Spotlights

Annie Coker ’29 was the first Black woman to graduate from Berkeley Law and also the first to practice law in California. In a compelling new article that profiles her remarkable life, successful legal career, and enduring legacy, alumni and current students of color describe the inspiration and insight they gained learning about Coker’s path.

Professor Rebecca Wexler is one of two winners of the 2020 Reidenberg-Kerr Award, which rewards exceptional privacy law papers submitted by a pre-tenure scholar. The Privacy Law Scholars Conference program committee selects the recipients. This year it reviewed entries from more than 300 participants, including Wexler’s “Privacy as Privilege.”

California’s electrical grid is vital to the state’s ambitious renewable energy goals, but also a source of community vulnerability. A report from our Center for Law, Energy & the Environment and UCLA Law’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change highlights policy recommendations from a convening of state energy regulators, local government leaders, grid experts, and clean […]

During a recent livestreamed event moderated by Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, four UC Berkeley professors said dismantling structural racism must be part of US healthcare reform. Berkeley Law’s Khiara M. Bridges described how people of color receive worse care than white people, even when their insurance and income are the same, and how anti-Black racism is embedded […]

The Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies released a 14-episode podcast on Israel and Jewish identity amid COVID-19. The series includes interviews with experts on topics related to Israel and the crisis through constitutional, political, economic, technology, and other lenses, and the pandemic’s impact on Jewish communal practice and the Jewish press.

Professor Frank Partnoy raises eyebrows and heartbeats in the latest issue of The Atlantic. His buzz-generating article, “The Looming Bank Collapse,” explains how the U.S. banking system is replicating risky blunders from 2008’s financial crisis—this time through collateralized loan obligations—and why the end result could be even worse.

Berkeley Law professors authored two articles judged to be among the best law review scholarship relating to intellectual property in the last year: The Paradox of Source Code Secrecy by Sonia Katyal and The Disgorgement Remedy of Design Patent Law by Mark Gergen and Pamela Samuelson. Both will be published in an anthology by Thomson […]

Four members of Berkeley Law’s Human Rights Center co-authored a new report on the risks and rewards of distributing cash during humanitarian crises. Aiming to help limit harm to displaced groups, the authors present research from Afghanistan and Cameroon and propose global protection principles for existing and new cash programs.

Keker, Van Nest & Peters awarded $75,000 in scholarship funding to four Diversity Scholar recipients—three of which are Berkeley Law students. Susana Herrera ’22, Yongbin Chang ’22, and Erica Peña ’22 were chosen for showing “incredible promise in the legal field” and an interest in practicing complex litigation in the Bay Area. 

The Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic celebrated a Supreme Court ruling that Georgia cannot claim copyright protection for its annotated legal code. The clinic had filed an amicus brief on behalf of four library associations, arguing that the government edicts doctrine (which establishes that the law is in the public domain) is crucial to libraries’ mission.