Professor Khiara M. Bridges says the Supreme Court’s recent decisions have sent a message to conservative state lawmakers that it won’t stand in the way of laws restricting birth control methods. “It’s all of the implications of the Dobbs decision that make us reasonable to be fearful about the accessibility of contraception in the future,” she says.
“Precedent and the principle of stare decisis are supposed to limit judicial discretion and provide stability to the law. But time and again, as in this decision, the conservative justices are willing to overrule the precedents they dislike,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes. “They are motivated by carrying out the Republican platform, not a judicial philosophy or an interpretative methodology. The only question is how far they will go.”
California’s strict gun laws could be affected by the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling striking down a New York law. The new test outlined in the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen case “potentially has long-term implications for California’s other gun laws,” California Constitution Center Executive Director David Carrillo says.
One reason the case is so important to airlines is that they are likely to get a more pro-business outcome in the Supreme Court than with California’s lawmakers, Professor Catherine Fisk says. “The usual way of dealing with a policy disagreement is to get the legislature to enact a law,” she says. “What’s significant here is apparently the airlines couldn’t persuade the California legislature.”
Even before Roe was decided in 1973, the California Supreme Court held in 1969 that women have a fundamental right to choose whether to have children based on a right of privacy or liberty in matters related to marriage, family and sex. “The court did this interpreting ‘liberty’ in the California Constitution, just as the U.S. Supreme Court did four years later in Roe vs. Wade,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says.
Dean Erwin Chemerinsky calls the Supreme Court’s ruling that a New York gun-control law is unconstitutional “by far, the most expansive reading of the Second Amendment in American history,” and that it will put a vast number of laws regulating firearms in jeopardy. “Striking down a century-old New York law and expanding gun rights is stunning judicial activism,” he writes.
In a 6-3 ruling in the Vega v. Tekoh case, the Supreme Court held the only remedy for a Miranda violation is to block the use in court of a suspect’s incriminating comments. Professor Charles Weisselberg says he fears the decision gives police an incentive to pressure people who refuse to talk. “There will be no penalty for violating Miranda in this way,” he says. “There will be zero incentive for officers to cease questioning.”
Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes that the U.S. House committee hearings examining the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol has convinced him the U.S. Department of Justice should bring criminal charges against Trump. “I do not minimize the difficulty of prosecuting a former president or of fairly trying one. Nor do I underestimate the risks of doing so,” writes. “But the central tenet of the rule of law is that no one is above the law, not even the president of the United States.”
Professor David Oppenheimer, faculty director of the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality & Anti-Discrimination Law, says the lawsuit was the “largest verdict in an individual race discrimination in employment case.”
California Constitution Center Executive Director David Carrillo discusses SCA10, which Democratic state leaders are trying to get on to the November ballot to codify abortion rights in the state. “If courts are interpreting away abortion rights at the federal level, there is the same risk a California court could interpret away California abortion rights, because SCA10 doesn’t specify what they are,” Carrillo said.
Professor Catherine Fisk says “illustrates how the companies get all the benefits of wage and price control that they would have if drivers were employees while none of the responsibility.”
The U.S. Supreme Court “is basically cutting the establishment clause out of the Constitution,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes about the court’s holding that the state of Maine is constitutionally required to subsidize religious education when it pays for private secular education.
“Secession is clearly unconstitutional. There’s a reason the pledge of allegiance refers to ‘one nation, indivisible’,” Professor Daniel Farber says. “That’s as much true now as it was in 1865 when the South (including Texas) lost the Civil War, or 1868 when the 14th Amendment guaranteed all Americans the rights of citizenship.”
Professor Frank Partnoy discusses why he helped start the nonpartisan, nonprofit International Institute of Law and Finance, which promotes academic research with an eye on influencing government agency rulemaking. “There’s a gap in terms of academics connecting with policymakers,” he says.
International Human Rights Clinic Co-Director Roxanna Altholz discusses the sentencing of energy executive Roberto David Castillo in Honduras for arranging the 2016 murder of environmental activist Berta Cáceres.
California Constitution Center Executive Director David Carrillo and a co-author analyze why the Supreme Court of California has such a high rate of unanimous decisions, concluding that the court’s culture of consensus-building is largely responsible.
Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes that Republicans are using the Second Amendment as “a false fig leaf” to avoid backing new gun regulations. The U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear, he says, that the right to bear arms enshrined in the Constitution does not preclude many needed reforms.
California Constitution Center Executive Director David Carrillo and two co-authors track the evolution of California’s abortion law in light of the impending decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
The Rhode Island senator joined Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and fellow Democratic Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Richard Blumenthal on an amicus brief in the West Virginia v. EPA case, which could limit the government’s ability to lower emissions at power plants.
Lecturer Shanin Specter says a proposal to allow the state legislature to write laws allowing lawmakers to decide the venue for civil lawsuits would increase tension between the legislative and judicial branches. “That is troubling because it seeks to upset the delicate balance among our three branches of government,” he says.
Companies often push or ignore the boundaries about what they can tell staff, since the National Labor Relations Board has no power to punish them, Professor Catherine Fisk says. “They’ll spend a few million dollars litigating it, but that’s less than the millions more they presumably think they’ll have to pay if they were unionized.”
With California already behind on its climate goals, the state’s pending decision on whether to list the iconic western Joshua tree as a threatened species could imperil progress further, by making it impossible to build large-scale solar projects in the state’s vast deserts, writes Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment.
An eight-month investigation by The Associated Press in partnership with the University of California, Berkeley’s Human Rights Center and its Investigative Reporting Program reveals a shadow industry that’s profiting off the Biden administration’s decision to send more than 25,000 Haitians attempting to immigrate into the U.S. back to Haiti, rather than to the South American countries where many had been living.
Professor Jonathan Simon discusses how to interpret the results alongside the successful recall of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin. “I think the constituency for people who really think that the criminal legal system needs a deep reform may in fact be deeper in the East Bay,” he says.
Kyra Morris ’23, co-leader of the student-led Gun Violence Prevention Project, or GVPP, lost her brother to gun violence in 2014. She calls Newsom’s program a step in the right direction. “Gun violence is a problem that needs to be addressed with all hands on deck,” she says. “We cannot look away from this issue at the state, local, and national levels.”
Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Dennis Aftergut of Lawyers Defending American Democracy argue the U.S. Supreme Court’s originalist interpretation of the Second Amendment “is robbing us of our safety and our children” as an obstacle to sensible gun control legislation.
Lecturer Shanin Specter discusses the challenges of recruiting paraprofessionals as firms like his expand their practice areas. “It seems that the number of folks going into that area is decreasing or stagnant and it’s a significant need,” he says.
The work of Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program and the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, on rail transit is cited in this podcast about where the political left is now and what happens next.
As demand for battery-powered vehicles increases, “we’re just pretty far behind here,” says Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment. “But I think we can get things moving, now that there’s bipartisan support for it.”
In a new decision this week, the U.S. Supreme Court court has made it virtually impossible for those whose rights are violated by federal officials to sue, no matter how egregious the constitutional violation or the injury, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes.
Some of the president’s ideas, such as raising the age to own a gun nationwide, could be problematic, Yoo says, adding gun laws might be better left up to individual states in the wake of several recent mass shootings.
“My sense is that now, more than ever, our country and our world are going to need lawyers to uphold the rule of law and ensure justice,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, telling this year’s graduates to be inspired, not discouraged, by their experience over the past few years.
Desirée Nguyen Orth, director of the Consumer Justice Program at East Bay Community Law Center, says the Biden administration’s announcement is a step in the right direction.
Weighing in along with other legal experts, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says “a program to help homeless trans individuals would be allowed so long as it is a reasonable way to achieve a legitimate government objective.”
Kristin Theis-Alvarez, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, discusses Berkeley Law’s plan to waive tuition and student service fees for in-state residents who belong to a federally recognized tribe
Dean Erwin Chemerinsky predicts we are on the verge of a dramatic change in so many areas of constitutional law and likens this era to the ideological shift the court underwent in 1937, after then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to “pack” the court with additional justices in response to opinions stifling his agenda
Professor Catherine Fisk discusses the Supreme Court’s efforts to force clerks to hand over their phone records and suggests the clerks respond as a group and decline to act until they consult with counsel
Professor Rebecca Wexler, with U Chicago Law’s Professor Aziz Huq, writes, in an era of medication abortion and remote medicine, states’ ability to clamp down on abortion access turns partly on their ability to identify who is seeking such care. Tech companies can make that harder, or easier.
Professors Katerina Linos and Elena Chachko, co-editors of the AJIL Unbound symposium on Ukraine and International Law, discuss the contributions to the symposium and make the case that despite the horrific violence in Ukraine international law has fared better, and appears more resilient, than many might think.
Lecturer Mallika Kaur interviews Nancy Lemon, Herma Hill Kay Lecturer, about her extensive experience in a practice area most attorneys agree is emotionally draining and personally trying
Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, with federal law clerk Andrew Chemerinsky, writes the law is clear: The social media companies cannot be punished for being the sites where racist speech was expressed by a deeply disturbed and violent individual
Matthew Stanford, California Constitution Center Senior Research Fellow, explains why only time will tell if the court is in fact prepared to lift its thumb entirely from the pro-arbitration scale
Professor Adam Badawi says Elon Musk would need to prove the true number of bots and the amount Twitter disclosed in its SEC filings rises to the level of a ‘material adverse effect’ in order for him to renege on his offer
Professor Khiara M. Bridges says the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade could have implications for other reproductive rights such as contraception and IVF
Berkeley Law announces it will cover all tuition for current and future students who are both California residents and members of federally registered tribes
Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, with Andrew Chemerinsky, writes it is urgent that the Supreme Court justices block Texas HB 20 from going into effect and declare it unconstitutional
Professor Catherine Fisk, Faculty Director of the Center for Law & Work, addresses employee privacy concerns as a growing number of tech companies extend abortion-related travel benefits
Alexa Koenig, Executive Director of the Human Rights Center, says open source information can be invaluable at the preliminary investigation stage, as you’re planning either humanitarian relief or to conduct a legal investigation
