Holly Doremus Says Delta Water Package Lacks Clout

-Jim Prevor’s Perishable Pundit, November 9, 2009 by Jim Prevor
http://www.perishablepundit.com/punditprint.php?date=11/09/09&pundit=4

“These kinds of conflicts are very difficult to solve because they are quite entrenched in history. People have their emotional and financial investments tied up in many ways. And we don’t have institutions to find a way to make the tradeoff that has political support and credibility.”

-The Sacramento Bee, November 15, 2009 by Matt Weiser
http://www.sacbee.com/politics/story/2326156.html

“This package does not confront the really tough questions,” said Doremus, co-director of Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and Environment. “It’s not going to radically shift anything.”

Melissa Murray Explains Success of Gay Marriage Opponents’ Schools Campaign

Los Angeles Times, November 6, 2009 by David Sharp and Lisa Leff
http://cbs5.com/education/gay.marriage.schools.2.1297494.html

“Parents are always thinking about how do I keep unwanted influences out of my children’s lives? And it’s a lot harder to do that as a parent if that influence is the state,” Murray said. “That’s the fear they are tapping into…. and they are just going to keep repackaging it, because it works.”

James Tuthill Warns of Privacy Concerns in Google Voice Call Recording

San Francisco Chronicle, November 5, 2009 by James P. Tuthill and Michael Katz
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/05/ED7H1AE3JV.DTL

Monstrous privacy concerns loom: What information will Google collect from the calls it connects, and what will it do with that information? Google’s privacy policy says it will store and maintain recorded conversations. Is it preserving the numbers called, the duration of the call and even the name and address of the person the Google Voice user called?

Kenneth Bamberger, David Kasher Discuss New Jewish Law Class

j. Weekly, November 5, 2009 by Dan Pine
http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/40442/no-argument-here-students-drawn-to-u.c.-berkeley-class-in-jewish-law/

“[The class] throws into relief the question of why one follows the law,” Bamberger says, “whether law and morality can be separate, and what is the law’s view of the truth.”

“The law school was a logical place to offer programs because Judaism is a particularly legalistic religion,” Kasher notes. “It’s not a stretch to talk about law and Judaism.”

Stephen Maurer Supports Security Standards for Synthetic DNA Screening

Nature News, November 4, 2009 by Corie Lok
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091104/full/news.2009.1065.html

“The next thing we will do is to reach out to everyone in the industry with this standard and invite them to join it,” says Stephen Maurer, a lawyer and expert in public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who helped to formulate the code. “And in the nature of standards wars, if enough people do that, the war will be over.”

Stanley Lubman Urges Obama to Support Chinese Legal Reforms

The Wall Street Journal, China Real Time Report, November 4, 2009 by Stanley Lubman
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2009/11/04/stanley-lubman-a-letter-to-obama/

In recent years the U.S. government, including your predecessor’s administration, has increased the support that it has given to strengthen labor rights, legal aid, open government, and administrative law, augmenting the support for these and other institution-building efforts by multilateral and U.S. NGOs. The current administration ought to increase that support while restraining highly public calls that urge China to speed up its adherence to Western values.

Berkeley Law Hosts State Supreme Court Session

-Contra Costa Times, November 3, 2009 by John Simerman
http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_13705312?source=rss%27

At issue during oral arguments at Boalt Hall in Berkeley was a provision of Proposition 83 that bans people who must register as sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park where children “regularly gather.”

-San Francisco Chronicle, November 4, 2009 by Bob Egelko
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/03/BARO1AEJP6.DTL&type=health

The court said defendants who possessed greater amounts of marijuana could still try to persuade a jury that they had only what they needed for medical use. Neither side disputed that in Tuesday’s Supreme Court hearing at the UC Berkeley law school.

-Cal Law, November 4, 2009 by Mike McKee
http://www.law.com/jsp/ca/PubArticleFriendlyCA.jsp?id=1202435168668

The justices may have been playing to the on-campus audience of students at UC-Berkeley School of Law’s Booth Auditorium, but their questions indicated they’ve given the case lots of thought — and it didn’t look good for DeVito.

-KQED-FM, The California Report, November 12, 2009 by Tara Siler
http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R911120850/a

All seven justices are present, all in black robes but something is amiss. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re sitting on a stage in a college auditorium facing a packed audience of eager law students.