Media Highlights

Professor Prasad Krishnamurthy weighs in on Trump’s plan to close two of the DOJ’s Antitrust Division offices.

“The question is, do we have the guardrails for our Constitution to survive?” said Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “‘We don’t know’ is the only answer anyone can give. You can play it out, and it’s very frightening.”

There is “no consensus about at what level of generality or specificity the law requires” for California, said Pamela Samuelson, a professor at UC Berkeley Law. The European Union has a similar training data disclosure rule in its EU Artificial Intelligence Act, and “Gen AI developers are working toward a consensus about what level of disclosure is required,” she said.

The trial will test the boundaries of the U.S.’s antitrust laws pertaining to corporate acquisitions, said Prasad Krishnamurthy, a law professor at U.C. Berkeley Law. The FTC will have to prove that not only did Meta monopolize the social media market but that its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp actively “harmed competition.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky weighs in on executive powers and the courts.

“They are trying to expand the number of political appointees,” said John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer and a professor at UC Berkeley Law. “You will have less of this notion that the Justice Department is independent.”

“You have this dynamic of presidents increasingly relying on emergency powers to do things that are not directly related to any actual emergency in the traditional understanding of that term,” said Elena Chachko, an assistant professor at Berkeley Law School.

Assistant Professor Emily Rong Zhang joins AirTalk to look at how voter ID laws work.

The Guardian reviewed cases in the arrest data, which was released by the Deportation Data Project from UC Berkeley Law School, where people who had previously been released on supervision were now arrested, as well as cases of people with pending immigration proceedings who were arrested in their communities.

“Authoritarian regimes come to power by silencing critics. I worry that if it gets worse it’ll even be harder to speak up. What we have is our voice and our authority as deans,” said Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

Professor Claudia Polsky, director of the Environmental Law Clinic, weighs in on toxic heavy metals found in fire retardant gathered from the LA fires. “To me this situation is disturbing if unsurprising.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky discusses this term’s U.S. Supreme Court cases about the Constitution and religion.

“What we’re trying to do in GRIL is expand the opportunity to data science students who are also on a career path to work with clients and give them the opportunity to work alongside lawyers in a social justice space and (learn) how they can apply data for good,” said GRIL director Laurel Fletcher.

“There is ample support for the D.C. Circuit’s jurisdiction in the case,” writes Professor Amanda L. Tyler. “But can it order the return of individuals no longer in the country?”

“The idea of government wanting to stifle speech is not new. But some of what is being done now is,” said Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “And it does not matter if you are a citizen or a visitor, you have free speech, even if people view that free speech as offensive or in favor of Hamas.”

Professor Colleen Chien discusses racial bias in the criminal justice system, and the database she built to compare sentencing outcomes by race in the California justice system.

The Trump administration “has really taken to heart the motto of ‘move fast and break things,’” says Daniel Farber, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley law school This has led to some losses in court, he adds, but “Even if they’re eventually told to stop what they’re doing, or to reverse what they’re doing, just the fact that they’ve done it has an impact.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinksy and Professor John Yoo weigh in about whether the nation is approaching, or has reached, a “constitutional crisis.”

“If democracy is to survive, though, it must be because the illegal and unconstitutional acts of the Trump administration are stopped,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “That requires that those targeted fight back.”

Professor Elisabeth Semel, founding director of the UC Berkeley Law Death Penalty Clinic, said no matter what someone thinks of the death penalty, there remains no evidence that executions advance public safety.

Jeremy Fogel, a retired federal judge, said no judge in the nation’s history has been removed “because of dissatisfaction with his or her rulings.” But threats of impeachment “contribute to a toxic environment that increases the difficulty of an already difficult job,” said Fogel, who now leads the Berkeley Judicial Institute.

Here & Now‘s Scott Tong talks with Dean Erwin Chemerinsky about what would happen if President Trump defies the courts.

Delaney Green, clinical supervisor with the Policy Advocacy Clinic at UC Berkeley Law, said it’s unclear whether an increase in staffing is going to help survivors more readily access better resources. “By and large, accessing victim compensation is very, very difficult,” she said. “I’m hoping this is starting to signal some changes that are reprioritizing the needs of survivors.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky joins LA Times Today host Lisa McRee to discuss expansion of presidential power.

Arbitration is commonly understood to favor employers over employees, but “an arbitrator cannot violate the law,” said Catherine Fisk of UC Berkeley’s Law School, where she teaches employment and labor law. 

“It’s absolutely the case that Ice enforcement appears to be becoming more indiscriminate,” said David Hausman, assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley’s law school. “First, we know they’re trying to maximize the number of arrests each day, which means they can’t be as thoughtful about what they’re doing. And second, they explicitly have the goal of spreading fear among immigrants in the United States, and indiscriminate arrests accomplish that as well.”

“The right thing to do here is concede error and make it right,” said David A. Carrillo, executive director of Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center. “Hedging, delaying, and minimizing will only prolong the problem and make it worse.”

Professor Chris Hoofnagle, faculty director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology discusses UC Berkeley Law’s  comprehensive set of rules on AI use.

UC Berkeley professor of law and history, Dylan Penningroth in a conversation with American historian Heather Cox Richardson about the historical evolution of the Republican Party, and the state of U.S. politics and democracy today. 

“Hopefully, the pushback in the form of lawsuits like this will show that there are legal boundaries that should not be crossed,” said Laura Riley, director of the Clinical Program at Berkeley Law. “What exactly those are; we have to wait to see what the courts do. But I do think it shows that municipalities can’t criminalize homelessness in a way that’s unchecked.”

Laura Riley, director of the clinical program at UC Berkeley Law, shares her insights on disability act claims that are expected to arise in future cases related to the clearing of homeless encampments.

“A lot of things are coming together right now,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley Law School. “We have an administration that is being very aggressive toward the media, and a media that is afraid. … And that’s frightening.”