Talented Trio

For new professors Jennifer Chacón, Jonathan Glater, and Osagie K. Obasogie, the appeal of joining Berkeley Law’s exceptional faculty was undeniable.

Chacón says she relishes the chance to collaborate with many new colleagues who are leaders in her main fields of interest (constitutional law, immigration law, and criminal law and procedure). She looks forward to working with the school’s Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, where she has been a visiting scholar, its Center for the Study of Law and Society (CSLS), and the university’s Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative.

“I love this job because it is an opportunity to learn every day, from people from all walks of life, through research, teaching, and conversations — both on and off campus,” she says. “I am excited to begin the next chapter of my academic career … and to keep those conversations going.”

A former U.S. Ninth Circuit judicial clerk and law firm associate in New York, Chacón began her law teaching career at UC Davis. She and Glater, who are married and Yale Law graduates, come to Berkeley from UCLA Law and previously taught at UC Irvine Law.

Glater, who focuses on access to education and the effects of student debt, says many Berkeley Law faculty members “care about the same issues that interest me, around inequality in general and equity in educational opportunity in particular. There is also the expanding focus on consumer law, which is implicated in student lending.”

He will work with CSLS, the Berkeley Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice, and others researching the connections between debt, regulation, and inequality. Previously a private practice lawyer in Argentina and New York, Glater was a New York Times reporter for almost a decade and prioritizes writing — both with his students and in his own scholarship.

“Often the concepts and the problems addressed by legal scholarship are complex and arcane, so explaining them well takes a considerable effort,” Glater says.

Obasogie, the only faculty member appointed at both Berkeley Law and UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, aims to build bridges between students and faculty in both places and bring critical conversations around medicine, science, and technology to the law school.

A new educator in Berkeley Law’s interdisciplinary Ph.D.-granting Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program, Obasogie is a Columbia Law graduate who taught at UC Hastings College of Law before being recruited to Berkeley’s School of Public Health in 2016 as part of its Joint Medical Program with UCSF.

Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and growing awareness of how police use of force can threaten public health, he says, “Law can be an important tool to combat these challenges. But in order for this to happen, we have to think creatively and try to create synergies between law, medicine, and public health.”

This year, Chacón will teach Constitutional Law, Glater Criminal Law, and Osagie Critical Theory and Social Science Method. They join a faculty that has added nearly two dozen top scholars since 2017. —Gwyneth K. Shaw