Media Highlights

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky weighs in on what we can expect from SCOTUS in 2025.

Professor John Yoo discusses Presidential power and what Trump can and cannot do on his first day in office.

Professor Amanda Tyler and Jeremy Fogel, director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute at UC Berkeley Law School weigh in on proposed legislation to expand the federal judiciary.

Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute and a former California federal judge weighs in on the Supreme Court ethics debate.

Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute and a former California federal judge weighs in on a push for legislation expanding the judiciary,

Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, said he expected major new legal fights between Democratic-led states and the Trump administration that could reshape federal and state relations.

Claudia Polsky, director of the Environmental Law Clinic at UC Berkeley School of Law, weighs in on findings of a study she co-authored on California limits on ‘forever chemicals’ saying “It suggests a tangible public health payoff from the state’s more stringent environmental regulations.” 

Colleen Chien, a law professor at UC Berkeley, has been publishing legal data across California related to RJA and studying legal disparities. “What we’re seeing is that there’s what we already know, there’s a lot of racial disparity in our system, and it’s really pervasive — almost every single county, on every single charge,” she said. “It’s hard to believe that that could just be the product of things that don’t have to do with racism.”

Professor Diana Reddy weighs in on challenges by corporations and Trump to the legal structure of the National Labor Relations Board.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky weighs in on the law of birthright citizenship and if  Trump can change it by executive order.

Ethan Elkind, the director of the climate program at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment weighs in on what the incoming Trump administration might do if a series of environmental rules that are before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, are approved saying “If Trump follows through with campaign promises to revoke these waivers after EPA approves them, California would likely sue over the federal administration’s action.”

Professor Jonathan Simon comments on Calif. Justice Reformers vow to fight after election day losses.

“Practicum projects prioritize advocacy on behalf of marginalized veterans, including veterans of color, women veterans, and those experiencing homelessness, criminal legal system involvement, or mental health disabilities,” said Professor Rose Carmen Goldberg, who leads the practicum. “Projects vary over time, in response to the needs of the veteran community.”

“We do not have four years to not do things, let alone go backwards,” said Ken Alex, director at the Center for Law Energy and Environment at UC Berkeley. “We are in a very, very precarious moment.”

“Transportation is really where the Trump administration can do the most damage to California,” said Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at UC Berkeley law school’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment. “This could make it hard for the state to meet climate goals.”

“Faced with near-total Republican control of the federal government, Sacramento may think the state does better by negotiating,” said David A. Carrillo, executive director of Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center. “That affects whether California’s strategy is to fight on all fronts, or to focus on leveraging its size and market power in making its own domestic and international agreements — call it soft secession.”

“It becomes incredibly important to evaluate whether the law is actually doing what it’s supposed to be doing,” says Claudia Polsky, study co-author and director of the Environmental Law Clinic at UC Berkeley School of Law, “which is reducing exposure to chemicals.”

Professor Elena Chachko weighs in on Israel’s 2002 law criminalizing incitement to terrorism.

Professor Diana Reddy weighs in on whether or not the N.L.R.B. and its underlying statute is doomed.

With U.S. democracy hanging in the balance, the leader of UC Berkeley’s globally influential Othering and Belonging Institute urges that, whenever possible, we build bridges — even with those who traffic in hate.

A new study, co-authored by Claudia Polsky, director of the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, suggests California’s stricter regulations are reducing levels of BPA, PFAS and other harmful toxics in people.

“Trump repeatedly warns voters that they are good people beset by bad people, and that his supporters are among the good ones while his opponents are nothing short of evil,” said Mr. López, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. “Many Americans — of all races — want to be among the good ones.”

Dean Chemerinsky and Professor John Yoo discuss the Supreme Court’s conservative majority and the upcoming election’s potential impact on the court.

Dave Jones, a former California insurance commissioner and now director of the climate risk initiative at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law weighs in on insurance companies practice of arbitrarily adjusting its algorithm to approve more prior authorization requests.

Berkeley Law receives an A+ in the areas of Criminal Law, Racial Justice an Business Law in the Fall issue of preLaw Magazine.

Alexa Koenig, a co-faculty director at Berkeley Law’s Human Rights Center discusses how nearly 10 years after receiving a MacArthur “genius” award for institutions, The Human Rights Center has transformed itself and its work, offering lessons for both grant makers and nonprofits.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky previews some of this term’s more high-profile SCOTUS cases on the docket so far.

Professor Adam Badawi co-writes a new paper that finds that 63% of the S&P 500 include ESG components in their calculation of executive compensation and that such goals are almost always met.

Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute and a former federal judge and a judicial ethics expert, said expanding the court to 15 justices might improve the administration of the high court and cool the rancorous politics around nominating justices.

Professor Charles Weisselberg weighs in on the push for clemency for people who were convicted of crimes committed before November 1987, when the federal parole system was abolished and replaced with new U.S. sentencing guidelines. 

Rio Scharf, staff attorney for the Criminal Law & Justice Center said the suit currently has two plaintiffs, Vaesau and Colin Scholl. If the suit becomes a class action lawsuit, however, the Criminal Law & Justice Center could represent more than a million individuals who allegedly received only a portion of, or none of, the money they’re entitled to.

Wayne Stacy, executive director of the BCLT discusses Berkeley Law’s NIL practicum. 

UC Berkeley Law’s Criminal Law & Justice Center and Edelson PC file lawsuit against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, for alleged unlawful failure to provide some or all of the $200 “gate money” to possibly more than a million people.

Professor Jennifer Urban, co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology discusses how university libraries’ lending programs differ from Internet Archive in that reader privacy is at the forefront.

Senior Director of Admissions Anya Grossman, discusses Berkeley Law’s newly announced launch of an AI-focused master of laws degree.

Berkeley Law ranked #1 for Legal Technology.

Professor Catherine Fisk weighs in on Governor Gavin Newsom’s return to the office directive for public employees. 

Colleen Chien, faculty director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology and Adam Sterling, assistant dean of Executive Education discuss Berkeley Law’s new AI focused law degree program.

Ethan Elkind, director of the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at Berkeley Law weighs in on The California Air Resources Board’s decision to drop its plan to regulate the jet fuel used for 220,000 in-state flights per year.

Arneta Rogers, executive director at the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice at Berkeley Law School, said Trump paved the way for extreme antiabortion laws that are disproportionately harming people living “on the margins” — including people of color and the young, poor and queer — and should be made to own that legacy, because “the stakes couldn’t be higher.”

UC Berkeley School of Law professor Catherine Fisk said that an employer’s intention when reviewing an employee’s email is key to determining whether a violation has occurred. If an employer reviewed a staffer’s email while they were on vacation to offload work to someone else, Fisk said, that type of search may be justified. But searching an employee’s email simply to surveil them probably would not be, she said.

Professor Daniel Farber comments on the boost in courses focusing on climate change issues at universities.

“I strongly support 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices, but I believe that this would require a constitutional amendment, especially if applied to current justices,” said UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

David A. Carrillo, executive director of Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center weighs in on California’s Prop 22 ruling.

“Although Democratic primary voters and delegates may be wary of those with prosecutorial experience, such experience is likely helpful nationally for distancing Harris (and any former prosecutor she might choose as VP) from left wing criminal justice policy positions that are nationally unpopular,” said Professor Rebecca Goldstein. 

Catherine Crump, director of University of California, Berkeley’s Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic weighs in on the controversy surrounding the Olympics’ AI security.

“This problem is so big that the federal government itself doesn’t even know the scope of the problem,” explained UC Berkeley Law Professor Rose Carmen Goldberg.

“Under the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Place, the government needs ‘reasonable suspicion’ to briefly seize your bag at an airport without a warrant or consent to subject it to a drug-detection dog’s sniff,” said Professor Orin Kerr.

Professor Holly Doremus weighs in on the possible impact the Chevron decision will have on endangered species.

“I think that the wild card is if Elon turns Delaware into some kind of cause célèbre for a large set of retail shareholders, given his platform,” said assistant law professor Andrew Baker. “That could happen and become a reason people choose not to incorporate in Delaware,” he said. “But who knows?”

Assistant Professor of Law Emily Rong Zhang weighs in on possible legal challenges to Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race.

“If we really think it’s in our interest as a society to be placing these people in state hospitals, that should be on the general fund, the taxpayers, to do that, not on people who are involuntarily being committed to these facilities,” said Professor Stephanie Campos-Bui.

Catherine Fisk, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, said public support for unions is at its highest levels since the 1960s. Coupled with recent actions by the NLRB that boost union organizing, those positive attitudes about unions embolden workers to form them, whether on their own as thousands of Starbucks workers have since 2021 or by teaming up with established unions like Volkswagen employees in Tennessee who recently voted to join the United Auto Workers, she said.

“The language that Trump is using is designed to promote and answer a single question: Who threatens you?” Professor Ian Haney López said.

“The long-settled legal doctrine here depends on constitutional permission for forced labor as punishment for crime,” said David Carrillo, executive director of Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center. “Removing that support raises difficult questions that courts will need to rethink — without an established foundation to build on.”

“The language that Trump is using is designed to promote and answer a single question: Who threatens you?” Professor Ian Haney López said.

“DEI is the latest in a long line of dog whistles,” coded words and phrases with a set political message intended for members of certain group to understand, “meant to trigger resentments rooted in racism and sexism, but presented instead as defenses of high principle,” according to Ian Haney López, a UC Berkeley Law professor of public law and author of “Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class.”

Heat waves are more predictable than other natural disasters, however. That can make the coverage expensive, compared with just setting aside money to pay for the added costs, said Ted Lamm, associate director of the University of California Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment. 

“Quite frankly, we probably need stricter program rules,” said Tejas Narechania, director of the UC Berkeley Center for Law & Technology and one of the project leads. “A lot of people got internet access, and that’s important. But there were lots and lots of problems that could have been, and still can be, solved through good, rigorous oversight and better program goals. And that’s an opportunity for policymakers.”

Professor Adam Badawi weighs in on Skydance Media’s acquisition of Paramount Global, and discusses what control an acquiring company can exert over the decisions made by the acquired company during the regulatory review process.

Much of the Biden administration’s executive order may remain unaffected, said Kenneth Bamberger, a UC Berkeley Law professor who has focused on AI regulatory issues. That’s because most of the order’s actions consist of non-binding efforts, like directing federal agencies to draft reports or establish guidelines that wouldn’t have fallen under Chevron. 

Professor Colleen Chien discusses AI web crawlers on NPR’s All Things Considered.

Professor Elena Chachko weighs in on the Supreme Court’s recent administrative law cases.

Professor Jeffrey Selbin weighs in on the Supreme Court ruling on City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson

According to Supervising Attorney in the Environmental Law Clinic at Berkeley Law Steve Castleman, the 2021 retesting found “significant” amounts of contamination that exceeded the cleanup goal of Strontium-90, a radioactive isotope, which he alleges the Navy has since tried to invalidate. 

The notion of America recruiting foreigners into its military under false promises isn’t new, said Rose Carmen Goldberg, Director of the Veterans Law Practicum at UC Berkeley School of Law. “This problem is so big that the federal government itself doesn’t even know the scope of the problem,” she explained.

“It’s a court driven by conservative ideology and politics, not precedent or constitutional doctrine,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the UC Berkeley law school dean.

San Francisco-based Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice and the UC Berkeley Law Clinic filed the lawsuit Friday, calling for, among other demands, 100% of the land to be retested for radioactive contaminants. They claim the Navy was obligated to do so, but never did.

“I didn’t expect such a broad definition of absolute immunity for a president for criminal acts,” said Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, one of the nation’s preeminent constitutional scholars. “While the court leaves many issues unresolved, it is a dramatic and stunning affirmation of broad, absolute immunity for a president.” 

Berkeley Law’s Environmental Law Clinic. representing a local environmental justice group, filed a lawsuit against the EPA and the Navy over the troubled cleanup of radiological and other contamination at the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.

Tweet by Professor Orin Kerr quoted in Vanity Fair: “I don’t know if Trump is going to be reelected in 2024. But I know that, if he is, he’s going to preface every blatantly illegal thing he does by saying, ‘Official act, this is an official act.’”

“One of the many policies in California that would be ripe for a legal challenge, without the Chevron doctrine in play, is the state’s zero-emission vehicle and tailpipe standards,” said Ted Lamm, associate director at UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment.

Professor Jeffrey Selbin and Laura Riley, director of the Clinical Program at Berkeley Law, comment on the Grants Pass decision.

Steve Castleman, a supervising attorney in the Environmental Law Clinic at UC Berkeley Law, which is representing Greenaction, said the Navy and EPA have a legal responsibility to retest the entire site because they found contamination in three parcels.

“What’s so crazy is when we teach election law, a case like this would never come up because we almost never litigate claims over whether or not to have an election,” said Emily Rong Zhang, an assistant professor at Berkeley Law, explaining election disputes are usually over more specific legal debates.

“So far, the term has been less ideologically defined than the last two,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley Law School. “But I really think it is (this) week’s decisions that will determine how we think of the term.”

Generative AI companies have plausible fair use defenses for using works as training data, said Pamela Samuelson, a digital copyright expert and law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. But she said courts might look at music differently than they would other works such as computer code, text or images.

Joshua Spivak, a senior research fellow at the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law who closely tracks recalls nationwide, comments on the recall of a Southern California school board president.

Professor Colleen Chien talks to NPR about Maryland’s mass marijuana pardons, drawing attention to not just the proclamation, but the implementation of relief.

“There is a very ongoing, current debate raging among the justices about how to interpret the Constitution across a range of cases and whether they need to adopt the same approach in all cases,” said University of California Berkeley law professor Amanda Tyler.

Berkeley Law selected as one of “The 13 Best Law Schools to Jumpstart Your Hollywood Career”

Professor Charles Weisselberg discusses the parole process.

Dean Chemerinsky comments on SCOTUS case City of Grants Pass v. Johnson.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky provides insight into some of the questions raised following the Trump trial and verdict.

Laura Riley, director of the clinical law program at Berkeley Law discusses the Grants Pass v. Johnson SCOTUS case.

“Displaying those particular flags creates the appearance at least that the justice is signifying agreement with those viewpoints at a time when there are cases before the court where those viewpoints are relevant,” said Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute at the University of California, Berkeley Law School.

“We are talking about incarcerating people and taking away the most fundamental of liberties—one’s freedom, one’s liberty in the truest, purest sense,” said Professor Amanda Tyler. “At its core, habeas reflects the idea … that we want to get it right.”

David A. Carrillo, executive director of UC Berkeley Law School’s California Constitution Center, discusses the challenge to Proposition 22.

“You always want to be proactive about the appearance of impartiality,” Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge and the director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute, said in an interview. “The best practice would be to make sure that nothing like that is in front of your house.”

Pocket-lint speaks with Tejas N. Narechania, Berkeley Law professor, faculty director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, and former Special Counsel to the FCC to get a refresher on net neutrality, learn what the FCC’s decision means, and what could happen next.

“I believe we’re marching toward an uninsurable future” in many places, said Dave Jones, the former insurance commissioner of California and now director of the Climate Risk Initiative at the University of California Berkeley law school.

A published study co-authored by Professor Catherine Albiston on counteracting workplace bias against mothers and caregivers is cited. 

Jeremy Fogel, the executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute, said it’s “unfortunate” that Supreme Court ethics have become such a partisan issue, which has prevented the country from having a real discussion about how to handle the behavior of the justices. 

Professor Khiara Bridges’ article Race in the Machine: Racial Disparities in Health and Medical AI is reviewed.

“The legal precedent set by the Weinstein appeal should not have any direct bearing on Donald Trump’s case,” said Chesa Boudin, executive director of the Criminal Law & Justice Center at Berkeley Law.

Dave Jones, director of Berkeley Law’s Climate Risk Initiative talks about possible solutions to California’s insurance problems. 

“The promise of AI is that it can create a level playing field for everybody. But we can already see that, organically, legal aid attorneys aren’t going to necessarily have access to the most cutting-edge technologies,” Professor Colleen Chien told Law360. “There’s a risk that this community in particular will be underserved by AI.”

Professor Amanda Tyler discusses the legacy of Mitsuye Endo and her historic Supreme Court victory.

University of California, Berkeley, law and bioethics professor Osagie Obasogie, who has studied excited delirium and sedation, said officers should be banned from influencing medical care. “We need to be sure that folks are treated in a way that meets their medical needs and not simply given a chemical restraint because it’s convenient for law enforcement.”

Laura Riley, the director of the Clinical Program at Berkeley Law and author of Homeless Advocacy discusses the City of Grants Pass vs. Johnson case.

Ted Lamm, a senior research fellow at Berkeley Law’s Climate, Center for Law, Energy & the Environment discusses San Francisco’s Climate Action Plan.

Berkeley Law named one of the top schools for Environmental Law by The National Jurist.

Joshua Spivak, a senior research fellow at the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law, said the vast majority of recall attempts fail to make the ballot. But when they do, the politician is more likely than not to be ousted. Since 2011, some 61% of officials nationwide whose recall made the ballot were voted out, he said.

“I believe that reparations that are race-based are likely to be struck down by the courts because of the Supreme Court’s strong hostility to race-based programs,” said Dean Erwin Chemerinsky by email. “If reparations are in a race-neutral way, such as descendants of slaves, they are more likely to be upheld,”

“Once billionaires are scared of the power of the NLRB, they bring in the big guns,” said Diana Reddy, a labor law professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

“Generally, the guilty party must pay for past harm and refrain from future harm,” in copyright cases said Colleen Chien, co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology at Berkeley Law School, in an email. “In the algorithmic context, we have started to see some creative forms of ‘disgorgement remedies’ including destruction of the model or algorithm, retraining it without the infringing material, or some combination of both,” she said.

A large share of the court’s docket touches on “enormously significant and difficult issues,” Dean Chemerinsky told CNN. “It also is a court that has deep divisions. I assume that all of this leads to delays in releasing decisions.”

“Bitcoin is mature enough at this point that it doesn’t have that kind of centralized managerial efforts of others. That’s what moves it into that commodity space,” said Hermine Wong, a lecturer at the UC Berkeley School of Law and former director of policy at Coinbase.

Former federal judge Jeremy Fogel, who now runs the Berkeley Judicial Institute, said the timing of Trump’s statement is as significant as what he said, because it could create the impression that when Cannon rules, she is responding in part to what the former president has said.

“There’s been a conscious effort from the beginning to try to make sure that there aren’t real price shocks. … and to try to soften that blow,” said Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment. “You have to go basically as fast as the public can accept it.”

The ruling, which led to Warren McCleskey’s execution in 1991, dealt a severe blow to opponents of the death penalty. But it also added legal support to arguments for prosecutorial discretion — that prosecutors, not judges, are the ones to decide what charges to pursue in court and take to the jury, said Elisabeth Semel, a UC Berkeley law professor and co-director of the school’s Death Penalty Clinic.

New report from Berkeley Law students and Lecturer Rose Carmen Goldberg who overseas the Veterans Practicum, looks at the struggles deported veterans face when trying to access benefits they are entitled to.

According to Rose Carmen Goldberg, lecturer at UC Berkeley School of Law and director of the VLP, the report is a testament to a great irony: Veterans, who served in the U.S. military, can be deported. After being deported, veterans have a more difficult time accessing the health and service benefits they’re entitled to.  

Lecturer Joseph Lavitt answers questions about comprehensive and collision insurance.

AI can narrow justice gap, but women lawyers slower to adopt it found a Berkeley Law study co-authored by Professor Colleen Chien.

“In my 30 years as a trial judge, I have never seen an order like this,” said Jeremy Fogel, who served on the federal bench in California and now runs the Berkeley Judicial Institute.

“You can avoid the necessity of consulting with a physician or getting a physical examination by a healthcare provider, and you can just order it delivered to your home and so that expands access,” said Khiara M. Bridges, a professor of law at UC Berkeley who studies reproductive rights. 

Deported veterans face significant barriers accessing a variety of veteran-centric services, including health care benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to a study by the University of California-Berkeley School of Law.

A commentary about a criminal-justice conference at the University of California, Berkeley organized by Professor John Yoo and Chesa Boudin. 

Ethan Elkind is Director of the Climate Program at UC Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment discusses robotaxi expansion.

A new report from Berkeley Law’s Death Penalty Clinic finds that just 19 states collect race and ethnicity information from prospective jurors, meaning that a majority of states cannot ensure that their juries are a “representative cross-section of the community ” as mandated by the Constitution.

The U.N. human rights investigation began following the petition by Clean Cape Fear, with help from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. 

Professor David Hausman discusses a study he co-authored with Dorothy Kronick titled “The Illusory End of Stop and Frisk in Chicago?.”

“The problem of urban hydrology is caused by a thousand small cuts,” says Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at UC Berkeley. “No one driveway or roof in and of itself causes massive alteration of the hydrologic cycle. But combine millions of them in one area and it does. Maybe we can solve that problem with a thousand Band-Aids.”

An analysis by University of California-Berkeley Law Professor Colleen Chien found that less than 1% of people eligible under New York’s old sealing law successfully navigated the petition process. The new automated sealing process will help ensure that everyone eligible for record relief will receive it.

Andrea Roth, Berkeley Law professor of criminal justice, thinks the current decision to send prosecutors to Alameda County is likely not due to any shortage of prosecutors. Instead, she sees the action as state-oriented. “An alternative possibility is that state officials are understandably concerned about reported crime rates in Oakland for a variety of reasons and have decided to intervene, but don’t want to be seen as overreaching,” said Roth. 

Arneta Rogers, who previously worked with the ACLU of Northern California, will take the reins of UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center for Reproductive Rights and Justice, or CRRJ, just over a year and a half after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court.

Jeremy Fogel, a retired federal judge who has also worked extensively on the issues of judicial ethics and mental health, said the situation surrounding Newman’s suspension illustrates broader problems with how the federal judiciary deals with aging in its ranks. Fogel said a protocol to assess judges’ cognitive function on a regular basis, implemented by the judiciary in consultation with experts, could reduce the kinds of confrontations that can emerge when a particular judge appears to show signs of decline.

Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at Berkeley Law discusses on NPR’s Marketplace how automakers like Ford get “extra credit” for EVs they produce toward their overall fuel economy obligations under federal regulations.

“This is an effort by a group of lawyers who are foes of the administrative state and the New Deal-era legislation that created the NLRB and the SEC to essentially end enforcement of those statutes,” says Catherine Fisk, an employment and labor law authority at UC Berkeley law school.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky joins host Scott Shafer to discuss the legal perils Trump is facing.

“While the Supreme Court could decide to upend more than half a decade of its own Eighth Amendment jurisprudence in deciding this case, it doesn’t need to touch earlier cases in order to strike down the lower-court holdings at issue here that extend constitutional protections to homeless people on the basis of their status,” Professor Jeffrey Selbin told the Chronicle.

“What I always hear now is how, when students are upset or offended, they phrase it as, ‘I feel unsafe.’ And I think it’s so important that we separate out the campus’ duty,” said Dean Erwin Chemerinksy during a panel on campus free speech. “It’s not our role to make them safe from ideas that they don’t want to be exposed to. But that line, I think, has gotten blurred.”

Professor Jeffrey Selbin said the existing cases neither fully tie cities’ hands, as some politicians say, nor provide a broad right to sleep outside, as some advocates say. He defended the status quo in which cities sometimes must seek guidance from federal judges to know whether their local rules are constitutional under the Boise decision.

“This is on of the many things that’s got caught up in the culture wars,” said Berkeley Law’s Holly Doremus. “The expectation was that it would be ratified because the military was on board…but these concerns about global entities controlling the conduct of the United States got in the way.”

“The court’s decisions … could be decisive for the presidential election in a way that we never have seen before,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of U.C. Berkeley School of Law. “But also they will matter as to how the court is perceived.”

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley Law School, said the Supreme Court should “take the case and resolve early and for the entire country whether Trump can be on the ballot.” 

Professor Holly Doremus comments on the future of the Endangered Species Act.

“Stalkers always find a way to use location data, making this problem “totally foreseeable,” said Catherine Crump, a Berkeley Law School professor specializing in privacy issues involving technology. “It is disappointing that a company as sophisticated and well-resourced as Tesla doesn’t have better answers to this,” said Crump, who is also a former adviser to the White House Domestic Policy Council.

Discrimination cases are generally difficult to argue in court. “You need a smoking gun,” said Khiara M. Bridges, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former professional dancer. The array of aesthetic judgments involved in dance casting and hiring scenarios can make them especially difficult to parse.

Professor Khiara M. Bridges discusses a legal challenge to Texas abortion bans.

“I’m committed to a life of public service,” said Chesa Boudin, executive director of Berkeley Law’s Criminal Law & Justice Center. “It’s not an accident that I am working at a public university, but I have no plans to run for office. I’m laser focused on building and growing our center to make sure that it is successful.”

“We didn’t have these professional police forces at the time the Constitution was written, so we did really rely a lot more on citizens for certain types of law enforcement,” said Professor Andrea Roth.

“That stuff will be there for 100 years — if the Navy does it right,” said Steve Castleman, clinical supervising attorney at the Environmental Law Clinic. “If the Navy does it wrong, it will start spreading.”

“Artificial intelligence is taking the world by storm, and University of California, Berkeley, School of Law is at the forefront, helping to mitigate risks and maximize benefits.”

“We want them to retest a hundred percent of the shipyard,” said Steve Castleman, clinical supervising attorney at the Environmental Law Clinic. 

Professor Colleen Chien noted that women and smaller companies typically have a more difficult time securing patents or getting their name on patents, and AI tools could help “level the playing field and improve patent quality.”

“If they’re going to build housing that’s going to be lived in for 100 years or more, we want to make sure that all of the contamination that they can remove is removed,” said Steve Castleman, an attorney with UC Berkeley’s Environmental Law Clinic. “And that will require the Navy to tighten up their cleanup standards and to retest 100% of the work that Tetra Tech did because they did it fraudulently.”

“The power of police is not just that they have guns and have a high degree of solidarity in their unions,” said UC Berkeley law Professor Catherine Fisk. “The power is the political threat that elected officials feel.”

“The great thing about framing this accurately as a violation of human rights,” said Claudia Polsky, director of Berkeley Law’s Environmental Law Clinic, “is that framing is capacious enough to include stories about PFAS health harms, ecological harms, corporate responsibility, about lack of regulatory vigor, about inadequate legal remedies for people who are coming out injured.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes about what he calls the potential “sleeper” of the SCOTUS term—Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy.

Claudia Polsky, director of Berkley’s Environmental Law Clinic, said it’s rare for the Human Rights Council to send allegation letters to a transnational corporation, rather than solely to national government. “We hope the UN’s action will induce shareholders to bring DuPont in line with international human rights law.”

Professor Khiara M.Bridges also drew another distinction between the role of race in college admissions and the role of race in health disparities. “If you don’t get into Harvard, there’s always Princeton or Columbia or Cornell,” she said. “Maternal death — the stakes are a little bit higher.”

“The 9th Circuit likely would play a key role in another Trump presidency because it is where officials in deeply Democratic states like California and Washington would go to try to block his policies,” said Chemerinsky, the University of California, Berkeley, law school dean. “But Trump’s appointees to the court could make it less likely to rule against Trump.”

Former U.S. District Judge Jeremey Fogel who is currently executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute discusses ethics at the Supreme Court.

Professor Pamela Samuelson said claims that all gen AI outputs are infringing are not persuasive. The “Big Kahuna,” she said, are the training data copyright claims.

The code’s value “will depend in large part on whether and to what extent individual justices are involved in future ethical controversies,” said former federal judge Jeremy Fogel, director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute at Berkeley Law. “My impression is that the process of getting to this point has made the justices more intentional about public trust and confidence and the impact of ethical issues.” 

Retired U.S. District Judge and Director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute Jeremy Fogel said the careful wording of the ethics code and its introductory statement suggest the justices, led by Roberts, approached it as if they were crafting an opinion.

“Judicial elections used to be sleepy affairs, and that’s changed in recent years both in Pennsylvania and across the country,” said lecturer Shanin Specter. “And so the reality is the statewide elections cannot be won without spending a lot of money and putting a lot of human resources into the effort, as well.”

“There’s only so much the administration can do without action from Congress,” said Catherine L. Fisk, professor of labor and employment law at Berkeley Law. “Expanding the liability chain for businesses that have illegal child labor present in their supply chains would be the best way to tackle the crisis.”

While charging infrastructure has expanded, it’s still not exactly reliable in may places, said Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment. “I think some of that is a victim of the success we’ve had with EV uptake, and so the chargers are getting more used. And the more they’re used, the more they’re going to break down.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinksy writes about the Supreme Court case United States v. Rahimi, a case about the scope of Second Amendment rights.

Professor Catherine Fisk, a faculty director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Work, talks with Law360 about why she thinks stronger laws are crucial and a moral imperative.

If the Michigan litigation achieves its goal, Berkeley Law Assistant Professor Emily Rong Zhang said she can envision the strategy — focusing on primary preferences instead of general election party results — being picked up by Republicans who might do better if voters of color are packed into a small number of districts. She said she’s skeptical because the Supreme Court “is working hard to say ‘we’re not going to disentangle race and party, even if they’re super intertwined.”

Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, said having companies report water-related sustainability targets and mapping their use across supply chains is an important step to using it better.

“Successful transit systems all over the world have one thing in common: walkable, dense development all around the stations,” said Ethan Elkind, Director of the Climate Program at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment.

“Where forum shopping leads to forum crowding… that’s bad for the docket, that’s bad for the litigants, that’s bad for the judiciary,” said Berkeley Law professor Tejas Narechania.

“If companies are going to be risk-averse going forward, then all of the groups that have benefited from DEI programmes are going to be harmed,” warns Khiara M. Bridges, a professor at UC Berkeley law school.

Regulating industrial emissions and equipment—as California has been working to do for decades—certainly provides important benefits to surrounding communities, but “it’s not enough to say, ‘Let’s clean this up,’” says Louise Bedsworth, the executive director at the Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment (CLEE) at UC Berkeley School of Law.“We have to think about building wealth and investment in communities—it’s all part of implementing environmental law and policy.”

“Changing the language of a program by itself is not enough to avoid litigation and the design of DEI programs must make clear that there is no racial, gender, religious, or national origin exclusion,” said Professor Catherine Fisk..

“I assume (Katherine Feinstein) will have to wait; they’ll have to open a probate proceeding and she’ll have to be appointed as the executor,” said Eric Rakowski, a professor at Berkeley Law who teaches estates and trusts. “She can maintain the same causes of action but now in a different role as executor for the estate.” 

Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at U.C. Berkeley, told me that A.D.F. “puts freedom to discriminate over freedom from discrimination.” 

Michael Kiparsky, founding director of the Wheeler Water Institute at Berkeley Law said the idea behind creating these quasi-governmental districts was sound. They brought together a group of landowners and enabled them to pool resources and build costly water infrastructure. The problem, he said, is that you can “get situations where you literally have one or a small number of very large landowners controlling an entity that is managing a public resource owned by the state of California.”

“This is what the court conservatives have wanted for decades – and it is not disappointing them,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley Law School.

Professor John Yoo, testifying in defense of Trump attorney John Eastman, told the California State Bar Court that he doesn’t share his colleague’s belief that Vice President Mike Pence had basis to alter the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky discusses the Supreme Court’s October 2023 term.

“The usual inquiry at the beginning of a term is, ‘What are the big cases and how is the court likely to rule on those cases?'” retired federal judge Jeremy Fogel, who heads the Berkeley Judicial Institute at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, said in an interview. “But the question about the court’s administration of its own business – I don’t remember ever seeing that at the beginning of a term.”

The Washington Post reviews Professor Dylan Penningroth’s book, Before The Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights.

The primary argument made in the lawsuit brought by the authors, in turn, centers on the alleged illegal use of copyrighted material for the training of the AI models, Pamela Samuelson, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley Law School who specializes in the overlap between technology and copyright, told ABC News.

Pamela Samuelson, a UC Berkeley professor and expert in generative AI and copyright law discusses “algorithmic destruction” as it pertains to issues highlighted in lawsuits like those filed against OpenAI and Meta. 

“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.

“One of the ironies of the call to a more ‘law and order’ approach is that people often associate it with being more effective at trying to reduce crime,” Jonathan Simon said. “I think we have to live with the fact that the actual effects on crime are going to be marginal.”

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.

Professor Khiara M. Bridges discusses the impact Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has had on 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.

“Having California participate is a big deal,” said Ken Alex, director, Project Climate at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment. “These are difficult cases. They have five defendants who have endless resources; it’s not simple to prove what they need to prove in terms of misrepresentation.”

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.

Lecturer Joseph Levitt discusses use of aerial photography by insurance companies. 

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.

“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.

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.”

“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.

“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.

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 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.

“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.

“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. 

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

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. 

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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

“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. 

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

“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.

“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.’ ”

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.

“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.”

“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.

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. 

“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.

“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.

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

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. 

“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.

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.

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.”

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.

“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.”

“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.

“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.”

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.”

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

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

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.

“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.”

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.”. 

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

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.

“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.”

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.

“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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.”

“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.” 

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.

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

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.”

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.