Sho Sato

A second-generation Japanese American and California native, Sato was held with his family at camps in California and Colorado during World War II because of the government’s policy of relocating Japanese Americans. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he was spurned by San Francisco law firms but took a role in the office of then-California Attorney General Edmund G. (Pat) Brown.

In 1955, Sato joined Berkeley Law, becoming the first Japanese American to serve on the faculty of a major U.S. law school. In addition to his other scholarly work, Sato worked tirelessly to foster a stronger relationship between Japan and the U.S., particularly among legal academics.

Over more than 30 years on the Berkeley Law faculty, Sho Sato established himself as a leader in what his colleague Michael E. Smith called “legal subjects of relatively low scholarly visibility but of great day-to-day importance.”

Sato extended his teaching and research on state and local government law and taxation well beyond the law school into an advisory role, serving on several important public committees. And his work on the law of natural resources helped shape the environmental law field that emerged, particularly in California, in the second half of the 20th century.

Sato earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Denver while his family was at a Colorado camp, then joined the U.S. Army. He worked in Tokyo, leading a team of soldiers serving as translators for the American occupying forces. 

After graduating from Harvard, Sato was one of the first to participate in Berkeley Law’s nascent law associates program, in which promising young law graduates were hired to supervise the first-year legal writing program and work as research assistants for faculty. After the stint in Brown’s office, he returned to the law school, this time as a professor. 

Smith, a longtime colleague, penned a tribute to Sato in the March 1987 issue of the California Law Review, describing his friend as a quiet man who reveled in fishing, court games, the Cal men’s basketball team, and classical music when he wasn’t working. 

“Sho was a reticent man; he did not advertise his activities or achievements,” Smith wrote. “At his death, many of his students and younger colleagues learned for the first time of the richness of his life.”

Sato’s service included a decade on the California Law Revision Commission, including two years as the panel’s chairman.The commission is an independent state agency, then relatively new, that helps the legislature and the governor by examining California law and recommending needed reforms.

He also worked on several other committees and organizations focused on natural resource management, including on innovative topics like geothermal energy and weather modification. At UC Berkeley, he chaired the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Discrimination and won the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1960. 

Throughout his three decades at Berkeley Law, Sato devoted himself to bolstering ties between Japan and the U.S.. As a Fulbright Lecturer, he visited Japanese institutions three times: Tokyo University in 1960 and 1981 and Kyoto University in 1970. 

With Professor Sanford Kadish, he founded the Berkeley Law Japanese American Legal Studies Program, which was renamed the Sho Sato Program in Japanese and U.S. Law after his 1986 death. The Sato Program fosters research and education on the topic of Japanese law and Japanese-U.S. legal relationships, as well as the historical and contemporary comparative study of the Japanese and American legal systems.

Over the past four decades, the Sho Sato Program has been led by three faculty members: Kadish, Professor Emeritus Harry Scheiber, and Professor Charles Weisselberg. Scheiber convened a series of conferences, which produced significant collaborative comparative scholarship, and also trained Ph.D. students who have become leading Japanese law scholars. Over the past several decades, under Weisselberg, the program has deeply engaged with Japan’s new graduate professional law schools, particularly with respect to the development of experiential education.

Its Sho Sato Conference Series hosts scholars from Japan, the U.S., and other nations to Berkeley Law together to discuss their research. The program also brings in distinguished senior professors from Japanese universities to teach courses and enables student and faculty exchanges, allowing them to do research and lecture at Japanese sister institutions. 

“To his colleagues Sho never expressed bitterness about the discrimination against him and his family, nor was he politically active in Japanese-American affairs, but he was widely known and admired in the Japanese-American community,” Smith wrote in his tribute to Sato. 

When he died, the law school saw a surge of donations from Japanese Americans in his honor — many with no connection to Berkeley Law. 

Sho Sato Professor of Law Daniel A. Farber arrived after Sato’s death and never met him, although he spoke once with Sato’s widow, Mas. Farber says he’s heard a lot over almost 25 years at Berkeley Law from older alumni and retired faculty about the pioneering professor.

“For me, what is probably most significant is that his class on water law was the first course in the law school to devote time to environmental issues,” Farber says. “It’s a privilege to hold a chair in his name.”

About the Series

The Legends of Berkeley Law series highlights scholars whose ideas helped establish one of the world’s most intellectually influential law schools. Through pathbreaking research, innovative teaching, and institutional leadership, these faculty members reshaped major fields of law and inspired generations of lawyers, judges, policymakers, and academics.