All News
November 17, 2023
Congratulations to Bonnie Cherry and Brianne Felsher for being named Student Research Colloquium Fellows bythe American Society for Legal History!
October 30, 2023
Congratulations to Brianne Felsher for receiving a 2023 Cromwell Fellowship for early career scholars from the American Society for Legal History.
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Dylan Penningroth talks with host Alexis Madrigal about his new book “Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights”
Listen here: https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101894860/before-the-movement-the-hidden-and-vibrant-history-of-black-civil-rights
September 26, 2023
What the conventional narrative gets wrong about the civil rights movement
The Washington Post reviews Professor Dylan Penningroth’s book, Before The Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights.
Why The True History Of Black Civil Rights Must Be Traced Back To The Days Of Slavery
Professor Dylan Penningroth appears on LAist’s AirTalk to discuss his new book, Before The Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights
September 20, 2023
DA Brooke Jenkins reverses 8-year decline in convictions
“One of the ironies of the call to a more ‘law and order’ approach is that people often associate it with being more effective at trying to reduce crime,” Jonathan Simon said. “I think we have to live with the fact that the actual effects on crime are going to be marginal.”
September 15, 2023
The Legal Lives of Slaves in America
To understand slavery in all its cruelty, writes historian and Berkeley Law professor Dylan C. Penningroth, we have to grasp what sounds like an oxymoron: the legal lives of slaves.
August 25, 2023
August 1, 2023
Berkeley Law News
Jonathan Simon, a professor of criminal justice at UC Berkeley’s law school, said incarcerating people over minor property crimes makes little sense. “Jail does real harm and makes it more likely the person will be arrested again,” Simon said.
Berkeley Law News
Eight New Professors Further Bolster Our World-Class Faculty“The quality of any educational institution is largely determined by the quality of its faculty and we simply could not have had a better year in our hiring,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says.
July 21, 2023
Bonnie Cherry and Brianne Felsher were selected to be participants in the American Society For Legal History's 2023 Graduate Research Colloquium.
Michael Banerjee's essay, "California's Constitutional University: Private Property, Public Power, and the Constitutional Corporation, 1868-1900," won second place in the California Supreme Court Historical Society's Selma Moidel Smith Student Writing Competition.
July 11, 2023
Berkeley Law News
Rising 3Ls Chloe Pan and Zabdi Salazar are expanding engagement and making changes, including how students join the journal and the way articles are selected and edited.
July 6, 2023
Sarah Song’s book Immigration and Democracy [link] (Oxford, 2019) was recently lauded in
Chris Tomlins was named co-winner (with Michael McCann, of the University of Washington) of the Harry J. Kalven, Jr. Prize of the Law and Society Association. The Kalven Prize (according to the LSA) is “not a book award, nor is it a career achievement award, but is given in recognition of a body of scholarly work, including some portion of work having been completed within the past few years.” Previous Berkeley Law (JSP) winners of the Kalven Award include Philip Selznick (2003), Bob Kagan (2006), Frank Zimring (2013), Malcolm Feeley (2015), and Laurie Edelman (2018).
June 2, 2023
Congratulations to JSP Student Dvir Yogev who has been awarded the 2023 CSLS Graduate Student Paper Prize for his paper, Holding Justice Accountable: Intensive vs. Extensive Margins in Prosecutor Elections!
The CSLS Graduate Student Paper Prize is awarded annually to a current Berkeley graduate student whose nominated paper best represents outstanding law and society research.
June 1, 2023
We invite you to join us on Friday, June 02 from 4:45-6:15pm to honor the life and legacy of our friend and colleague, Lauren Edelman.
The memorial will take place at the San Cristobal A, Garden Wing of the Caribe Hilton during this year's LSA Conference.
May 24, 2023
Congratulations to JSP Student Brianne Felsher who has been awarded an Opportunity Grant Scholarship from the Point Foundation!
The Opportunity Grant provides financial support, a community of peers, leadership training, and mentorship, to US college students from around the world and generates research to document the challenges LGBTQ students face on US campuses.
May 17, 2023
Congratulations to JSP Student Bonnie Cherry who has been awarded the 2023 CSLS Frances Coles Summer Research Grants!
The CSLS Frances Coles Summer Research Grants are designed to assist mid-career and advanced graduate students who are pursuing independent research related to law and society. The goal is to enable grant recipients to complete a major piece of research and writing during the summer of the grant.
May 12, 2023
Law enforcement prosecutions are inherently difficult, UC Berkeley law Professor Jonathan Simon allowed. State law enables police to use deadly force when they reasonably believe they are threatened; juries bring a set of presumptions into the courtroom and historically they have been swayed by testimony of police officers. Considering all these hurdles, “it’s inevitably rare that officers are charged for using force in the course of their jobs,” Simon said, let alone convicted.