Stephen Sugarman

Richard Buxbaum, Mel Eisenberg, Jesse Choper, Stephen Sugarman Remember Stephen Barnett

-Los Angeles Times, October 18, 2009 Editorial Board
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-passings18-2009oct18,0,3963453,print.story

Colleagues said Barnett, who retired in 2003, was a tireless advocate of free speech rights and had spent his last years as a vocal critic of the speed with which the California Supreme Court handed down its decisions and the way it went about much of its day-to-day business.

-The Recorder, October 19, 2009 by Petra Pasternak
http://www.law.com/jsp/ca/PubArticleCA.jsp?id=1202434697325&slreturn=1&hbxlogin=1

“If there is such a thing as a constructive gadfly, that was Steve,” said Berkeley law professor Richard Buxbaum, who knew him since Barnett joined the faculty in 1967…. He had an engaging way of making deans and faculty members uncomfortably aware of some of the consequences of their decisions,” Buxbaum said, “often to the betterment later.”

Choper said he often called Barnett a muckraker because the professor would uncover policies at the school he didn’t agree with and “he just wouldn’t let it go…. He wanted to do something about it.” Choper, who served for a time as the dean, said he’d receive regular memos from Barnett outlining what he could be doing better.

-San Francisco Chronicle, October 21, 2009 by Bob Egelko
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/21/BAH11A6VDB.DTL&type=printable

He was a leader in “shaping public policy concerning the industrial structure and public regulation of both print and visual media,” said Richard Buxbaum, a fellow Berkeley law professor.

“In his scholarship, Steve was a devastating critic of the practices of the California Supreme Court and the California State Bar,” said another UC Berkeley colleague, Melvin Eisenberg. “He did a lot of acute, penetrating research that no one else has done regarding judicial transparency and legitimacy.”

-The New York Times, October 21, 2009 by William Grimes
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/us/22barnett.html?_r=2

“Stephen Barnett was probably California’s leading analyst and critic of the way the California Supreme Court goes about its business,” said Stephen Sugarman, a professor and associate dean at Berkeley’s law school.

Stephen Sugarman Questions Defense Strategy in Death of Water-Drinking Contestant

McClatchy News, September 7, 2009 by Andy Furillo
http://www.connpost.com/breakingnews/ci_13287287

While the defense plans to fight the case on the issue of foreseeability, the legal experts said the Entercom lawyers could have a difficult time making that argument … that Strange “knew as much—if not more—about the dangers of drinking water as any defendant. “She knew and they didn’t? That seems unlikely,” said Stephen D. Sugarman. “And I’m skeptical about her awareness of the danger. How many people are going to do this if they think they’re going to kill themselves?”

Stephen Sugarman Explains Why Feds Give Swine Flu Makers Legal Immunity

San Francisco Chronicle, July 17, 2009 by Mike Stobbe
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/07/17/national/a161229D59.DTL&type=printable

“The government paid out quite a bit of money,” said Stephen Sugarman, a law professor who specializes in product liability at the University of California at Berkeley. Vaccines aren’t as profitable as other drugs for manufacturers, and without protection against lawsuits “they’re saying, ‘Do we need this?'” Sugarman said.

Stephen Sugarman Praises Retiring Public Defender David Coleman

Contra Costa Times, July 10, 2009 by Malaika Fraley
http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_12811905?source=most_emailed

As the top public defender, Coleman is proud of recruiting and maintaining a diverse staff of lawyers (60 percent women and 25 percent nonwhite) with distinguished academic records despite funding shocks to the office. Under Coleman’s leadership, the office is known for providing first-class legal representation for indigent defendants and as a great place to work, said Professor Stephen Sugarman, of UC Berkeley School of Law.

Stephen Sugarman Proposes a Way to End Steroid Abuse in Professional Baseball

San Francisco Chronicle, April 17, 2009 by Jasper Rine and Stephen D. Sugarman
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/17/ED4K173OSA.DTL&hw=Berkeley+University+UC&sn=005&sc=168

Here’s how: Require that a substantial share of baseball salaries—say two-thirds of earnings above the league minimum guaranteed by the collective bargaining agreement—go into a trust for the duration of the player’s career…. If a player’s stored samples are clean, he would get everything in his trust and remove any suspicion about his honesty. If the samples prove he cheatedֽ after appropriate retesting and inevitable challengesֽ his share would be forfeited.

Stephen Sugarman Suggests a Cap-and-Trade Approach to Limit Dietary Salt

San Francisco Chronicle, March 1, 2009 by Stephen D. Sugarman
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/01/INDK164MAL.DTL

“Merely telling people to eat less salt is unlikely to do the trick. After all, people like salt for its flavor. Moreover, most of the salt we consume is not added in our home kitchens or at the table. Instead, it’s added by food processors to the food we buy…. A more creative way to attack this problem is with performance-based regulation. This approach imposes outcome targets on business by imposing financial penalties if those targets aren’t met.”

Stephen Sugarman Explains Berkeley Law’s Grading Policy

The National Law Journal, February 26, 2009 by Vesna Jaksic
http://www.law.com/jsp/law/LawArticleFriendly.jsp?id=1202428588174

The University of California, Berkeley, School of Law uses high honors, honors and pass designations and has no intention of changing that policy, said Stephen D. Sugarman…. “If you give everyone A’s and there aren’t any A-pluses, or if you don’t give honors and high honors, you just wouldn’t have a way to easily distinguish the best 25 or the best 10 percent of your students,” Sugarman said. “So I think you need in some ways to help the judges and help yourself decide who to promote as the best students.”

Stephen Sugarman Calls for Performance-Based Regulations

British Medical Journal, Oct. 2, by Stephen Sugarman
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/oct02_2/a1750

“Public health leaders who now distrust industry should accept that public health needs business as an ally. But public health leaders who promote self regulation by business should accept that voluntary cooperation will never achieve enough. Performance based regulation occupies the middle ground—a third way. Let society set legally enforceable goals and then let enterprises loose to accomplish them.”