John Yoo Calls on Obama Administration to Restore Senate’s Treaty Power

The New York Times, January 4, 2009 by John R. Bolton and John Yoo
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/opinion/05bolton.html

International agreements that go beyond the rules of international trade and finance—that involve significant national-security commitments, or that purport to delegate lawmaking and enforcement functions to international organizations, or that could fundamentally alter the American constitutional system of individual rights—should receive the intense scrutiny of the treaty process, regardless of their policy merits.

Goodwin Liu Expects Obama to Support American Constitution Society’s Policy Ideas

NPR Weekend Edition, January 3, 2009 by Ari Shapiro
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98918143

“This is just a tremendous opportunity for us,” says University of California Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu. He’s the new chairman of the board at ACS. “Whereas I think in the last seven or eight years we had mostly been playing defense, in the sense of trying to prevent as many—in our view—bad things from happening, now we have the opportunity to actually get our ideas and the progressive vision of the Constitution and of law and policy into practice,” Liu says.

Richard Frank and Christopher Edley Propose Supreme Court Training Program

The Recorder, January 2, 2009 by Mike McKee
http://www.law.com (requires registration; go to G:\Law School in the News\News Clips for article)

“Advocacy before the Supreme Court is, at best, uneven,” said Richard Frank, a lecturer in residence at the UC-Berkeley School of Law. “Attorneys appearing before the court could benefit from some clinical training or preparation.”

Edley encouraged attendees to participate in the proposed program as “advocates or judges.”

Franklin Zimring Blames Rise in San Francisco’s Homicides on Chronic Urban Problems

San Francisco Chronicle, January 2, 2009 by Demian Bulwa
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/02/MNEN1515TC.DTL&type=printable

“What you’re seeing here is an outgrowth of chronic problems,” Zimring said. “We never solved the problems—chronic unemployment, gun availability, community disorganization. It is much more likely that what we’re seeing here is a slightly more concentrated edition of the chronic problems we’ve been having for decades in these cities, rather than something new,” Zimring said.