David A. Carrillo received his doctorate from Berkeley Law before joining the faculty as a lecturer in residence and the founding executive director of the California Constitution Center in 2012. The center is devoted to developing scholarship concerning the California constitution and the California Supreme Court. Dr. Carrillo coauthored a casebook on California constitutional law, teaches courses on the California constitution and the California Supreme Court, publishes articles on those subjects, and is editor-in-chief of SCOCAblog.com, a blog about the state high court.
Before starting his academic career Dr. Carrillo was in active practice for 16 years, as a Deputy Attorney General with the California Department of Justice, as a Deputy City Attorney in San Francisco, as a Deputy District Attorney in Contra Costa County, and as a commercial litigation associate in private practice. A member of the California bar since 1995, Dr. Carrillo is admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Northern, Southern, Central, and Eastern District Courts of California.
In October 2023 and October 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Dr. Carrillo to two consecutive four-year terms on the California Law Revision Commission, where he was the 2022–23 chair and the 2021–22 vice-chair. He currently chairs the Citrin Center advisory council and serves on the board of the Northern District of California Historical Society. His past charitable and professional board service includes: the Constitutional Rights Foundation, the Bar Association of San Francisco, the California Bar Foundation, the National Advisory Council of the Institute of Governmental Studies, the Foundation for Democracy and Justice, the State Bar Committee on Appellate Courts, the Justice and Diversity Center of the Bar Association of San Francisco, the Volunteer Legal Services Corporation in Alameda County, and the Berkeley Law Alumni Association. Dr. Carrillo chaired the judicial appointments committee of the Alameda County Bar Association, and served on the State Bar Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation and the Committee of Bar Examiners, as well as San Francisco and Alameda bar association committees on judicial appointments. He is a life member of the La Raza Lawyers Association (San Francisco and East Bay) and the Hispanic National Bar Association.
Education
B.A., UC Berkeley (1991)
J.D., Berkeley Law (1995)
LL.M., Berkeley Law (2007)
J.S.D., Berkeley Law (2011)
David A Carrillo is not teaching any Law courses in Fall 2024.
Courses During Other Semesters
| Semester | Course Num | Course Title | Fall 2023 | 223.8 sec. 001 | California Constitutional Law |
|---|
Uber, Lyft California Prop 22 Ruling Opens Door to Challenges
David A. Carrillo, executive director of Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center weighs in on California’s Prop 22 ruling.
If Californians vote to ban slavery this fall, will prisoners get a raise?
“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.”
Uber, Lyft-Backed California Labor Law Faces Final Court Test
David A. Carrillo, executive director of UC Berkeley Law School’s California Constitution Center, discusses the challenge to Proposition 22.
Commentary: How Alameda County Became Mired in a Recall Rules Roulette
“Rather than making a clear choice between the charter or the state rules, the county clerk used both,” write Joshua Spivak and David A. Carrillo of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law.
Commentary: Guess What? Voters Hate Taxes
“The electorate and the legislature share the state’s lawmaking power, so the electorate’s power to propose and adopt tax laws is at least as broad as the legislature’s,” write David A. Carrillo and Stephen M. Duvernay of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law.
Commentary: Alameda County’s Bait-and-Switch On the Local Recall
“A proposal seeking to change Alameda County’s recall law, linking recall procedure to state law may create rather than solve problems, dilute the local electorate’s direct democracy powers, and cede local control to the state,” write Joshua Spivak and David Carrillo of Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center.
The Recall Is Raw Democracy
“Officials targeted with a recall, the most personal of the direct democracy devices, are unsurprisingly unhappy about having to defend against it,” write Joshua Spivak and David Carrillo of Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center. “But voters should not be fooled when their targets complain about risks to democracy.”
Commentary: A High-Quality Education Means What, Exactly?
“We’re not advocating a vote for or against any of the educational quality measures, but we are in favor of clear constitutional commands,” write David A. Carrillo and Stephen M. Duvernay of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law.
Commentary: State Court Takeaways from Dobbs
“The ultimate liberty is the right to be left alone, and Dobbs established a clear mandate for state courts to define that right under their state constitutions,” write David Carrillo and Brandon V. Stracener of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law. “This is an opportunity for states to abandon their flawed lockstep doctrines, reassert themselves as the primary guarantors of individual liberty, and restore the state–federal balance of power in this area of the law.”
Commentary: A New Constitutional Right to Housing Is a House of Straw
David Carrillo and David A. Kaiser of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law write, “Supporters of increased affordable housing think a recently proposed initiative constitutional amendment will generate increased state power to impose building mandates on local governments. That’s unlikely to happen, because a new constitutional right to adequate housing has dim prospects in the courts.”
Commentary: Proposition 8—End It and Mend It
David Carrillo and David A. Kaiser of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law write, “if the U.S. Supreme Court abrogates Obergefell, as it did Roe, then the now-dormant Proposition 8 text in the California constitution will once again ban same-sex marriage in California.”
OpEd: Judges Should Not Be Politicians
David Carrillo and Stephen M. Duvernay of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law write “There is one major disadvantage from making it difficult to remove judges, through rules or culture (or both): You can be stuck with a bad actor for life.”
Would Prop. 1 allow abortions after fetal viability? Legal experts say no
David A. Carrillo, executive director of the California Constitution Center at UC Berkeley School of Law discusses the California’s Proposition 1.
Four justices vie to keep spots on ‘collegial’ California Supreme Court
David A. Carrillo, executive director of the California Constitution Center at UC Berkeley School of Law discusses the California Supreme Court.
UC Hastings’ name change spawned a potential $1.7 billion lawsuit. Will it hold up in court?
“If Hastings’ family had a contract with the state, as shown in a document from 1878 with signatures from both sides, it might still be a binding agreement that could not be changed by future legislation,”said David A. Carrillo, executive director of the California Constitution Center at UC Berkeley School of Law and is not involved in the court case. “But if there is no such document, Carrillo said, the Legislature that passed the 1878 law ‘cannot bind the hands of a future Legislature.'”
How the California Supreme Court went from political lightning rod to low-key happy family
“The absence of drama around the California court arguably shows that it better reflects California society, and the rancor on the U.S. Supreme Court and political arguments about reforming that court suggest that it is misaligned with society at large,” said David Carrillo, executive director of the California Constitution Center at UC Berkeley Law School.
Can California’s abortion protections survive a federal ban?
David A. Carrillo, executive director of Berkeley Law’s California Constitution center, said adding abortion rights to California’s constitution would give Attorney General Rob Bonta a “major new weapon to combat Congressional overreach.”
OpEd: California’s latest stupid reason for attacking recall elections
Voters should see through the “reform” sham to the truth: Recalls have little to do with hyperpartisanship, and under cover of reforming the recall, the Legislature is stripping power from voters, write David A. Carrillo and Joshua Spivak of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law.
Newsom Nominates a Latina to be California Supreme Court Chief Justice, a First
David A. Carrillo, executive director of the California Constitution Center, says diversifying the court first became a priority under former Gov. Jerry Brown in the 1970s. “Doing so is crucial to both the perception and the reality that those who administer justice reflect the state’s diversity,” Carrillo says. “The judge in my case doesn’t have to look like me, but it shouldn’t be true that there are no judges who look like me.”
Gov. Newsom Nominates Justice Patricia Guerrero as California’s Next Chief Justice
Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and California Constitution Center Executive Director David Carrillo discuss the nomination. “This is two-sevenths of the California Supreme Court, and these are people who are going to be there for a long time,” Chemerinsky says. “They are historic and important appointments.” Guerrero’s appointment also makes sense politically, Carrillo says, as appointing the first Latina chief justice “speaks directly to the nearly 40% of the California population with Hispanic ancestry.”