Spotlights

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky’s 2021 book Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights has won the annual best book award from the American Society of Legal Writers, which honors the top work in legal scholarship each year. Chemerinsky argues that the Supreme Court’s rulings over the last 50 years have […]

Berkeley Law Professor Victoria Plaut will be UC Berkeley’s new vice provost for the faculty starting Aug. 15. A renowned scholar in the psychological science of diversity, she will oversee the campus’ academic personnel process while building, supporting, and maintaining the faculty in close collaboration with department chairs, deans, and Academic Senate colleagues. Read more […]

When Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, Professor Emerita Kristin Luker says “it changed everything.” Co-founder of the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice, Luker, who has written books on abortion and interviewed hundreds of women about their experiences before and after Roe, discussed the case’s impact — and the Supreme Court’s June ruling reversing […]

Professor Calvin Morrill is one of two winners of this year’s Stan Wheeler Mentorship Award from the Law and Society Association. A longtime leader in graduate sociolegal studies, Morrill has served on 44 Ph.D. committees and chaired over half of them. Many of the people he supervised have co-authored publications with him and become leading […]

Berkeley Law and three other campus schools created a database tracking all federal legislation on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects online platforms from civil liability based on third-party content. Updated monthly, the database provides vital information to researchers, journalists, policymakers, and the public amid growing concerns about internet accountability.

Recent alumna and Cooley corporate associate Dana Yeo ’21 (pictured) has launched PDQuery, which connects lawyers who represent indigent criminal defendants with grad students, professional statisticians, and computer scientists for pro bono technical consultations. Professor Andrea Roth also serves on the leadership team for the nonprofit, which has helped lawyers in more than 25 cases.

Four recent alumni received a 2022 Equal Justice Works Fellowship, one of America’s most prestigious postgraduate fellowships. Darby Aono ’22 (pictured), Jennifer Holloway ’22, Tara Branine ’22, and Alexandra Zaretsky ’20 each designed two-year public service projects in partnership with legal services organizations to help develop sustainable solutions in the communities where they will serve.

Professor Robert Merges recently received the PatCon Extraordinary Achievement Award for his contributions to scholarship about the patent system. The Patent Conference (PatCon) is the world’s largest annual gathering for scholars in the field to share their research with other experts and explore new developments. Merges is America’s second-most cited intellectual property scholar according to […]

Efforts by our Human Rights Center to bring the first ‘cyber war crimes’ charges were recently featured in Wired. The center is pushing for the International Criminal Court to pursue such charges against Sandworm, a Russian military intelligence hacker group, for its acts in Ukraine that have caused blackouts, destroyed media networks, and ravaged both […]

Professor Lauren Edelman has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a leading honorary society and independent research center that convenes leaders from myriad disciplines to address significant challenges. A past Law and Society Association president and Guggenheim Fellowship winner, Edelman confronts the interplay between organizations and their legal environments.