In Brief

Nuggets from the School Community
Angeli Patel ’20 and Betsy Popken
NEW PATH: Angeli Patel ’20 (left) and Betsy Popken recently became the executive directors of our Berkeley Center for Law and Business and our Human Rights Center, respectively. Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small

Leadership, Reloaded

Two of our renowned research and policy centers recently welcomed new leaders with big shoes to fill and ambitious plans to match.

Berkeley Center for Law and Business (BCLB) Executive Director Angeli Patel ’20 is a familiar face: As a student and since graduation, she’s worked closely with the center, particularly in the growing sphere of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) guidance for corporations.

At the Human Rights Center (HRC), Betsy Popken joins longtime leader Alexa Koenig ’13 as co-executive director. Popken previously co-founded and co-led Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe’s business and human rights practice, and also helped launch its ESG practice.

Patel, who worked in the Office of Management and Budget during the Obama administration before law school, sees BCLB as a strong platform to tackle some of society’s most pressing issues.

“I’m driven to figure out how to realign incentives of our economy that lead to positive outcomes,” she says. “BCLB is well-positioned to bring together powerful, influential people to talk about how to do that.”

Patel replaces Adam Sterling ’13, now assistant dean for executive education and revenue generation, who took over BCLB in 2015 and greatly expanded its programming.

“Thanks to her incredible background — as a White House administrator, ESG attorney, and instructor at Berkeley Law — Angeli is the perfect leader to take our program, and business law, into the future,” Sterling says.

Popken has worked on United Nations–mediated peace and ceasefire negotiations in Sudan, Syria, and Yemen through the Public International Law & Policy Group, and led that organization’s Istanbul office. She’s also taught negotiations at Stanford Law School and worked for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Pacific Council on International Policy.

“HRC’s leadership and expertise in human rights and technology excites me,” says Popken, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. “We have such a knowledgeable and passionate team that I’m inspired to work with.”

Koenig, who will become co-faculty director with Eric Stover, says they’re thrilled with Popken’s hire.

“Betsy’s breadth of experience and diverse perspectives on human rights is truly stunning, ranging from frontline to government to legal practice,” Koenig says. “She’s an ideal person to lead our multidisciplinary team into its next decade.”
— Gwyneth K. Shaw

Students Notch Precedent-Setting Victory in Immigration Case

Just a few weeks before graduating, Nicole Conrad ’22 and Joya Manjur ’22 stepped before a panel of U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judges to argue against the U.S. Department of Justice. The asylum petition of El Salvadoran Oscar Gonzalez-Castillo hung in the balance.

In Berkeley Law’s Ninth Circuit Practicum, students craft and argue cases under attorney supervision — in this instance, from Amalia Wille ’13 and Judah Lakin ’15.

Months later, the panel issued an opinion that closely followed their arguments and broke new ground, expanding the circuit’s ability to grant asylum for many others who were previously barred.

“We had spent a year thinking and writing about how our client deserved justice,” Conrad says. “It was gratifying to see that come to fruition.”

Gonzalez-Castillo left El Salvador in 2014 for the U.S. after police accused him of being part of an infamous gang. In 2020, after the U.S. government moved to deport him, he applied for asylum and relief under the Convention Against Torture.

At his hearing, the government introduced a “Red Notice” alleging his gang involvement during a 2015 incident. The immigration judge denied Gonzalez-Castillo all requested relief, citing the Red Notice as evidence of a serious crime.

Among the notice’s many flaws that the students highlighted in court: Gonzalez-Castillo was in the U.S. when the incident happened. Manjur notes that the notices, used increasingly by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in asylum cases, are abused by corrupt governments.

“Having the chance to clarify what Red Notices actually are and help develop the law around them in the Ninth Circuit was really exciting,” she says.

Gonzalez-Castillo’s case was returned to the Board of Immigration Appeals for further review. Hoping to expedite his removal from detention, Conrad and Manjur are pushing to use the Ninth Circuit’s decision to support a request for Interpol to rescind his Red Notice. — Gwyneth K. Shaw

Nicole Conrad ’22, Amalia Wille ’13, and Joya Manjur ’22
PERSUASION POWER: (From left) Nicole Conrad ’22, Amalia Wille ’13, and Joya Manjur ’22 after their argument beforethe U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Atteeyah Hollie ’10
REASON TO SMILE: Atteeyah Hollie ’10 says Berkeley Law’s latest LRAP improvements are right on brand.

Public Interest Booster

New improvements to Berkeley Law’s already strong Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP) provided welcome but hardly surprising news to Atteeyah Hollie ’10.

“Berkeley not only talks the talk of wanting students to be social transformers, it walks the walk by ensuring they can dedicate their lives to it,” says Hollie, deputy director of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta. “I’m a prime example.”

The program’s income cap rose from $100,000 to $120,000, enabling more public interest graduates to obtain this support. Also, the out-of-pocket contribution decreased from 35% of a participant’s income over $80,000 to 25% — meaning grads will receive more funding and spend less of their own money on student loan expenses.

“Over the past few years, we’ve made a number of improvements to this program,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says. “This is our most impactful policy change yet.”

Anyone in law-related, public interest employment can qualify, participants are able to enter and exit the program at will, and the school maximizes support by not considering assets, allowing for dependent deductions, and protecting a portion of side job income.

Director of Public Interest Financial Support Amanda Prasuhn calls Berkeley Law’s LRAP “assuredly the best of any public law school” with “one of the lowest out-of-pocket contribution formulas of any institution.”

The improvements reflect a far-reaching commitment to help serve students and the public interest (see infographic).

“LRAP literally paid for my law school and undergraduate loans for 10-plus years,” Hollie says. “And now that they’ve been completely forgiven, I have many more years fighting for transformations in our criminal legal system to look forward to. Without LRAP, I’m not sure I could have lasted this long doing the work I love.”
— Andrew Cohen

$120k
Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP) income cap, up from $10ok last year
10
New Public Interest Scholar students receiving three years of full California resident tuition and fees, up from 5 last year
25%
New level for LRAP out-of-pocket contribution of participants’ income over $80,000, down from 35%
310
Students received fellowships to work in public interest positions last summer

New Courses Abound

Berkeley Law’s powerhouse curriculum gained more momentum this semester with a whopping 18 new courses. Three tackle hot-button topics within the school’s top-ranked business law program.

Sustainable Corporate Governance Colloquium, taught by Professor Stavros Gadinis, right: Confronts the sustainability and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) issues sweeping the corporate world amid new practice groups, regulations, and international considerations. Top scholars present their work and surface varying viewpoints. Students study the tools needed to meet sustainability benchmarks, and how those tools can achieve transparency, accountability, and standard-setting while helping companies improve communication.

FinTech Innovation and Financial Inclusion, taught by Upgrade Deputy General Counsel Tuong-Vi Faber: Explores how FinTech — which uses technologies to reshape how financial products and services are structured and consumed — disrupts the traditional financial sector and provides new opportunities and challenges for financial inclusion. With nearly 40% of U.S. households unable to cover basic expenses for three months if they absorbed an income shock, the course addresses current sector limitations, the U.S. regulatory environment, and innovation areas.

Communication Skills for Business Lawyers, taught by Amazon Studios Senior Business Affairs Executive Paul Marchegiani ’03: Enhances oral communication skills needed for business lawyers to effectively connect with clients, close deals, and speak in public. Through group exercises and games, performance theory discussions, and individual assignments, students tap into their unique voice to engage others and better represent clients.

“Berkeley Law remains a national leader in business law not only because of the pathbreaking scholarship of our professors, but also their innovations in the classroom,” says Professor Andrew Bradt, associate dean of J.D. curriculum and teaching. — Andrew Cohen

Professor Stavros Gadinis
Photo by Delia Violante
Other courses being taught at Berkeley Law for the first time this semester:

  • Angel Island – Legal Histories of Imprisonment
  • Anti-Discrimination Policies in Insurance Law
  • Asylum Law Seminar and Practicum
  • Designing Government Services
  • Human Rights Practice Workshop
  • Introduction to Supreme Court for 1Ls
  • Litigating Class Actions
  • Pathways to Carbon Neutrality
  • Preparing to Practice Patent Law
  • Special Topics in Education Policy: Race, Gender, and Sexuality
  • Strategy: Theory, Law and Policy
  • The Killing of Jamal Khashoggi and the Search for Justice
  • The Legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
  • Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Case
  • Women’s Leadership in the Law
Radial blurred screen covered in code

A Partnership Pursuing Responsible AI

Artificial intelligence — using machines to mimic outputs of the human mind — is part of our everyday lives. Alexa and Siri help us with tasks and anticipate our choices; chat bots assist with everything from customer service to health care.

This burgeoning technology, however, has hype and fear competing for the dominant public narrative. As AI spreads, two University of California powerhouses are teaming up to examine how to promote responsible innovation: Our Berkeley Center for Law & Technology (BCLT) and the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute’s CITRIS Policy Lab, which draws expertise from several UC campuses.

The Artificial Intelligence, Platforms, and Society Project, co-led by CITRIS Policy Lab Director and Goldman School of Public Policy Associate Research Professor Brandie Nonnecke and Berkeley Law Professor Tejas N. Narechania, also works closely with various researchers from Berkeley’s information and engineering schools. A timely forum for students, academics, practitioners, and tech companies that supports research, training, and a fellowship program, the project focuses on general AI governance, usage, and how new tools can ethically address pressing problems in law.

“We cannot, as a nation, control any AI technology from being developed. We just can’t,” says BCLT Executive Director Wayne Stacy. “So it really comes down to regulations, implementation, and the ability to follow those regulations.”

Complementing and broadening the reach of BCLT’s Asia IP & Technology Law Project and its Life Sciences Project, this new initiative will also feed the center’s fast-growing online B-CLE platform for Continuing Legal Education credits.

How should we regulate speech on platforms with significant market power, address discrimination by machine-learning-based algorithms, and balance the individual privacy interests in information against the collective benefits gained from aggregated data?

“It’s really important that we get a handle on the governance questions ahead of time, and start to think about how we’re going to answer them,” Narechania says. — Gwyneth K. Shaw

Untangling the Web

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky is co-leading a major UC Berkeley initiative to combat online harms. “Our Better Web examines the prevalence of content promoting deception, discrimination, and child exploitation, and assesses laws pertaining to internet material and online platforms’ content moderation strategies.

Chemerinsky heads the project with former U.S. Secretary for Homeland Security Janet Napolitano (who now directs UC Berkeley’s Center for Security in Politics), Graduate School of Journalism Dean Geeta Anand, and three leading campus authorities in data science, digital forensics, and information technology. Some key features of the initiative:

  • Enlists top experts in various internet-related disciplines
  • Aims to help influence policymaking and legislation to protect children online, boost privacy protections, stop the spread of illegal content, and mitigate online hate that has fueled violence based on race, gender, and sexual orientation
  • First project focused on Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which largely protects online platforms from liabilities associated with user-generated content (published a report on the law’s effects, suggested various reforms, and created a public database of all Section 230-related federal legislation)
  • Probing how best to neutralize deepfakes, which use artificial intelligence to create seemingly real but deeply deceptive videos of public figures and others
  • Launching multidisciplinary research projects, public events, and trainings on effective technology and policy strategies
Areeba Jibril
Karla Cruz
GUIDING LIGHTS: Areeba Jibril (left) and Karla Cruz are part of a huge influx of teaching talent for Berkeley Law’s clinics.

Clinical Program Adds Depth and Diversity

Berkeley Law’s Clinical Program recently welcomed 14 new hires, extending its representation of marginalized communities and range of real-world experience in direct services, litigation, counseling, policy advocacy, and research to over 300 students each year.

More hires are expected as the 14-clinic program plans to add three more in-house clinics amid recently starting to hire five clinical faculty members over the next five years. Here are the new additions and their most recent positions:

Environmental Law Clinic: Nazune Menka, supervising attorney, former Berkeley Law Tribal Cultural Resources Project Policy Fellow

New Business Community Law Clinic: Mariana Acevedo Nuevo LL.M. ’19, supervising attorney, former housing rights attorney at Legal Access Alameda

Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic: Areeba Jibril, teaching fellow, former ACLU of Massachusetts fellow; Brianna L. Schofield ’12, supervising attorney, former executive director of Authors Alliance

East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC) Clean Slate Clinic: Shahrzad (Shazzy) Kamali ’21, supervising attorney, former law clerk in Legal Aid at Work’s Work & Family Division; Brigitte Nicoletti ’20, supervising attorney, former post-bar fellow with the Juvenile Defender Unit at Contra Costa County Public Defender’s Office

EBCLC Community Economic Justice Clinic: Michael Trujillo, supervising attorney, former Law Foundation of Silicon Valley housing rights attorney

EBCLC Consumer Justice Clinic: Sophia Wang, supervising attorney, former Bay Area Legal Aid staff attorney

EBCLC Education Justice Clinic: Atasi Uppal, supervising attorney (and director, Education Defense and Justice for Youth), former National Center for Youth Law senior policy attorney

EBCLC Housing Clinic: Laura Bixby, supervising attorney, former public defender in the Orleans Public Defenders’ Special Litigation Unit

EBCLC Immigration Clinic: Karla Cruz, supervising attorney, former staff attorney at Centro Legal de la Raza; Daisy Ocampo Felt, supervising attorney, former UC Davis School of Law Immigration Law Clinic attorney; Abigail Rich, supervising attorney, former staff attorney at East Bay Sanctuary Covenant

EBCLC Youth Defender Clinic: Ellen Ivens-Duran ’21, supervising attorney, former clerk for District of Columbia Court of Appeals Judge Corinne Beckwith — Sarah Weld

A-List Guest List

Spanning all walks of law, Berkeley Law regularly hosts events with a dazzling roster of prominent guests. Here are just three who recently shared their insights
U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar: Responsible for conducting and supervising all Supreme Court litigation on behalf of the United States, Prelogar was interviewed by Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. She urged the packed gathering’s future litigators to stay authentic when developing their courtroom style: “They say that argument is truth serum — you have to be yourself.”
Uber Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer Tony West: Interviewed by Professor Stavros Gadinis, West described leading the global legal, compliance and ethics, security, and cybersecurity functions for a company operating in over 70 countries and 10,000 cities: “I look for people who have the courage to exercise good judgment, even in situations where it’s hard to do that.”
California Department of Financial Protection Commissioner Cloey Hewlett ’79: Interviewed by Berkeley Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice Executive Director Ted Mermin ’96, Hewlett discussed guiding the regulation of banks, mortgage lending, debt collectors, cryptocurrency, and more. Having grown up in poverty, she told students: “It’s OK to challenge yourself. It’s in the challenge that you’ll find your mission.”
— Andrew Cohen
U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar and Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.
LAUGH-IN: U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar shares a light moment with Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. Photo by Laurie Frasier

Pulling Up New Chairs

Professors Catherine Crump, Sonia Katyal, and Jonah B. Gelbach have been awarded faculty chairs for their accomplishments and contributions to scholarship, policy, and legal education.

Crump is the Robert Glushko Clinical Professor of Practice in Technology Law, a new chair funded by a $2 million donation from Professor Pamela Samuelson and her husband, Robert Glushko.

As director of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic — itself established with a donation from Samuelson and Glushko — Crump has emerged as a renowned expert on surveillance technology and its privacy and civil liberties implications.

“Bob and Pam have been longtime supporters of clinical legal education, at Berkeley and beyond, and it somehow seems right that the very first clinical chair is named after one of them,” Crump says.

Katyal, who previously held a chair granted by the main UC Berkeley administration, is now the Roger J. Traynor Distinguished Professor of Law. The chair had been held by the late Stephen D. Sugarman.

“I am simply delighted to receive this chair, and even more touched that it is associated with one of the greatest heroes for justice and equality in California,” she says.

Gelbach is now the Herman F. Selvin Professor of Law after the previous holder, Professor Robert Cooter, moved to emeritus status. An empiricist who was an economics professor before earning his J.D., Gelbach’s scholarship and teaching focus on civil procedure, evidence, statutory interpretation, and law and economics.

“To follow in my friend Bob’s footsteps is a great honor, as anyone who knows him or his tremendous footprint on the field of law and economics knows,” he says.
— Gwyneth K. Shaw

New chair holders Catherine Crump, Sonia Katyal, and Jonah B. Gelbach.
TALENTED TEACHERS: New chair holders Catherine Crump, Sonia Katyal, and Jonah B. Gelbach.
Ehren Tool with group of vets and students in studio
Photo by Torin Eastburn

Student Veterans Groups Build Community Through Art

It sounds like the start of a joke: A guy walks into a bar and meets a man who’s made more than 25,000 ceramic mugs …

But 2L Mark Mabry’s chance encounter with Ehren Tool led to a seriously gratifying and cathartic event for the members of two Berkeley Law student organizations for active military and veterans. Just weeks before randomly meeting Tool at a local watering hole, Mabry’s girlfriend had sent an article about his work connecting veterans through art.

For over two decades, Tool has helped fellow vets create and design mugs that resonate with their military experience. The senior lab mechanician for ceramics at UC Berkeley’s Art Department, he has shown his work across the United States and Europe.

Mark Mabry sculpting a mug
HANDS ON: Ehren Tool (center in photo above) helped veterans like 2L Mark Mabry (above) connect and commiserate. Photo by Cheska Torres Ibasan
“We introduced ourselves and Ehren immediately offered to put on a ceramics event for the law school’s veterans,” says Mabry, a former Marine who co-leads Military Veterans at Berkeley Law (MVBL). “He did a great job and everyone had a blast.”

Students in MVBL and the group Legal Obstacles Veterans Encounter attended with alumni veterans and friends. The mugs were displayed before the Cal-Stanford football game through Platform, a UC Berkeley Art Department initiative featuring collaborative projects and pop-up exhibitions.

Reflecting camaraderie, discipline, commitment, and more, the mugs — some more playful, others more solemn — align with the diversity of the veterans’ experiences.

“The cups become a place to speak about unspeakable things,” Tool says. “I just make cups. The vets, their families, and their stories make them something more.” — Andrew Cohen

It sounds like the start of a joke: A guy walks into a bar and meets a man who’s made more than 25,000 ceramic mugs …

But 2L Mark Mabry’s chance encounter with Ehren Tool led to a seriously gratifying and cathartic event for the members of two Berkeley Law student organizations for active military and veterans. Just weeks before randomly meeting Tool at a local watering hole, Mabry’s girlfriend had sent an article about his work connecting veterans through art.

For over two decades, Tool has helped fellow vets create and design mugs that resonate with their military experience. The senior lab mechanician for ceramics at UC Berkeley’s Art Department, he has shown his work across the United States and Europe.

“We introduced ourselves and Ehren immediately offered to put on a ceramics event for the law school’s veterans,” says Mabry, a former Marine who co-leads Military Veterans at Berkeley Law (MVBL). “He did a great job and everyone had a blast.”

Students in MVBL and the group Legal Obstacles Veterans Encounter attended with alumni veterans and friends. The mugs were displayed before the Cal-Stanford football game through Platform, a UC Berkeley Art Department initiative featuring collaborative projects and pop-up exhibitions.

Reflecting camaraderie, discipline, commitment, and more, the mugs — some more playful, others more solemn — align with the diversity of the veterans’ experiences.

“The cups become a place to speak about unspeakable things,” Tool says. “I just make cups. The vets, their families, and their stories make them something more.” — Andrew Cohen

Mark Mabry sculpting a mug
HANDS ON: Ehren Tool (center in photo above) helped veterans like 2L Mark Mabry (above) connect and commiserate. Photo by Cheska Torres Ibasan

Sonic Boom

Berkeley Law’s pro bono culture is a well-known draw for students and a crown jewel of the school’s public mission. Now, the “Power of Pro Bono” podcast adds to that tapestry — and to our robust lineup of audio shows. Pro Bono Program Director Deborah Schlosberg envisions it “expanding access to legal information and highlighting the importance of pro bono work.”

Leaders of Arts & Innovation Representation (one of our Student-Initiated Legal Services Projects) produced the first three “Power of Pro Bono” episodes, which cover music sampling, international restitution, and COVID-19’s impact on live theater.

“We wanted to ensure rigor and integrity, but at the same time make the podcasts easily understood by creatives who are trying to understand the various ways the law can affect their rights,” says group Co-Director Ross Moody ’23.

Other recent highlights from our podcast library:

  • On “More Just,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky spoke with U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge M. Margaret McKeown about her book on the environmental activism of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.
  • The Berkeley Center for Law & Technology’s “Careers in Tech Law,” hosted by Executive Director Wayne Stacy, talked to experts about how life sciences patent prosecution differs from other patent work.
  • The “California Law Review” podcast presented interviews with authors of articles published in the student-run journal, including Elizabeth Heckmann ’22 on felon disenfranchisement and the 24th Amendment.
  • In four new episodes of “Be the Change,” Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice Executive Director Savala Nolan ’11 interviewed guests including Professor Khiara M. Bridges and Environmental Law Clinic Supervising Attorney Nazune Menka. Her goal: “Help folks be brave and envision their lives, their gifts, and their work as expansive and transformative … to nudge them toward taking a real crack at being the change they want to see.” — Gwyneth K. Shaw
Rainy Ren LL.M. ’22, Shen-Min Chen LL.M. ’22, and Kalyn Adiekweh ’24 recording podcast
SOUNDING OFF: (From left) Rainy Ren LL.M. ’22, Shen-Min Chen LL.M. ’22, and Kalyn Adiekweh ’24 discuss the pandemic’s effect on live theater with producer and lawyer Doug Nevin.

Political Office Pioneers

Two alums made area history in the 2022 November election.

Pamela Price ’82 was elected as Alameda County’s first Black district attorney in the position’s 170-year history. She vowed to work to reduce gun violence, end mass incarceration, and root out racial, socioeconomic, and gender disparities within the county’s criminal legal system.

The first person in nearly a century to assume the job without having worked in the county DA’s Office, Price was a longtime civil rights lawyer who started her own firm in Oakland in 1991. She represented victims of retaliation, wrongful termination, sexual assaults, and discrimination based on sex, age, religion, disability, and race. A survivor of the Ohio juvenile justice and foster care systems, Price was emancipated at age 16.

Janani Ramachandran ’20 is Oakland’s new City Council member for District 4 — the youngest person ever elected to the council and its first South Asian. Her campaign called for improvements in responsive leadership, public and fire safety, clean streets and flourishing parks, reduced homelessness, affordable housing, and thriving small businesses.

A member of the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs, Ramachandran has been an attorney at legal nonprofits and on the boards of violence prevention nonprofits across Oakland. — Andrew Cohen

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price ’82
Oakland City Council member Janani Ramachandran ’20
TRAILBLAZERS: New Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price ’82 (left) and new Oakland City Council member Janani Ramachandran ’20.
Elizabeth Simanjuntak on campus
PURE ENERGY: Elizabeth Simanjuntak has relished her LL.M. experience in Berkeley.

International Influx

This school year, 246 LL.M. students from 41 countries are bringing a vast array of experiences and perspectives that greatly enrich the school. Here are three members of the talented class:

Elizabeth Simanjuntak, President’s Legal Analyst for Energy and Environmental Law, Indonesia
Moving to a polluted city at a young age, Simanjuntak recalls being affected by issues surrounding energy and clean technology. She now helps analyze and draft laws on energy policy in line with Indonesia’s shift towards a sustainable future, and is pursuing an Energy and Clean Technology certificate at Berkeley Law.

“It will enable me to deliver more profound legal advice to other ministries on issues such as energy tax incentives, pricing schemes, and low-carbon policies.”

David Garzón García, Legislative Work Unit Coordinator, Senate of the Republic of Colombia
Aspiring to become a judge on Colombia’s Constitutional Court, Garzón García is earning a Public Interest and Social Justice Law certificate. Senator Jorge Londoño’s former chief of staff, he sees global threats to fundamental rights as a call to action.

“Challenging times serve as catalysts for social movements to find new ways and strategies. I wanted to study in a place with a strong position of respect for and unwavering defense of disadvantaged groups’ rights.”

Anneke Bossard, Public Defender, Australia
Bossard clerked for the Supreme Court of the Australian Territory’s chief justice and was a junior public defender in the remote outback serving Indigenous Australians. Learning about the U.S. civil rights experience, she aims to develop strategies and arguments that help indigent clients.

“It’s time to step outside and gain a new perspective on problems that both the U.S. and Australia face: mass incarceration, police violence, entrenched racism, and a broken justice system.” — Marissa Gutierrez

Irene Liu ’06
TECH SAVVY: Irene Liu ’06 brings a sparkling record to her new role at Berkeley Law.

News Nibbles

Irene Liu ’06 was named our Executive Education Program’s first executive in residence. She will develop a webinar series on Berkeley Boosts and lead General Counsel Institute programs, among other projects. The Hypergrowth GC founder has built and scaled tech companies to multi-billion dollar valuations through M&A deals, financings, and investments.
Five experts from our Center for Law, Energy & the Environment led several events at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Egypt, largely to advance partnership and dialogue between the U.S. and China.
Best-selling author Heather McGhee ’09 launched “The Sum of Us” podcast, which presents stories of people working together across racial lines to improve their communities.
Our Berkeley Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice and a group of legal scholars including Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Professor Jonathan D. Glater filed amicus briefs opposing challenges to President Biden’s student debt cancellation plan.
Steven Feldstein ’04 won the University of Louisville’s annual Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. The $100,000 prize honors his book, The Rise of Digital Repression, which showed how governments use internet shutdowns, facial recognition, and other tools to intimidate critics and spread propaganda.
Our Berkeley Center for Law and Business recently launched Canvas, a newsletter on the art world and its intersections with law, finance, technology, and culture.
Hailed for supporting fellowships, implicit bias conferences, and other social justice efforts, litigator Elizabeth Cabraser ’78 and Berkeley Law lecturer Henry Hecht received Champions of Justice awards at the Equal Justice Society’s annual gala. The event also served as a retirement party for founding president and civil rights icon Eva Paterson ’75.
Pro Bono Program Director Deborah Schlosberg won an Emerging Leader Award from the Association of American Law Schools.
Berkeley Law librarian Kate Peck
NEXT CHAPTER: Berkeley Law librarian Kate Peck led a recent project to reclassify materials about America’s Indigenous people. Photo by Shelby Knowles

‘The Respect They Deserve’

A recent Berkeley Law Library project sought to confront bias and advance inclusion within its storied stacks: Reclassifying books, periodicals, and other materials about America’s Indigenous people to their own place on the shelves.

Cataloger Kate Peck was inspired by an American Association of Law Libraries presentation last summer, which stemmed from the Library of Congress expanding the classification system for Indigenous materials within the class for law materials in 2014.

The original 1969 schema had just 28 call numbers for all works involving Indigenous law, pushed to a tiny space at the bottom of the main category — treatment criticized by some catalogers as “ghettoization” and echoing the societal exclusion and erasure of tribal nations and sovereignty issues. By comparison, Peck says there were 148 call numbers for federal income tax law and 90 for laws involving the U.S. Postal Service.

The project’s motivation is “treating Indigenous materials with the respect they deserve,” she says. “Reclassifying our Indigenous law materials allows them to exist in their own context, acknowledging the sovereignty and independence of people who have been marginalized and isolated for too long.”

Peck and fellow catalogers Irina Migal, Shelly McLaughlin, and Enedina Vera found about 860 physical items that met the review criteria, examined each title’s catalog entry, and decided whether to keep it in its existing classification or move it to a new one.

“We reclassify or reorganize materials for a variety of reasons,” Law Library Director Marci Hoffman says. “To make like materials easier to locate, to organize materials based on a more logical system, or to better address political, social, and economic realities in society.” — Gwyneth K. Shaw