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 and the California Legal History journal.
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.
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 2026.
Courses During Other Semesters
| Semester | Course Num | Course Title |  Teaching Evaluations | Fall 2025 | 223.8 sec. 001 | California Constitutional Law | View Teaching Evaluation |
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Column: Circle the wagons, blue states
David A. Carrillo, executive director of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law and Brandon V. Stracener a senior research fellow at the California Constitution Center see the results of the recent election as a time for blue states to reinvigorate state constitutions and present a road map for action blue states can take.
California beat Trump in court his first term. It’s preparing new cases for his second
“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.”
Commentary: Why Is California’s State Bar Pinching Pennies at the Public’s Expense?
“Protecting the public—not thrift—is the bar’s primary regulatory purpose, and its focus on cutting corners has arguably diluted the bar exam from the nation’s hardest to something that weakens public protection,” write Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center’s Executive Director David A. Carrillo and Senior Fellow Stephen M. Duvernay.
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.”