San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 3, 2008 by Wyatt Buchanan
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/03/BAN214GAKU.DTL
“This is the court’s decision, not the Legislature’s, just as whether you balance the budget is the Legislature’s decision and not the court’s,” said Jesse Choper.
The Washington Times, Dec. 3, 2008 by Christina Bellantoni
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/03/clinton-challenged-in-key-cabinet-role/print/
“The courts would decline to hear that lawsuit on the grounds that this is a matter to be resolved in a political process,” Mr. Choper said.
Dan Farber, another Berkeley constitutional law professor, said there was no conflict when Mr. Bush signed the order earlier this year. “The last thing he had in mind was that he could sway Clinton’s vote by promising her the position with higher pay, and any possible conflict is eliminated if she doesn’t actually get the higher salary,” he said.
San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 1, 2008 by Valerie Blair and Sarah Ruby
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/01/ED4N14DRMH.DTL
Politics can’t change the way we feel about our partners, but it has changed the way we feel about marriage in California. For us, state-run marriage is tainted. To marry the people we love, we must enroll in an institution that is discriminatory and unfair. Prop 8 made that clear. Marriage now feels like the wrong way to begin our lives with people we love so much.
Los Angeles Times, Dec. 1, 2008 by Noam N. Levey
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-na-healthcare1-2008dec01,0,2564031.story
“Possibly more important than policy agreements,” Hacker said, “is the fact that the political forces now are in alignment.”
San Francisco Daily Journal, Dec. 1, 2008 by Lawrence Hurley
http://www.dailyjournal.com (requires registration)
“It’s important as a matter of deciding the role dollars and cost consideration should play in charting environmental policy,” said Richard Frank, executive director of the California Center for Environmental Law and Policy at UC Berkeley School of Law.
National Journal, Dec. 1, 2008 by Alan Auerbach
http://economy.nationaljournal.com/2008/12/is-the-deficit-a-threat-to-a-f.php?rss=1
President-elect Obama faces a very difficult task in his design of fiscal policy, thanks in no small part to the fiscal profligacy of his predecessor. He shouldn’t try to attack the long-term fiscal problem immediately, but he needs to address it soon, in a big way. And it won’t take a line-by-line review of the budget to know where the bodies are buried, with roughly 70 percent of the non-interest federal budget now accounted for by Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Defense.
San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 30, 2008 by Tom FitzGerald
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/30/SPKG146T55.DTL
“His program is a model for programs around the country,” said Jesse Choper, a law school professor and a faculty athletic representative. “These student-athletes work their butts off. It’s like going to school and having a full-time job. They do very, very well in my judgment.”
The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 29, 2008 by Eleanor Laise
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122791328588265155.html#printMode
The theory that financial innovation would suddenly give ordinary consumers the ability to manage all of the risks once borne by big institutions “turned out not only to be false, but catastrophically false,” says Jacob Hacker … author of the book “The Great Risk Shift.”
The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 28, 2008 by Yuka Hayashi and Phred Dvorak
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122782362228562381.html#printMode
The big pay packages of American CEOs are less socially acceptable in many other countries including Japan, says Jesse Fried, a University of California, Berkeley law professor who co-authored a book on executive compensation in 2004.
San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 28, 2008 by Matthai Kurvuila
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/28/BAB214BA4E.DTL
The issue was last debated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1970, according to Jesse Choper, a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law. Choper said the court acknowledged that the history of tax exemption for churches stretches back to the nation’s beginnings. The court ruled that because tax exemption was a benefit not solely given to religious groups, but included groups like schools and nonprofits, it was fair.