, he says. 

“We live our lives online, we leave digital breadcrumbs of our prior activities, and of course those are going to be caught up in abortion investigations,” says Professor Catherine Crump, director of the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic. Tech companies will almost certainly comply with state law and hand over information from legal court orders, but they should be transparent with their users and the public when they do and disclose how many abortion-related court orders they get, she adds.

Human Rights Center Executive Director Alexa Koenig discusses the growing use of open source intelligence (OSINT) as a way to document international atrocities and bolster human rights prosecutions. 

In a time of concern about a rise in retail theft, some politicians are seizing on viral videos to paint left-leaning city leaders as soft on crime. “These crimes deserve to be taken seriously, but they are also being weaponized ahead of the midterm elections,” Professor Jonathan Simon says. 

“If you have a period tracking app, you should delete it,” says Professor Catherine Crump, director of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Policy Clinic. “Tech companies like everyone else has to comply with law and they may not have a choice about what data they collect, what data they are forced to disclose. The law enforcement agency gets a warrant and serves it on Google and asks for location information and it’s a valid warrant. Google is going to have a hard time not complying with that.”

“Someday, when there is a liberal Supreme Court, it likely will overrule Dobbs and again recognize a constitutional right to abortion. But in the years and perhaps decades until that happens, abortion will be the defining political issue for the U.S.,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes. “It is unclear what that will mean for our political system … The central question in the abortion debate is who should decide.”

“It is stunning how far and how fast the conservative justices have moved to overrule constitutional law principles in a single week,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes about the Supreme Court’s recent decision in the Kennedy vs. Bremerton School District case involving prayer in schools. “It’s clear that they would have decided countless cases over the last half-century differently from their predecessors, and have no hesitation eliminating precedents they don’t like. The implications for all of our rights and the society we will live in is staggering.”

Professor Rebecca Wexler, a faculty co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, talks about how big and small tech companies will need to have a response to the question of what to do with users’ data if new laws try to restrict access to information about abortion and other reproductive services in the post-Roe environment. “Anything they do or don’t do, it’s going to be a choice with consequences. It also means they’ve got a lot of power at this point,” she says. “They have power to reclaim some of the privacy from government intrusion that Roe once guaranteed, and that the court has just eviscerated.”

While much is written about the potential promise of quantum computers, “their simpler cousins — quantum sensors — are here now and improving at a rate that demands urgent attention,” writes Professor Chris Hoofnagle and a co-author. “Strategists must understand the new capabilities that quantum sensing will provide and start planning countermeasures today.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky discusses John Eastman, whom he has publicly urged the State Bar of California to investigate because of his activities after the 2020 presidential election. Chemerinsky debated Eastman on a radio show for years but says his last appearance with him, in October 2020, still disturbed him more than a year later. “It was the first time I ever debated him where he wasn’t civil. I felt like I was debating Donald Trump,” he says.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky discusses the overturning of Roe v. Wade and other recent Supreme Court decisions. “The reality is that Supreme Court decisions are always a product of the ideology of the justices,” he says. 

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says said that while the right to travel, including to get an abortion, is protected, he expects conservative states will pass laws that try to prohibit women from leaving in order to get an abortion. “That should be unconstitutional, but we’ll see what the court does,” he says.

Professor Khiara M. Bridges talks about the racial dynamics of the fight over abortion, and how they shaped the events that led to the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade. 

“The decisions this week must be understood as a conservative majority favoring conservative political ideology: requiring aid for religious instruction, greatly expanding gun rights, ending abortion rights,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says. “It is not about judicial philosophy or constitutional interpretation. It is about conservatives moving constitutional law very far and very fast in a very conservative direction.”

Professor Khiara M. Bridges says the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade presents an imperative for California to “be on the offensive” but putting additional money and effort into ensuring its residents, and those coming from the outside to receive care, can access contraceptives and abortion services. “When you have a law that makes abortion unavailable, you have a law that makes unavailable a service upon which Black people disproportionately rely, so there’s a specific racial impact,” she says, noting that Black people have not only higher rates of unintended pregnancy but also higher rates of maternal mortality and morbidity.

“There’s an open legal question about whether states could limit the use of mifepristone in light of the FDA’s judgment that the medicine is safe and effective. It’s not at all clear,” Professor Khiara M. Bridges says. “States can regulate the practice of medicine within their borders.”

Professor Rebecca Wexler discusses the role of big tech in a post-Roe world, and why the fight over sensitive data will be of essence to protect patients. 

The Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade decision raises a host of thorny legal issues for pregnant people, healthcare providers, and state governments, Professor Khiara M. Bridges says. “We are going to see an abundance of lawsuits for the next 10 years, if not longer, around what states can and cannot do to regulate abortion,” she says. “It’s complicated. There aren’t easy answers, and there’s a lot of uncertainty.”

Professor Khiara M. Bridges says the Supreme Court’s recent decisions have sent a message to conservative state lawmakers that it won’t stand in the way of laws restricting birth control methods. “It’s all of the implications of the Dobbs decision that make us reasonable to be fearful about the accessibility of contraception in the future,” she says. 

“Precedent and the principle of stare decisis are supposed to limit judicial discretion and provide stability to the law. But time and again, as in this decision, the conservative justices are willing to overrule the precedents they dislike,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes. “They are motivated by carrying out the Republican platform, not a judicial philosophy or an interpretative methodology. The only question is how far they will go.”

California’s strict gun laws could be affected by the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling striking down a New York law. The new test outlined in the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen case “potentially has long-term implications for California’s other gun laws,” California Constitution Center Executive Director David Carrillo says. 

One reason the case is so important to airlines is that they are likely to get a more pro-business outcome in the Supreme Court than with California’s lawmakers, Professor Catherine Fisk says. “The usual way of dealing with a policy disagreement is to get the legislature to enact a law,” she says. “What’s significant here is apparently the airlines couldn’t persuade the California legislature.”

Even before Roe was decided in 1973, the California Supreme Court held in 1969 that women have a fundamental right to choose whether to have children based on a right of privacy or liberty in matters related to marriage, family and sex. “The court did this interpreting ‘liberty’ in the California Constitution, just as the U.S. Supreme Court did four years later in Roe vs. Wade,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says. 

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky calls the Supreme Court’s ruling that a New York gun-control law is unconstitutional “by far, the most expansive reading of the Second Amendment in American history,” and that it will put a vast number of laws regulating firearms in jeopardy. “Striking down a century-old New York law and expanding gun rights is stunning judicial activism,” he writes.

In a 6-3 ruling in the Vega v. Tekoh case, the Supreme Court held the only remedy for a Miranda violation is to block the use in court of a suspect’s incriminating comments. Professor Charles Weisselberg says he fears the decision gives police an incentive to pressure people who refuse to talk. “There will be no penalty for violating Miranda in this way,” he says. “There will be zero incentive for officers to cease questioning.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes that the U.S. House committee hearings examining the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol has convinced him the U.S. Department of Justice should bring criminal charges against Trump. “I do not minimize the difficulty of prosecuting a former president or of fairly trying one. Nor do I underestimate the risks of doing so,” writes. “But the central tenet of the rule of law is that no one is above the law, not even the president of the United States.”

Professor David Oppenheimer, faculty director of the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality & Anti-Discrimination Law, says the lawsuit was the “largest verdict in an individual race discrimination in employment case.”

California Constitution Center Executive Director David Carrillo discusses SCA10, which Democratic state leaders are trying to get on to the November ballot to codify abortion rights in the state. “If courts are interpreting away abortion rights at the federal level, there is the same risk a California court could interpret away California abortion rights, because SCA10 doesn’t specify what they are,” Carrillo said.

Professor Catherine Fisk says “illustrates how the companies get all the benefits of wage and price control that they would have if drivers were employees while none of the responsibility.”

 The U.S. Supreme Court “is basically cutting the establishment clause out of the Constitution,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes about the court’s holding that the state of Maine is constitutionally required to subsidize religious education when it pays for private secular education.

“Secession is clearly unconstitutional. There’s a reason the pledge of allegiance refers to ‘one nation, indivisible’,” Professor Daniel Farber says. “That’s as much true now as it was in 1865 when the South (including Texas) lost the Civil War, or 1868 when the 14th Amendment guaranteed all Americans the rights of citizenship.”

Professor Frank Partnoy discusses why he helped start the nonpartisan, nonprofit International Institute of Law and Finance, which promotes academic research with an eye on influencing government agency rulemaking. “There’s a gap in terms of academics connecting with policymakers,” he says. 

International Human Rights Clinic Co-Director Roxanna Altholz discusses the sentencing of energy executive Roberto David Castillo in Honduras for arranging the 2016 murder of environmental activist Berta Cáceres. 

California Constitution Center Executive Director David Carrillo and a co-author analyze why the Supreme Court of California has such a high rate of unanimous decisions, concluding that the court’s culture of consensus-building is largely responsible. 

Professor Khiara M. Bridges and NPR reporter Sarah McCammon answer listener questions about what a post Roe v. Wade world might look like. 

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes that Republicans are using the Second Amendment as “a false fig leaf” to avoid backing new gun regulations. The U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear, he says, that the right to bear arms enshrined in the Constitution does not preclude many needed reforms. 

California Constitution Center Executive Director David Carrillo and two co-authors  track the evolution of California’s abortion law in light of the impending decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. 

The Rhode Island senator joined Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and fellow Democratic Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Richard Blumenthal on an amicus brief in the West Virginia v. EPA case, which could limit the government’s ability to lower emissions at power plants. 

Lecturer Shanin Specter says a proposal to allow the state legislature to write laws allowing lawmakers to decide the venue for civil lawsuits would increase tension between the legislative and judicial branches. “That is troubling because it seeks to upset the delicate balance among our three branches of government,” he says.  

Companies often push or ignore the boundaries about what they can tell staff, since the National Labor Relations Board has no power to punish them, Professor Catherine Fisk says. “They’ll spend a few million dollars litigating it, but that’s less than the millions more they presumably think they’ll have to pay if they were unionized.”

With California already behind on its climate goals, the state’s pending decision on whether to list the iconic western Joshua tree as a threatened species could imperil progress further, by making it impossible to build large-scale solar projects in the state’s vast deserts, writes Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment. 

An eight-month investigation by The Associated Press in partnership with the University of California, Berkeley’s Human Rights Center and its Investigative Reporting Program reveals a shadow industry that’s profiting off the Biden administration’s decision to send more than 25,000 Haitians attempting to immigrate into the U.S. back to Haiti, rather than to the South American countries where many had been living.

Professor Jonathan Simon discusses how to interpret the results alongside the successful recall of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin. “I think the constituency for people who really think that the criminal legal system needs a deep reform may in fact be deeper in the East Bay,” he says. 

Kyra Morris ’23, co-leader of the student-led Gun Violence Prevention Project, or GVPP, lost her brother to gun violence in 2014. She calls Newsom’s program a step in the right direction. “Gun violence is a problem that needs to be addressed with all hands on deck,” she says. “We cannot look away from this issue at the state, local, and national levels.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Dennis Aftergut of Lawyers Defending American Democracy argue the U.S. Supreme Court’s originalist interpretation of the Second Amendment “is robbing us of our safety and our children” as an obstacle to sensible gun control legislation. 

Lecturer Shanin Specter discusses the challenges of recruiting paraprofessionals as firms like his expand their practice areas. “It seems that the number of folks going into that area is decreasing or stagnant and it’s a significant need,” he says.

The work of Ethan Elkind, director of the  climate program and the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, on rail transit is cited in this podcast about where the political left is now and what happens next. 

As demand for battery-powered vehicles increases, “we’re just pretty far behind here,” says Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment. “But I think we can get things moving, now that there’s bipartisan support for it.”

In a new decision this week, the U.S. Supreme Court court has made it virtually impossible for those whose rights are violated by federal officials to sue, no matter how egregious the constitutional violation or the injury, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes.

Some of the president’s ideas, such as raising the age to own a gun nationwide, could be problematic, Yoo says, adding gun laws might be better left up to individual states in the wake of several recent mass shootings. 

“My sense is that now, more than ever, our country and our world are going to need lawyers to uphold the rule of law and ensure justice,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, telling this year’s graduates to be inspired, not discouraged, by their experience over the past few years. 

Desirée Nguyen Orth, director of the Consumer Justice Program at East Bay Community Law Center, says the Biden administration’s announcement is a step in the right direction. 

Weighing in along with other legal experts, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says “a program to help homeless trans individuals would be allowed so long as it is a reasonable way to achieve a legitimate government objective.” 

Kristin Theis-Alvarez, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, discusses Berkeley Law’s plan to waive tuition and student service fees for in-state residents who belong to a federally recognized tribe

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky predicts we are on the verge of a dramatic change in so many areas of constitutional law and likens this era to the ideological shift the court underwent in 1937, after then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to “pack” the court with additional justices in response to opinions stifling his agenda

Professor Catherine Fisk discusses the Supreme Court’s efforts to force clerks to hand over their phone records and suggests the clerks respond as a group and decline to act until they consult with counsel

Professor Rebecca Wexler, with U Chicago Law’s Professor Aziz Huq, writes, in an era of medication abortion and remote medicine, states’ ability to clamp down on abortion access turns partly on their ability to identify who is seeking such care. Tech companies can make that harder, or easier.

Lecturer Mallika Kaur interviews Nancy Lemon, Herma Hill Kay Lecturer, about her extensive experience in a practice area most attorneys agree is emotionally draining and personally trying

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, with federal law clerk Andrew Chemerinsky, writes the law is clear: The social media companies cannot be punished for being the sites where racist speech was expressed by a deeply disturbed and violent individual

Professor Frank Partnoy’s 2012 interview with the New York Times exploring the moral responsibility we have to care for future generations, is cited

Matthew Stanford, California Constitution Center Senior Research Fellow, explains why only time will tell if the court is in fact prepared to lift its thumb entirely from the pro-arbitration scale

Professor Adam Badawi says Elon Musk would need to prove the true number of bots and the amount Twitter disclosed in its SEC filings rises to the level of a ‘material adverse effect’ in order for him to renege on his offer

Professor Khiara M. Bridges says the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade could have implications for other reproductive rights such as contraception and IVF

Berkeley Law announces it will cover all tuition for current and future students who are both California residents and members of federally registered tribes

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, with Andrew Chemerinsky, writes it is urgent that the Supreme Court justices block Texas HB 20 from going into effect and declare it unconstitutional

Professor Catherine Fisk, Faculty Director of the Center for Law & Work, addresses employee privacy concerns as a growing number of tech companies extend abortion-related travel benefits

Alexa Koenig, Executive Director of the Human Rights Center, says open source information can be invaluable at the preliminary investigation stage, as you’re planning either humanitarian relief or to conduct a legal investigation

Professor Khiara M. Bridges says in its initial filing, the plaintiffs in Dobbs were testing how far the Supreme Court would go to disregard the viability line

Alexa Koenig, executive director of the Human Rights Center, says there’s been a shift in how tech companies are responding to events such as the Buffalo shooting

Professor Peter Menell, with Dennis Aftergut of Lawyers Defending American Democracy, writes Sen. Hawley appears ready not only to undo property and free speech rights, but also to bust a foundation of America’s international trade

Professor Khiara M. Bridges explains the obstacles to mail-ordered abortion medications and says she expects a conflict between a state’s ability to regulate the practice of medicine and the federal government’s ability to regulate the availability of any medication in the US.

Alexa Koenig, Executive Director of the Human Rights Center, appears on 60 Minutes to discuss open source investigations and says we are headed into an entirely new era of human rights investigations, and war crimes investigations, more generally

Dave Jones and Ted Lamm from the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment weigh in as investors campaign to require insurance companies to make stronger climate disclosures

Professor Dan Farber says the draft Dobbs opinion appears to go out of its way to decide issues that the justices don’t need to reach in order to resolve the case

Four high-ranking congressional Democrats sent formal requests to the CEOs of YouTube, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook’s parent company, Meta, on Thursday, asking them to archive content that could be used as evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine and citing a 2021 report from the Human Rights Center

Professor Orin Kerr explains why he believes there are reasons to think that birth control restrictionists will not succeed as abortion opponents have

Professor Khiara M. Bridges warns, if the Supreme Court is willing to do away with longstanding precedent like Roe, Bridges said, it’s impossible to predict what other rights also could be in question

David A. Carrillo, Executive Director of the California Constitution Center, and senior research fellow Allison G. Macbeth, explain how the reasoning in the leaked draft Supreme Court opinion in ‘Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization’ can also be applied to void other federal liberty protections such as contraception and interracial and same-sex marriage

Joshua Spivak, senior research fellow at the California Constitution Center, discusses the complex issues in play in the Chesa Boudin recall effort 

Lecturer Ann Ravel explains potentially illegal campaign finance issues with Maryland Rep Anthony Brown’s AG campaign

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says the announcement that preference for seating for the D.C. Bar Exam will be given to students from D.C.-area law schools is arbitrary, unfair and likely unconstitutional

Professor Orin Kerr discusses the confidentiality rules for Supreme Court clerks

Alexa Koenig, Executive Director of the Human Rights Center, discusses the increase in news using open source investigation techniques

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky suggests Chief Justice John Roberts no longer wields the moderating influence he once had over the court’s more hard-line conservatives

Professor Khiara M. Bridges explores the idea of the federal government leasing out federal lands and allow abortion clinics to operate on them

Dean Erwin Chemerinksy says the fact that a prominent Republican leader like McCarthy even discussed invoking Section 4, a political maneuver that has no historical precedence, was “stunning” in and of itself

Professor Khiara M. Bridges helps unpack the complicated question of what constitutes a burden

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says Justice Alito’s opinion, assuming it becomes the final decision, will put many rights in danger

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky warns that if the Supreme Court overturns the right to abortion in Roe v. Wade, the justices would likely begin “unraveling the whole fabric of constitutional protection of privacy”

Professor Khiara M. Bridges, one of the authors of an amicus brief in the Dobbs case, says the burden of restricted abortion access will fall heaviest on Black women and expects, if abortion is criminalized and states begin prosecuting people who terminate pregnancies, poor people of color will be arrested and convicted at higher rates than their white counterparts

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky points out that, from 1960 through 2021, Republicans have held the White House for 32 years and Democrats for 29, almost an even split, but Republicans have appointed 15 justices and Democrats only 9

Professor Dan Farber predicts that the Supreme Court’s dismissive attitude toward precedent in Roe v Wade is another signal of a conservative majority that’s eager to roll up its sleeves and “fix” all the issues in the law that conservatives have complained about for years

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky raises concerns that the investigation into the Supreme Court leak could be damaging to the high court

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky explores whether the Supreme Court should be as transparent as counterparts in the other branches of the U.S. government.

Professor Khiara M. Bridges appears on the Majority Report to discuss the bombshell leaked US Supreme Court brief from Justice Alito that would overturn Roe V. Wade

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky appears on The Hill TV to discuss the Supreme Court’s apparent intention to overturn Roe v Wade

Professor Khiara M. Bridges says the anti-abortion movement has organized around Roe v Wade, but very few people have read it

Alexa Koenig, Executive Director of the Human Rights Center, discusses the use of satellite imagery to capture war crimes evidence

Professor Orin Kerr says we’ve had Supreme Court leaks before, but this is a whole new order of magnitude of leak

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says even without an explicit constitutional amendment, access to abortion in California would be unlikely to change unless a pre-emptive federal law is passed by Congress

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky examines the potential consequences of the Supreme Court’s apparent intention to overturn Roe v Wade

Oaklandside notes that Professor Khiara M. Bridges sounded the alarm in March over the impending loss of abortion protections, and how they would impact vulnerable people

Professor Orin Kerr’s tweets regarding the legal issues relating to the Supreme Court leak are cited

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky predicts that if Justice Alito’s reasoning from the leaked draft opinion is followed, then there is a large number of constitutional rights that are in jeopardy

Professor Orin Kerr says the leaking of the Supreme Court draft opinion is the most egregious violation of confidentiality for a staff member or employee of the court

Professor Khiara M. Bridges says a decision against abortion rights would come down hardest on people who do not have the ability or means to travel where an abortion would be available and the only source of optimism may be in the likelihood that the Supreme Court’s decision will sort of spur activism

David A. Carrillo, Executive Director of the California Constitution Center, says states like California “can use their constitutions to increase protections for reproductive liberty”

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes the draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v Wade is right-wing Republican politics masquerading as law

Lecturer Shanin Specter says leaving the definition of individual rights to each of 50 jurisdictions will create the un-United States and predicts it is likely to get worse from here

Dean Erwin Chermerinsky questions whether the intense secrecy surrounding every aspect of the Supreme Court’s work is a good thing

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and NYU Professor Burt Neuborne write the core principle underlying the First Amendment is that government cannot punish speech because it disagrees with its viewpoint, but that is exactly what Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature have done to the Disney corporation for having dared to oppose legislation limiting discussion of gay issues in Florida’s public schools

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

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky reflects on the LA riots and the anger that remains today because police excessive force, and racist policing continues

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes federal Judge Mizelle’s misguided mask mandate decision is only the latest example of a bad practice that undermines orderly judicial processes and should be rejected by both sides of the partisan divide

Professor Jonathan Simon says, despite recall efforts, San Francisco D.A. Chesa Boudin has done the things he said he would do

Ethan Elkind, Director of the Climate Program at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, says big corporations are perhaps not the ideal “poster child” for a cap-and-trade revenue recipient, they likely do deliver emission reductions

Professor Dan Farber says the Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling in West Virginia vs. EPA is likely to curtail not just EPA’s ability to combat climate change but the government’s ability to protect the public from other threats, from financial fraud to public health

Professor Andrew Bradt says the results of the federal civil trial against opioid manufacturers underway in San Francisco will have ripple effects far beyond just the city

Professor Steven Davidoff Solomon says the Elon Musk/Twitter deal is a fairly standard merger agreement

Ethan Elkind, Director of the Climate Program at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, claims that local agencies tend to poorly plan infrastructure work and don’t have enough capacity to manage megaprojects. They also often use procurement methods that create a management bottleneck.

Mridula Raman, Clinical Supervising Attorney at the Death Penalty Clinic, discusses the All Writs Act and if it can authorize prisoner transport in habeas proceedings

Savala Nolan, Executive Director of the Henderson Center for Social Justice, offers words of advice and wisdom to women of color, and other marginalized people, graduating law school

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

Professor Seth Davis discusses Oklahoma v McGirt’s relevance for disputes about taxation and civil regulatory authority

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky appears on The Nation’s podcast and argues the Supreme Court has empowered the police and subverted civil rights

Ten percent of the seller’s commission from the auction of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s personal mementos will go to to fellowships offered by the Women of Berkeley Law

Ethan Elkind, Director of the Climate Program at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, says he believes mass rail transit will get the bulk of the ridership back to pre-pandemic levels.

A former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court wrote an op-ed urging the reexamination of the case of Toforest Johnson, a prisoner on Alabama’s death row long represented by the Death Penalty Clinic

A op-ed Dean Erwin Chemerinsky wrote last summer regarding possible D.C. statehood is cited to answer a Washington Post reader’s question about the constitutionality of it

Professor Chuck Weisselberg explains his fears regarding the Supreme Court signaling it may shield police from civil lawsuits for failing to provide Miranda warnings to suspects, saying police could be given an incentive to pressure people who refuse to talk

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

Professor Frank Partnoy, with fellow Robert Bishop, filed a comment letter regarding the SEC’s recent proposal to halve the deadline for large investors to disclose their stakes in companies

Alexa Koenig, Executive Director of the Human Rights Center, says that the challenge on convicting war crimes through social media images will be on the admissibility, on convincing judges this is something they should be allowing or heavily weighing

HRC’s Berkeley Protocol is being used by Ukrainian groups to determine how best to document and preserve evidence, as well as ethical and legal guidance for gathering eyewitness accounts

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky expresses that creating meaningful checks and balances for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s office is long overdue

Alexa Koenig, Executive Director of the Human Rights Center, appears on the Lawfare Podcast for an in-depth interview examining the history of using social media for international criminal cases and Berkeley/the HRC’s role in developing the Berkeley Protocol

Professor Robert Merges 2004 paper, A New Dynamism in the Public Domain, is mentioned in an article examining whether corporations are going to use IP law to profit from psychedelics

Professor David Oppenheimer discusses the Tesla racial discrimination case and says the judge wrote a very careful opinion that will make it hard for Tesla to appeal

Professor Catherine Crump, Director of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic, filed suit on behalf of a coalition of immigrant rights groups seeking information from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement about the agency’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, a so- called alternative to detention program that has ballooned during the Biden administration

Professor Steven Davidoff Solomon explains the options the board at Twitter has in reaction to Elon Musk’s takeover offer

Professor Catherine Fisk says more needs to be done to protect gig workers and their families

Lecturer Carla Shapreau, who has been working on the case of a Stradivarius violin stolen under the Nazis, is one of the thirty French and international speakers participating in the colloquium devoted to the spoliation of musical instruments in Europe, between 1933 and 1945

Professor Leti Volpp says clarifies a proposed bill would that would permit non-citizens who are authorized to work in the U.S. to become police officers in California

Professor Catherine Fisk explores the leverage workers and employers have when it comes to a return-to-the-office policy

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says the Supreme Court’s holding in Thompson v. Clark was narrow and the justices only ruled that malicious prosecution claims did not require an affirmative indication of actual innocence

Alexa Koenig, Executive Director of the Human Rights Center, explains the benefits and challenges of a large amount of social media evidence

Dean Erwin Chemerinksy say Justice Jackson is not going to change anybody’s mind with regard to the abortion issue or the gun issue, but she’s the first justice in history to have ever been a public defender, she’s the first Black woman to ever serve on the court, and these things could really influence others

Professor Khiara Bridges debunks Facebook posts claiming California lawmakers proposed a bill that would allow mothers to kill their babies up to 7 days after birth

Professor Orin Kerr explores how the reshuffled Supreme Court might rule on surveillance and policing

Professor Catherine Fisk explains the lack of coverage gig workers and their families have when people are killed on the job and the cost-saving measures companies like Uber take to exclude their drivers from workers’ compensation

Alexa Koenig, Executive Director of the Human Rights Center, discusses the increase in major warrants of arrest coming forward on the basis open source investigations and social media evidence

The Hollywood Reporter ranks Berkeley Law #4 on their Top Law Schools list, calling out of offerings in law and tech and our strength in intellectual property and privacy

Lecturer Mallika Kaur writes, in order for the VAWA to truly positively affect everyone who has experienced gendered violence, it must openly examine the biases faced by minorities and provide support to grassroots initiatives

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says John Eastman’s actions went beyond that of an attorney