Spotlights

The American Society for Legal History issued its highest honor to Christopher Tomlins, naming him an honorary fellow. No more than three fellows are selected each year to recognize achievement and scholarship that has shaped legal history and influenced the work of others. Tomlins joined Berkeley Law’s faculty in 2014.

Seeking career advice? The Korea Law Center will co-host a mentorship conference on Oct. 29. Leaders in law, business and other fields will provide timely insights and networking opportunities for Korean-American and other young professionals, grad students and undergrads. Click here to register.

The Human Rights Center is piloting the world’s first university-based investigations lab using open sources to document crimes against humanity. The center and its international partners are training students to employ open source methods to gather and verify evidence of potential war crimes for prosecution.

Berkeley Law ranks fourth among U.S. law schools for the highest percentage of most-cited tenured faculty between 2010 and 2014. A study by a University of Chicago law professor shows that 34 percent of Berkeley’s tenured faculty have appeared on his most-cited lists in 20 areas of law, including IP, criminal and family law.

Privacy concerns are emerging quickly in the digital age. In new videos, Catherine Crump, Chris Hoofnagle and Paul Schwartz offer insights into issues such as the erosion of privacy on the web, the use of surveillance technology by local police and the key differences between U.S. and European privacy law.

What began as a student paper by Phil Hernandez ’16 will be state law January 1. Signed by Gov. Brown, the bill keeps tenant records private unless landlords win an eviction suit. Today, tenants must prevail within 60 days—even though cases may last longer—or their records are released, harming their credit and housing options.

A front-page New York Times story quotes Roxanna Altholz, who represents the family of a man murdered by Colombian drug-lord Hernán Giraldo Serna. He and fellow war criminals massacred people in their own country, yet were extradited to the U.S. to serve shorter sentences than even small-time American crack dealers.

A New York Times editorial on punitive court fees and fines charged to juveniles, many of whom come from poor families, hails a report by Berkeley Law’s Policy Advocacy Clinic. The report exposed these harmful practices and persuaded Alameda County to become the first in the country to repeal juvenile fees.

During World War II, four Japanese Americans fought the internment of 100,000 residents in a case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Of them, only Mitsuye Endo hasn’t received a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Amanda Tyler wants to change that. Her op-ed explains the strife Endo endured, and how much she sacrificed to win her legal […]

A new paper by the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice outlines the punitive effects of Welfare Family Caps. These policies limit cash aid for babies born into families already on welfare. The paper finds that these caps deepen poverty, hurt children and ought to be repealed in states nationwide.