Spotlights

Purvi Shah ’06 has received a 2017 Open Society Foundations Soros Equality Fellowship, which supports emerging racial justice leaders. One of seven applicants chosen from over 1,000, Shah co-founded Law4BlackLives, a network of lawyers, law students, and legal workers striving to build the Black Lives Matter movement.

Justice Goodwin Liu, a former Berkeley Law professor, has co-authored a study on the dearth of Asian American judges. Although they comprise 10 percent of graduates in top U.S. law schools, only 3 percent of federal and 2 percent of state judges are Asian American. The study is the first comprehensive look at Asian Americans […]

Jackie Aranda ’15 is savoring victory. The alum helped the Southern Poverty Law Center win a class action suit, which found that Alabama prisoners receive constitutionally inadequate mental-health care. Aranda defended depositions, drafted briefs, examined witnesses, managed nearly 2,000 trial exhibits, and more.

Antonio Ingram ’14 is the first Berkeley Law graduate to receive a Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship, which launched in 2012. Currently clerking for a federal judge in Louisiana, Ingram will spend 10 months in Malawi assisting a high-ranking government official in the nation’s Anti-Corruption Bureau.

The American Society of Criminology has awarded Keramet Reiter ’10 with the Ruth Cavan Young Scholar Award for stellar contributions to the field. An assistant professor at UC Irvine, Reiter recently published a book on the rise of solitary confinement, conditions in maximum-security prisons, and effects of isolation.

Lauren Edelman has won major awards for her new book on workplace discrimination, including the Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association’s Sociology of Law Section; and the George R. Terry Award from the Academy of Management for advancing global management knowledge. 

SCOTUS struck down a Calif. ruling that had allowed out-of-state plaintiffs to sue Bristol-Myers Squibb for injuries from its drug Plavix. Justice Sotomayor dissented from the 8-1 decision, citing an amicus brief co-authored by assistant professor Andrew Bradt to make her case.

From tech titan David Estrada ’93 to new dean Erwin Chemerinsky to the Human Rights Investigations Lab, Transcript magazine reveals how Berkeley Law routinely breaks new ground. Arriving this week, the annual issue profiles an admissions hero, awe-inspiring students, faculty scholarship, and other highlights from the school community.

Eva Paterson ’75 won the ABA’s John Minor Wisdom Public Service and Professionalism Award, which honors those who improve the quality of justice and ensure the legal system’s accessibility. Paterson is the co-founder and president of the Equal Justice Society, which works on race issues through law, social science, and the arts.

Professor Robert Cooter recently won the Ronald H. Coase Medal for advancing economic understanding of law and related areas of public policy and regulation. Bestowed every other year by the American Law and Economics Association, the award recognizes major contributions to the field—which Cooter helped pioneer.