Spotlights

The American Law Institute (ALI) has elected Christopher Hoofnagle and Peter Menell as two of its newest members. A highly selective process, members are nominated by peers, assessed internally, and elected by the ALI Council. They include highly regarded judges, lawyers, and law professors known for their “exceptional professional achievement” and interest in improving the […]

Chief Judge Robert Katzmann of the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals will talk about his book, Judging Statutes, on Nov. 3 with Professor Andrew Bradt. Judge Katzmann, who has won many awards for his public service and legal writing, argues that judges need to look beyond individual statutes to the legislative record behind the […]

Berkeley Law will celebrate the 25th anniversary of alumna Nancy Lemon’s Domestic Violence Practicum on Oct. 27 in the Warren Room. Lemon ’80, a John and Elizabeth Boalt Lecturer, has been a leading authority on domestic violence for three decades, pioneering its study in law schools and authoring its premiere law textbook. Dean Sujit Choudhry […]

Berkeley Law will hold a Festschrift Oct. 17 to honor Professor Emeritus Mel Eisenberg, one of his generation’s leading contract theorists. Eisenberg joined the faculty in 1966 and won multiple teaching awards before retiring last year. In addition to contracts, his influential scholarship spans corporate law, comparative law, and jurisprudence. Colleagues from Berkeley Law and […]

A scathing report by the New Orleans Inspector General and a new lawsuit against the city’s judges rely heavily on a California Law Review article by Micah West ’13. Both assert that the New Orleans court system unfairly funds most of its operation—and creates conflicts of interest—by imposing fees on convicted defendants. West’s article detailed […]

Before a packed audience, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer gave the keynote address at Berkeley Law’s Jorde Symposium Sept. 24. When interpreting U.S. law, Breyer said American judges must take greater account of foreign events, law, and practices—the subject of his new book, The Court and the World. Breyer’s brother, Judge Charles Breyer ’66, […]

The National Science Foundation has awarded Catherine Albiston, Victoria Plaut, and two colleagues $1.5 million for their study on the hiring of STEM faculty at research-intensive universities. They will analyze the conditions, processes, and social contexts that generate—or mitigate—gender and racial disparities in faculty hiring at 10 UC schools. The study’s dataset will test theories […]

She’s better known on campus as Berkeley Law’s associate dean of J.D. curriculum and teaching, but Professor Molly Van Houweling is also a champion cyclist. Van Houweling broke a women’s world cycling record September 12, riding 46.273 kilometers in one hour on a track in Mexico. She beat the previous record of 46.065 kilometers, set […]

Anne Joseph O’Connell has won the American Bar Association Administrative Law Section Annual Scholarship Award for “Bureaucracy at the Boundary,” chosen as the best administrative law paper published last year. O’Connell is the fourth repeat winner of the award, having also received it in 2010. Other repeat winners are Cass Sunstein, who served in the […]

Berkeley Law’s Green-Collar Communities Clinic (GC3) played a key role in pushing through AB 816, a new California bill that helps facilitate the creation of worker-run businesses. The law removes barriers to creating new cooperatives that are owned and operated by their employees. It caps a two-year effort by GC3, the nation’s only legal clinic […]