16 episodes

How can law schools can play a role in solving society's most difficult problems? Join Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky as he explores the answers.
Transcripts for all episodes of More Just are available on the Berkeley Law Podcast Hub.

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More Just Erwin Chemerinsky, Berkeley Law

    • Society & Culture
    • 5.0 • 22 Ratings

How can law schools can play a role in solving society's most difficult problems? Join Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky as he explores the answers.
Transcripts for all episodes of More Just are available on the Berkeley Law Podcast Hub.

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

    Free Speech & Community on Campus

    Free Speech & Community on Campus

    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.
    About:
    “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.

    • 58 min
    Justice Sonia Sotomayor

    Justice Sonia Sotomayor

    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.

    • 58 min
    Teaching Leadership in Law Schools

    Teaching Leadership in Law Schools

    Leadership is a key component of other professional schools, particularly business and policy programs. But it’s less emphasized in law schools. Should it be taught in law schools, and what are the most important elements for them to learn? Another critical question is whether leadership training will make a real difference for lawyers as they move into the profession.
    In this episode, Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky is joined by three expert leaders to talk about what’s happening and what law schools can do to make an impact in this area: 

    Christopher Edley, who spent 23 years at Harvard Law School before leading Berkeley Law as dean from 2004 to 2013. He recently finished a term as interim dean of the UC Berkeley School of Education and has a public policy portfolio, including government service, stretching over four decades. Janet Napolitano, who served as president of the University of California from 2013 to 2020, as the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama, and as governor and attorney general of Arizona. She’s now a professor of public policy at Berkeley and director of the new Center for Security in Politics.Donald Polden, dean emeritus and a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, where he was dean from 2003 to 2013 and helped develop its curriculum for leadership education.
    Want to know more about the leadership courses offered by Berkeley Law’s Executive Education Program, including Leadership in the Legal Profession, a groundbreaking 10-week leadership course? Click here to see a course description and find out when applications for the spring 2024 cohort will be accepted. 
    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.


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    • 41 min
    Analyzing Another Consequential Supreme Court Term

    Analyzing Another Consequential Supreme Court Term

    The U.S. Supreme Court had another momentous term. From affirmative action in college admissions to critical administrative law and First Amendment cases, the court again handed down a string of decisions that will resonate for generations. 
    In this episode, veteran court analyst Joan Biskupic returns to break down the term with Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. Biskupic has covered the court for decades and is now CNN Senior Supreme Court Analyst. Her most recent book, Nine Black Robes: Inside the Supreme Court's Drive to the Right and Its Historic Consequences, was published in April.
    About:
    “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.
    For a transcript, please visit the episode page on the Berkeley Law podcast hub.


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

    • 44 min
    The Future of Law School Rankings

    The Future of Law School Rankings

    Since 1983, U.S. News and World Report has published rankings of the nation’s law schools. For almost as long, there have been complaints about the way the rankings are done and what value they offer to prospective students. 
    Last fall, Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken announced that Yale — which consistently earned the top spot in the rankings — would no longer participate in the process because it is “undermining the core commitments of the legal profession.” Berkeley Law quickly followed, as did more than 60 law schools. 
    If U.S. News’ rankings are weakened, what, if anything, should replace them? And what are the right metrics for measuring a law school’s quality, for both prospective students and potential future employers? 
    In this episode, Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky talks to a blockbuster panel to discuss about how we got here, what the revolt means, and what the future may hold: Dean Gerken, now in her second term leading Yale Law School; Colorado College President L. Song Richardson, who pulled her school out of the college rankings; and Colin Diver, a former dean at Penn Law and president of Reed College who’s been a longtime critic of the U.S. News rankings and the author of the 2022 book Breaking Ranks: How the Rankings Industry Rules Higher Education, and What to Do about It. 
    About: 
    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.
    For a transcript, please visit the episode page on the Berkeley Law podcast hub.

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

    • 44 min
    Tracking the Diversity of Federal Judicial Clerks

    Tracking the Diversity of Federal Judicial Clerks

    For recent law school graduates, clerking for a federal judge can be a key career stepping stone, and the hiring process is both highly opaque and famously nerve-wracking. Even as law school cohorts have become more diverse, the clerkship ranks have remained heavily skewed toward white men, particularly from a handful of top-ranked law schools. 
    Leaders from Berkeley Law’s Berkeley Judicial Institute wanted to know why. So they asked 50 federal judges how and why they hire particular clerks in the first qualitative study of the issue. These conversations yielded a number of insights for law students, law schools, and other judges, from how much an aspiring clerk’s cover letter matters to the fact that “diversity” doesn’t mean the same thing to every judge. The pathbreaking study will be published in the Harvard Law Review later this year. 
    In this episode, Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky talks to the study’s three authors: Former U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of California Jeremy Fogel, who’s now the executive director of BJI; California Supreme Court Associate Justice Goodwin Liu; and Mary Hoopes, an associate professor of law at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law and co-director of the William Matthew Byrne Jr. Judicial Clerkship Institute. 
    About: 
    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.
    For a transcript, please visit the episode page on the Berkeley Law podcast hub.


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

    • 44 min

Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5
22 Ratings

22 Ratings

KJtraveling99 ,

Wisdom from the best of the best

Check out this podcast if you’d like wisdom from the best of the best.

Hdhdkjx ,

Very good but needs to be more clear eyed

Overall very good but too much credulity offered to an institution and a conservative legal movement that clearly is acting in pure bad faith. Debating the merits of a fig leaf basis for legal analysis doesn’t serve the listener. “Originalism” is whatever best serves the partisan interests of the majority and it’s important to clearly state that.

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