Elaine Rushing quoted by The Mercury News, Aug. 8, 2017
California employers can fire workers at will, as long as the termination isn’t based on discrimination by race, sex or age, said UC Berkeley Law lecturer Elaine Rushing. “He doesn’t fit into any of those categories,” Rushing said. “He will have a very steep uphill battle in my view of winning a wrongful termination case.”
Franklin Zimring cited by The American Interest, Aug. 7, 2017
According to Berkeley Law Professor Franklin Zimring, author of When Police Kill, African Americans are 2.3 times more likely to be killed by police than are whites. Worse yet, American police kill much more often than police in other countries because of the riskiness of American policing: “The threat of lethal attack is a palpable part of being a police officer in the United States,” Zimring writes.
Erwin Chemerinsky quoted by The Sacramento Bee, Aug. 5, 2017
But as UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes on these pages, Trump also is toying with “the rights and dignity of millions of Americans.” Our guess is that Trump doesn’t care.
Erwin Chemerinsky quoted by The New York Times, Aug. 3, 2017
“Sessions as attorney general has been everything conservatives could have dreamed of and liberals could have feared,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley.
Mark Yudof co-writes for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Aug. 3, 2017
Confronted with the prospect of adversarial proceedings, colleges will spend more time and resources on admissions and less on programs that capitalize on diversity in their student bodies. There will be fewer opportunities to develop and refine small classroom seminars that promote the exchange of ideas, campus activities that build cross-racial understanding, or programs that cultivate leadership skills in a multiracial society. Yet these are the very initiatives to maximize diversity’s benefits that the court very likely had expected to emerge in a more stable legal climate for affirmative action.
Erwin Chemerinsky writes for The Sacramento Bee, Aug. 2, 2017
The same man who declared, “I will fight for you,” now is going out of his way to undermine the rights of LGBT individuals. On July 26, President Donald Trump tweeted that transgender individuals would not be allowed to serve in the military. If this becomes policy, it will reverse Barack Obama’s decision from a year earlier.
John Yoo cited by High Country News, Aug. 2, 2017
Yoo and Gaziano offer advice for how Trump should proceed: “We think the courts are more likely to uphold significant reductions if the president could credibly include in his determination that the original designation was inappropriately large relative to the object to be protected or has become so with changed circumstances,” they write in a report.
Christopher Kutz quoted by Berkeleyside, Aug. 2, 2017
“Is it extortion? Morally, of course, if you think this is pressure that shouldn’t be brought to bear,” said Christopher Kutz, who specializes in moral, political and legal philosophy. But “it’s not enforceable as criminal extortion,” he said. Extortion also requires a demand of money or property.
Christopher Edley interviewed by EdSource, Aug. 1, 2017
“The test of being successful in first-year law school has to do with logic, with being analytical. It doesn’t have to do at all with quantitative skills.”
Daniel Farber interviewed by Capital Public Radio, July 31, 2017
Daniel Farber says companies will try to get the cases thrown out for lack of jurisdiction. But if they move forward, it could open up new claims. “If the plaintiffs can just get to the point of discovery, that is the point where they’re entitled to get documents and to interview oil company officials, that is really a huge victory,” Farber said.