In Defense of Democracy
Renowned public service lawyer Catherine E. Lhamon tapped to lead the Edley Center
In June, she joined UC Berkeley Law — where Edley served as dean for nine years — as executive director of the Edley Center on Law & Democracy. A mentor to Lhamon before he died in May 2024, Edley was a national leader in promoting measures to advance a fair and functional governing system.
His portrait reminded her “of the important and hard work necessary” to develop effective and lasting policy, Lhamon says. “I hold that reminder still following our many conversations and shared work.”
While leading President Joe Biden’s domestic equity policy portfolio, she saw the administration adopt many of the commission’s recommendations: protecting voting rights, solidifying fair working conditions for people with disabilities, honoring treaty obligations to Native Americans, and more.
“The Edley Center is vitally important at this moment in time and I cannot imagine a better person to direct it,” UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says. “I know that under Catherine’s direction the center will make a real difference.”
Lhamon says the center, created last year, will work to protect American democracy “against any and every onslaught” amid it “being tested in escalating and dangerous ways.” She expects to partner with faculty and students at the law school and across the university in courts, during policy reform efforts, and in interactions with states.
The center, which received a $500,000 gift from renowned plaintiff-side litigator Elizabeth Cabraser ’78, drew packed crowds leading up to the election for a five-part speaker series on various aspects of U.S. democracy. After, it presented programs examining issues related to climate, federal workers, immigration, and reproductive rights.
Lhamon was the chief civil rights enforcer in the nation’s schools as U.S. Department of Education Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s top legal adviser. She also litigated civil rights cases at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, National Center for Youth Law, and Public Counsel, and taught in Georgetown Law’s Appellate Litigation Program.
“She is superbly qualified to make the Edley Center a national leader in efforts to preserve and strengthen American democracy and the rule of law,” says Professor and center Co-Faculty Director Daniel A. Farber.
Lhamon has been named Yale Law School’s Outstanding Woman Law Graduate in 1996, one of the 50 Thinkers Transforming Politics by Politico, Attorney of the Year for Civil Rights by California Lawyer, and one of California’s Top Women Litigators by the Daily Journal, among other honors.
“Working at the Edley Center strikes me as the most important way I could contribute in this time,“ she says. “Our goal is to meet this acutely vulnerable moment in American democracy with an innovative and steady legal response.”