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 Spring 2025.
‘I think it’s a massive waste’: Legal experts weigh in on Calexit’s feasibility
Constitutional experts like David A. Carrillo, director of the California Constitution Center at UC Berkeley Law School, criticize secession as impossible and unconstitutional. “Even if this [ballot measure] passes, there’s virtually no way it can result in California leaving the union,” Carrillo said.
Trump may be planning a sharp, extended conflict with California, experts say
UC Berkeley experts, including UC Berkeley Law’s David Carrillo and Ken Alex weigh in on potential conflicts between the Trump administration and California.
Commentary: President Biden Should Commute Death Sentences of All Federal Inmates
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, ask President Biden to commute the sentences of the 40 inmates currently on federal death row to life in prison without parole.
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.