Constitutional Law has changed dramatically in the past few years, and therefore so has the course for law students. In this episode, Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky — a leading scholar in the field who has been teaching the class for decades and is the author of a popular casebook — talks about the U.S. Supreme Court’s most recent term. It’s the latest in a series of monumental years for the Court, and Chemerinsky analyzes these sweeping changes with Michael Dorf, the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, and CNN Chief Supreme Court Analyst Joan Biskupic.

Professor Dorf has authored or co-authored well over one hundred scholarly articles and essays for law reviews, books, and peer-reviewed science and social science journals. He is a co-editor of a Constitutional Law casebook, writes a bi-weekly column for Justia’s web magazine, Verdict, and posts several times per week on his own blog, Dorf on Law.

Biskupic has covered the Supreme Court for more than 25 years and has written several books on the judiciary, including Nine Black Robes: Inside the Supreme Court’s Drive to the Right and its Historic Consequences and The Chief, a biography of Chief Justice John Roberts.

More Just from Berkeley Law is a podcast about how law schools can and must play a role in solving society’s most difficult problems.

The rule of law — and the role of the law — has never been more important. In these difficult times, law schools can, and must, play an active role in finding solutions. But how? Each episode of More Just starts with a problem, then explores potential solutions, featuring Dean Erwin Chemerinsky as well as other deans, professors, students, and advocates, about how they’re making law schools matter.

Have a question about teaching or studying law, or a topic you’d like Dean Chemerinsky to explore? Email us at morejust@berkeley.edu and tell us what’s on your mind.

Production by Yellow Armadillo Studios.

Transcript available on this podcast episode page of the Berkeley Law website.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Debates over free speech have simmered, and occasionally boiled over, on university campuses for decades. But in recent months, the clash over words and phrases has reached a flashpoint, reaching beyond classrooms and quads as far as the halls of Congress. College and university presidents have faced fierce criticism — chronicled in extensive media coverage — over how they’ve handled protests over the Israel-Gaza conflict and other activities at their schools, including who can or should speak at events and how to foster a sense of community safety.

Looking ahead, what can colleges and universities do to protect the fundamental principles of free speech and academic freedom while simultaneously creating an atmosphere where everyone can learn? When can speech be considered threatening, and who decides where the line is? How can journalists cover a topic so rife with nuance and rhetorical complexity? And as this debate continues, how much influence should alumni, donors, and political leaders have on campuses, private and public?

In this episode, Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky leads a panel discussion about these important questions with three experts who approach the topic from different angles:

• Geeta Anand, dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who wrote for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Rutland Herald, and Cape Cod News during her 27-year career as a journalist. She began teaching at Berkeley in 2018 and became the journalism school’s dean in 2020.
• University of California, Irvine, Chancellor Howard Gilman, an award-winning scholar and teacher with an expertise in the American Constitution and the Supreme Court, with appointments in the School of Law and the departments of Political Science, History, and Criminology, Law, and Society. He also provides administrative oversight to and serves as co-chair of the advisory board of the University of California’s National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement.
• Emerson Sykes, a staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. Sykes focuses on First Amendment free speech protections. From 2019-2020, he was also host of “At Liberty,” the ACLU’s weekly podcast. Before joining the ACLU in 2018, he was a legal advisor for Africa at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, and assistant general counsel to the New York City Council, where he contributed to the council’s friend-of-the-court brief against the NYPD’s “stop and frisk” program.

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“More Just” from Berkeley Law is a podcast about how law schools can and must play a role in solving society’s most difficult problems. Have a question about teaching or studying law, or a topic you’d like Dean Chemerinsky to explore? Email us at morejust@berkeley.edu and tell us what’s on your mind.

Production by Yellow Armadillo Studios.

For a transcript, please visit the episode page on the Berkeley Law podcast hub.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Herma Hill Kay Memorial Lecture with Justice Sonia Sotomayor in Conversation with Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. Recorded Monday, January 29, 2024, at UC Berkeley.

Have a question about the law, or a topic you’d like us to cover? Send an email to morejust@berkeley.edu to tell us your thoughts.

For a transcript, please visit the episode page on the Berkeley Law podcast hub.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.