San Jose Mercury News, September 16, 2010 by Chris O’Brien
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_16096549
What’s interesting is that in most cases, these companies have more deductions and credits than they can take in a given year…. “If you say, ‘In addition to all the other deductions you can’t use, here are some more,’ it’s not going to do any good,” Auerbach said.
Chronicle of Data Protection, September 15, 2010 by Eric Bukstein
http://bit.ly/97pSWN
The Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) announced the papers that were selected as “privacy papers for policy makers” …. These works were deemed by the FPF to be the recent scholarship dealing with privacy issues that will prove most useful to policy makers. The papers that were selected are: Privacy on the Books and on the Ground—Kenneth A. Bamberger and Deirdre K. Mulligan….
National Public Radio, Morning Edition, September 14, 2010 by Ted Robbins
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129829950
David Sklansky, a former federal prosecutor who is now a law professor at UC Berkeley, says the federal courts have already been transformed by the rise in immigration prosecutions. “We’ve now reached a point where immigration prosecutions are not just the largest category of federal criminal prosecutions; they are a majority of federal criminal prosecutions,” Sklansky says. “And that doesn’t strike me as a good use of our prosecutorial machinery.”
Los Angeles Times, September 14, 2010 by Richard A. Serrano and Carol J. Williams
http://lat.ms/9j0Dre
Richard Frank, an environmental law professor at UC Berkeley, said the government’s separate-track proposal doesn’t necessarily conflict with the public interest. “As long as the federal litigation is overseen by the same judge and he can coordinate to the extent he deems appropriate, that should address the need for judicial economy and efficiency,” said Frank, noting that responsibility for recovering the costs of responding to the spill and countering its effects on the environment lies with the federal government.
Richmond Confidential, September 13, 2010 by Mark Oltmanns and Christopher Connelly
http://richmondconfidential.org/2010/09/13/murder-rate-on-the-decline/
Barry Krisberg … said that it is difficult to determine what causes crime to decrease because there are so many possible factors…. He praised the police department’s community policing strategy, and said that Richmond has an effective police chief and a cohesive violence prevention plan. Krisberg also said that new research suggests a correlation between immigration and lower crime rates. He said that because most immigrants have come to work, they tend to keep their heads down and avoid criminal activity. “Increasing immigration into Richmond has probably produced a safer community,” he said.
-National Journal Magazine, September 11, 2010 by Peter Cohn
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/nj_20100911_7590.php
“They’re certainly not putting forward a very different voice on tax policy than the Republicans are, other than with respect to the top 2 percent of the income distribution,” said Alan Auerbach, an economics and law professor….”There is the issue now having to do with the recession, which makes things more complicated, although that was not a factor in Obama’s position in the campaign in 2008, because his position was formed well before we were in recession.”
-The Wall Street Journal, September 11, 2010 by Deborah Soloman
http://bit.ly/ajcUBL
“I think his research would lead him to be quite comfortable with the administration’s current proposals to extend the lower-income tax cuts and not the higher-income,” said Alan Auerbach, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has known Mr. [Austan] Goolsbee for more than a decade.
-The Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2010 by John D. McKinnon, Ben Levisohn, and Justin Lahart
http://bit.ly/cGGFj8
Alan Auerbach, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who also has studied the effect of the Bush tax cuts, said the evidence suggested that repealing the changes probably would produce a “small negative effect” on financial markets.
-PBS WIDE ANGLE, September 10, 2010 by Jennifer Janisch and Oriana Zill de Granados
http://to.pbs.org/ab9o6u
According to Roxanna Altholz, a Colombian-American lawyer and Acting Head of University of California, Berkeley’s International Human Rights Law Clinic, the confessions were an important part of Colombia’s peace process. “In the U.S., justice looks something like long prison terms,” she says. “In Colombia, justice is truth…. They had incentives in Colombia to talk,” says Altholz. “What incentives do defendants facing drug charges and long jail sentences in the U.S. have to talk about their human rights abuses in Colombia?”
-The Washington Post, September 11, 2010 by Oriana Zill de Granados and Chisun Lee
http://bit.ly/9RFLes
Roxanna Altholz … who represents Colombian victims of paramilitary violence, said the United States has broken a promise made on the day of the extraditions by Ambassador William R. Brownfield…. “So far,” Altholz said, “none of those promises have been kept.”
-The Daily Journal, September 9, 2010 by Fiona Smith
http://www.dailyjournal.com/ (requires registration; go to G:\Law School in the News\News Clips for article)
The unreasonable use claims, combined with the public trust doctrine “have really been sleeping giants in California water politics, policy and law and I’m not surprised to see them coming to the fore,” said Richard Frank, executive director of UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment and member of a recent task force that advised the governor on delta policy.
-The Capitol Weekly, September 10, 2010 by Richard M. Frank
http://www.capitolweekly.net/ (requires registration; go to G:\Law School in the News\News Clips for article)
The Delta Smelt, which stands precipitously close to extinction as a result of those activities, now depends on the Endangered Species Act for its survival. PLF’s ill-considered court challenge to federal efforts to preserve the smelt is without legal merit. It also represents fundamentally unsound public policy. The Delta deserves to be protected and restored. So does the Delta smelt.
-KCRW-FM, Which Way L.A.?, September 9, 2010 Host Warren Olney
http://www.kcrw.com/news/programs/ww/ww100909prop_23_ab_32_and_th
“I think the answer is nobody really knows for sure. But what we do know is that there would be some immediate loss of jobs…. I think there is also this ripple effect: California has been a leader in the climate area. If California starts to do an about face, that is going to affect other states in the US and that is going to affect efforts in other parts of the world.”
-E&E Climate Wire, September 10, 2010 by Colin Sullivan
http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/print/2010/09/10/4
“Since most significant climate policy efforts in California are linked to [the climate law], its suspension could lead to legal and regulatory confusion,” said UC Berkeley law professor and co-author of the analysis Daniel Farber, who believes the referendum would freeze climate regulations indefinitely because it is tied to unemployment dropping to 5.5 percent for a full year.
-The Sacramento Bee, September 10, 2010 by Rick Daysog
http://bit.ly/dmQVMM
The Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at the University of California, Berkeley Law School also said the rollback initiative, Proposition 23, would benefit oil and power companies while increasing regulatory burdens to real estate developers and auto makers. “It adds significant uncertainty at a time when we have a lot of economic uncertainty,” the report’s co-author Dan Farber said.
ABC News, September 9, 2010 by Ariane de Vogue
http://bit.ly/cFrlHl
Elisabeth Semel, Director of the Death Penalty Clinic at Berkley Law, questions the use of absolute numbers to determine someone’s level of mental retardation. “So many factors can contribute to the reliability or unreliability of a numerical score.” she said. “If you have this absolute as a number you can’t take into account how severely intellectually disabled someone might be.”