Recent Faculty Scholarship

Like all faculty at major universities, law professors are expected to engage in research and scholarship.

The writing of law faculty helps improve the law, advances knowledge, and educates people about legal issues. Countless positive changes in the law and our legal system have been the result of scholarship by law professors.

Law professors write for many different audiences and engage in many different types of scholarship. Some is written primarily for judges and lawyers, considering crucial areas of legal doctrine, seeking to illuminate it and guide its future. Some writing by law faculty — such as casebooks and treatises — are directed at law students and other instructors. These allow us to educate a wider audience than just those in our classrooms. Sometimes scholarship is intended for other academics, engaging in a scholarly dialogue that enhances understanding of the law. And sometimes law professors write for a general audience seeking to inform and educate non-lawyers as well as attorneys about the law.

At the same time, research and scholarship by faculty contributes greatly to what they bring to the classroom and to their teaching. Having professors engaged in thinking and writing about cutting edge issues is vital to preparing our students to practice at the highest levels of the profession.

One of the things that I am most proud of about Berkeley Law is the scholarship of our faculty.

It is a prolific faculty engaged in every type of scholarship. This brochure provides a description of what they have written in just the last year or so. I hope you enjoy learning about it and perhaps are inspired, as I was in perusing this, to read some of the articles and books that are listed. I hope, too, that you enjoy reading about our eight new faculty members, our new and revitalized centers, and the exciting work of our centers and clinics. It is a special time at Berkeley Law and I am excited to share this with you.

Warmly,

Erwin Chemerinsky
Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law
University of California, Berkeley School of Law

VIEW RECENT FACULTY SCHOLARSHIP