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January 11, 2023
Dear Berkeley Law Alumni,
Happy New Year! I want to wish you and your loved ones all the best for a new year filled with good health and much happiness and joy.
I write this quarterly message at the end of my one-year term as president of the Association of American Law Schools. The theme for my presidency — how law schools can make a difference — reflects my strong belief in the ability and obligation of law schools to help propel positive change, especially given that the stakes to do so have rarely been higher. It was wonderful to see many of you in San Diego last week at the AALS Annual Meeting.
Faith in the institutions of government and our political system is lower than at any point in my 40 years of law teaching. But seeing how Berkeley Law has responded to various threats to the rule of law and democracy, at home and around the world, instills great pride in being the dean of this remarkable school.
At a time of climate change, racial strife, numerous states making it harder for voters of color to cast ballots, partisan gerrymandering, and authoritarian governments gaining strength around the world, Berkeley Law is protecting and advancing fundamental rights in many vital ways — advancing our public mission and serving our communities. You can read about this wide-ranging work here in the cover feature spread from the fall issue of Transcript, our biannual magazine. We must as a law school continue to look for ways to make a difference, including through our faculty’s scholarship, teaching the next generation of leaders, the work of our clinics and centers and pro bono program, and so much else that we do.
There are many other wonderful developments to report, though also some difficult issues:
Bar Passage and Celebration: I’m delighted that once again, Berkeley Law graduates delivered another great showing on their bar exams. For the July 2022 California Bar Exam, Berkeley Law for the second year in a row had the highest pass rate of any law school in California. Our J.D. alumni pass rate was 92.2% for first-time takers and 91.6% overall, compared to a pass rate of 62% for all first-time takers and 52.4% overall. For the July 2022 New York Bar Exam, our J.D. alumni pass rate was 98.1% for first-time takers and 98.2% overall, compared to a pass rate of 74.7% for all first-time takers and 66.1% overall. Congratulations to these newly-minted lawyers as they embark upon their promising legal careers.
On December 13, we held a swearing in ceremony at the Law School for those who passed the California Bar. California Court of Appeal Associate Justice Jon Streeter ’81 swore the new attorneys into the California Bar, and U.S. District Court Judge Trina Thompson ’86 swore them into the bar of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Each of them and Nicole Ozer ’03, Berkeley Law Alumni Association director, offered inspiring words. It was a wonderfully celebratory event. Photos may be viewed here.
Propelling Public Interest: We improved our already strong Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP), which provides funding to graduates working in public interest careers, in two key ways. First, we raised the income cap from $100,000 to $120,000, enabling more alumni to access this support. Second, we reduced the out-of-pocket contribution of participants’ income over $80,000 from 35% to 25%, meaning public interest graduates will receive more funding and spend less of their own money on student loan expenses. We’ve made many programmatic improvements to our LRAP over the years, and this is our most impactful policy change yet.
Berkeley Law’s public mission is one of its defining characteristics, and integral to this goal is supporting our graduates working in public interest after law school. Our LRAP has broad eligibility requirements that allow anyone in law-related, public interest employment to qualify for funding, including those working as judicial clerks and at private public interest firms. Participants can enter and exit the program at will, allowing them to follow their ideal career paths. And we maximize support by not considering assets, allowing for dependent deductions, and protecting a limited amount of side job income. Our LRAP is now one of the very best in the country. You can read more about these improvements and their impact on two of our graduates here.
These upgrades underscore Berkeley Law’s broad commitment to enable students to serve low-income and marginalized communities. Our Public Interest Scholars program provides three years of full California resident tuition and fees for incoming students dedicated to public interest work. We welcomed five scholars when the program launched in 2021, and increased that support to fund 10 1Ls this year. Our Career Development Office also continues to broaden its advising services in this arena, and now has three dedicated public interest and public sector career counselors and a full-time public interest program administrator.
New Criminal Justice Chair: Berkeley Law has received a $5.5 million gift that will create an additional faculty position at the school: The Barry Tarlow Chair in Criminal Justice. Providing endowed support for a Chancellor’s Chair, which will be awarded to a tenured professor, the gift will expand the school’s influential teaching and research in the field. This will allow us to strengthen our already outstanding criminal justice faculty, who are widely regarded as among the very best in the country. The gift came from the Barry Tarlow Charitable Trust. Barry, who passed away in 2021, was an extraordinary criminal defense attorney and I am thrilled that we will honor his legacy by having a permanent chair named in his memory. You can read more about the Chair here.
Surging Clinics: Clinical education has been a core part of our students’ experience over the last three decades, and more growth is on the way. Our thriving program — which currently houses six in-house and eight community-based clinics — plans to add three more in-house clinics and four clinical faculty members over the next four years. At a time of rising nationalism, deepening inequities, and diminishing rights, the work our clinics do on behalf of threatened individuals and communities is paramount. Their efforts to achieve transformative justice through direct services, litigation, counseling, policy advocacy, and research also offer crucial hands-on training opportunities to more than 300 students each year.
Our clinics were instrumental in helping to write several California bills which took effect January 1, from making free phone calls in state prisons and local jails to removing unpaid restitution as a barrier to criminal record relief. Other significant work includes bringing a U.S. law enforcement killing to the international stage for the first time, and filing a lawsuit against an Oakland foundry and Bay Area agency to protect neighbors from toxic air pollution. We also recently welcomed 14 new clinical hires who will help extend the program’s representation of aggrieved communities and expand real-world experiences in direct services, litigation, counseling, policy advocacy, and research. You can read more about our new additions here.
U.S. News Rankings: After careful consideration, Berkeley Law has decided not to continue to participate in the annual U.S. News & World Report ranking of law schools. To be clear, this means we will not provide U.S. News with the voluminous information it requires, though we will continue to be ranked along with all other law schools.
Although rankings are inevitable, and inevitably have some arbitrary features, aspects of these rankings are profoundly inconsistent with our values and public mission. In short, they penalize schools that help students launch careers in public service law, the ranking formula disregards and discounts graduates who are pursuing advanced degrees, and the methodology creates incentives to de-prioritize things we think are critical to our profession and role in society. Rankings have the meaning that we give them as a community, and they will exist with or without our participation. Nothing about Berkeley Law is fundamentally changed by this decision. We will be the law school we’ve always been, and we will always strive to improve — in accordance with our values. At this point, 9 of the top 10 law schools in last year’s rankings, and 12 of the top 14 and many others, have made the same choice as Berkeley Law. You can read more about our decision here.
For over a decade, I have been complaining to U.S. News about these features of their rankings, but to no avail. In early January, U.S. News announced that it will make some of the changes we have requested. We will be closely monitoring the situation and how U.S. News further responds.
Free speech controversy at Berkeley Law: As you may have read, we faced a difficult issue concerning freedom of speech in the Fall semester. A law student group, Law Students for Justice in Palestine, asked other student groups to adopt a bylaw pledging to “not invite speakers that have expressed and continued to hold views or host/sponsor/promote events in support of Zionism, the apartheid state of Israel, and the occupation of Palestine.” A handful of student groups adopted this bylaw.
I find the bylaw deeply offensive and profoundly inconsistent with our values. The Law School must be a place where all views can be expressed, and excluding a particular viewpoint is inimical to our values. Indeed, taken literally, this would mean that I could not be invited to speak because I support the existence of Israel, though I condemn many of its policies.
But at the same time, I believe that the law is clear that the Law School and the university cannot prohibit student groups from having the bylaw. Student groups can decide what speakers to include based on their views. Obviously, a college Republicans group could decide only to invite conservative speakers. To require student groups to invite speakers of views they loathe would violate the First Amendment as a form of compelled speech.
At the same time, no student group can exclude any speaker on the basis of race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation. That would violate Law School and campus policy, as well as state and federal law. Such discrimination would be punished. The Law School has an all-comers policy where all students may be part of all student groups and attend all student organized events. Berkeley Law must be a place where all ideas and views can be expressed. We are not going to solve the problems in the Middle East within our law school, but we must be a place where all students feel included and that they belong and that we aspire to always treat each other with civility and kindness.
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It is with great sadness that I must inform you that Professor Emerita Babette Barton ’54 passed away on October 16 at age 92. She taught multiple tax courses, consumer protection law, and estates and trusts here from 1961 to 2004. The first in her class all three years at Berkeley Law, she clerked for California Supreme Court Chief Justice Phil Gibson, became the third woman on our faculty, co-founded the California State Bar Tax Section, co-authored many books, and was active in several local organizations, including the Berkeley Family Services Agency. You can read more about Babette’s remarkable career here. She was an enormously important part of our community, and we extend heartfelt condolences to her family.
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I am always delighted to hear from our alumni. Please feel free to contact me with your thoughts about the Law School or if I can be of any assistance, at echemerinsky@law.berkeley.edu or (510) 642-6483.
Wishing you a joyous and healthy new year.
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