Why Here, Why Now
Inspiring new students reveal their varied motivations for choosing law school — and Berkeley.

Lights, Lawyers, Action!
Alumni stars and top programs help UC Berkeley Law make big waves in the entertainment industry.

Forefront
Leadership in Research, Service & Education
New project tracks ICE enforcement process • In defense of democracy • Certificate programs give students a leg up • Innovative contribution to truth and justice • Field placements yield transformative results • Public education project strives to unify

Fast Forward
Powerful Student Action Figures

Study Hall
Faculty Honors & Scholarship

Advancement
Updates from Development & Alumni Relations

Class Notes
All in the Alumni Family

Will our international students be able to get visas and do they still want to come to study in the United States? What will be the financial impact of the Trump administration on the resources of the University of California, the Berkeley campus, and the law school? What can UC Berkeley Law do to help uphold the rule of law and constitutional democracy?

Despite these challenges, it is very exciting to begin a new academic year at a truly consequential school with pioneering scholarship, a strong public mission, and a global reach reflected in the work our students do here and our alumni carry into the world. There is much that is wonderful happening at UC Berkeley Law.

Thanks to a grant-funded project led by UC Berkeley Law Professor David Hausman, this critical data is becoming public — and it’s already helping to highlight trends.

The Deportation Data Project has obtained and posted individual-level data sets tracking every arrest, detention, and deportation conducted by ICE. These datasets include anonymized identifiers that correspond to people, allowing users to follow individual people through the enforcement process without learning their identities.

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.”

She wasn’t anticipating spending much time inside an American courtroom — but she got plenty, thanks to her pro bono work and her choice to pursue the Practical Lawyering Certificate, one of the school’s baker’s dozen of specialty choices.

“I would recommend it to anyone exploring a legal career in the U.S.,” Kanoria says. “It was one of the most formative and rewarding experiences of my LL.M. journey.”

After years of harassment and threats, Cáceres was assassinated in her home in 2016.

Nearly a decade later, UC Berkeley Law Professor and Human Rights Clinic Director Roxanna Altholz ’99 is one of three experts appointed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to conduct an independent and impartial investigation of the killing — a mandate granted only three other times in the commission’s history.

Chung started listening to the news program “Up First” on National Public Radio (NPR) in high school, researched the effects of social media misinformation and disinformation, and went to law school “specifically to be involved in the decision-making of news media and social media companies amid the always-changing dynamics of technology and politics.”

Last semester, thanks to the Field Placement Program, she was a general counsel extern at NPR and worked on business contracts, reviewed digital content before publication, researched and wrote memos on artificial intelligence and intellectual property, scoured articles for potential defamation, and assessed constitutional protections for journalists.

Four senior scholars — Professors Brian Galle, Joy Milligan Ph.D. ’18, Bertrall Ross, and Kevin Washburn — join Assistant Professors Jason Ferguson and Ryan Sakoda and Clinical Professor Alina Ball as the school’s new hires. They’re the latest in a transformative wave of hiring since Dean Erwin Chemerinsky arrived in 2017.

“We had a spectacular year in faculty hiring. We’ve added terrific faculty in many different fields who will be great classroom teachers as well as influential scholars,” Chemerinsky says. “We are tremendously fortunate to have them join us.”