Berkeley Law professors are prolific, insightful scholars with broad and significant influence felt well beyond the school’s walls through their research, legal advocacy, policymaking and commentary.
New Research
‘Secret Settlements’ Study Wins Civil Justice Award
A team of scholars including Professor Jonah B. Gelbach is one of two recipients of the 2026 Civil Justice Scholarship Award from the National Civil Justice Institute for an article published in the University of Chicago Law Review last year. “Shedding Light on Secret Settlements: An Empirical Study of California’s STAND Act” is an empirical and qualitative study analyzing how California’s ban on secrecy in sexual-misconduct settlements has functioned in practice, testing longstanding assumptions about the effects of restricting non-disclosure agreements. Gelbach’s co-authors are Stanford Law School Professors David Freeman Engstrom and Nora Freeman Engstrom, then-Stanford student Garrett Wen, and University of Chicago Bigelow Fellow Austin Peters.Avoiding the ‘Uninsurable Future’
Dave Jones, director of the Climate Risk Initiative at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, recently published an article in the Yale Law Journal analyzing how climate change is driving the growing property-insurance crisis and suggesting federal and state policy solutions. “The Uninsurable Future: The Climate Threat to Property Insurance, and How to Stop It” compares the response of two states — Florida and California — and finds that neither approach will keep insurance available and affordable in the long run. Insurance is the canary in the climate crisis coal mine, Jones argues, and the bird is dying.Labor Law Laurels
Berkeley Law Professor Catherine Fisk '86 recently received the Miller Award at the 2025 Colloquium on Scholarship in Employment and Labor Law, held at Seton Hall School. Named for the late Paul Miller — a renowned leader in the disability rights movement and an expert on international disability rights and anti-discrimination law — the award is given to an academic who has shown “outstanding academic and public contributions to the field of labor and employment scholarship.”Powerful Policy Ideas
Matthew Hamilton, a Ph.D. student in the Jurisprudence & Social Policy Program, has recently published several essays and white papers for the Edley Center on Law & Democracy and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.Improving Expert Testimony
Expert testimony plays a crucial role in modern litigation, but the complexity of legal disputes, particularly in commercial litigation, demands that judges engage deeply with technical methodologies — an expectation that strains judicial capacity and resources. In a new article in the Berkeley Business Law Journal, Professor Andrew C. Baker suggests reforms aligning evidentiary standards and judicial goals to create more transparent, consistent, and equitable outcomes, improve the judiciary’s gatekeeping role, and foster greater trust in the legal process.
