News

On April 1, Professor Ashutosh Bhagwat delivered the endowed Quinlan Lecture at the Oklahoma City University School of Law. The title of Bhagwat’s talk was “The New Gatekeepers?: Social Media and the ‘Search for Truth.’” Watch a video of the lecture.

Professor Gabriel “Jack” Chin spoke to the History channel website about the wrongful conviction of, and groundbreaking community efforts to free, Chol Soo Lee, a Korean immigrant and death row inmate released from San Quentin in 1983.

The groundswell of support behind Lee’s release represents an “early example of multi-ethnic APA [Asian Pacific American] political action,” Chin said.

The History article also quotes Richard Kim of UC Davis’ Asian American Studies department.

Professor Carlton F.W. Larson spoke to the Rotary Club of San Rafael on May 16 about his book On Treason: A Citizen’s Guide to the Law. The event was held at the Marin Yacht Club.

Professor Carlton W. Larson spoke to writer Wajahat Ali ’07 for a May 4 Daily Beast piece exploring the long-term implications of a Roe v. Wade reversal. Read the story.

New York Times Opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie’s May 10 column, headlined “The Movement That Put Alito on the Court Isn’t Finished,” referenced Professor Aaron Tang’s 2021 paper “The Originalist Case for an Abortion Middle Ground.” Bouie wrote the column in response to the leake

Professor William S. Dodge recently gave two lectures in France on human rights litigation in U.S. courts. On April 14, he spoke to students at the Institute of International Humanitarian Studies of the Faculty of Law and Political Science at Aix-Marseille University. On April 19, he lectured at Salle 102, a joint workshop of the Universities Paris 1 and Paris 2 focusing on private international law. A video of the second talk is available here.

Professors Lisa Ikemoto and Courtney Joslin offered their expertise on the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade during a May 12 “UC Davis Live” livestream event. 

UC Davis School of Law is honored to host the 2022 Unity Bar Summit, “Access to Justice,” on Saturday, May 21 at King Hall.

Speakers at the daylong event promoting diversity and excellence in the judiciary include Gov. Gavin Newsom (by video); the Chief Justice of California, Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye ’84; California Supreme Court Associate Justice Martin J. Jenkins, and the governor’s Judicial Appointments Secretary, Luis A. Céspedes.

Incoming UC Davis Law faculty member Professor Mary Ziegler, one of the world’s leading historians of the U.S. abortion debate,  has weighed in for many national and international media outlets since a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion reversing Roe v. Wade came to light in early May.

UC Davis School of Law will welcome two acclaimed new faculty members to the law school to start the 2022-23 academic year. 

Professor Mary Ziegler will join the faculty as an expert on the law, history, and politics of reproduction, health care, and conservatism in the United States from 1945 to the present. She is one of the world’s leading historians of the U.S. abortion debate.

Glaring historical mistakes pervade the supposedly originalist analysis in the Supreme Court’s leaked draft opinion overruling Roe v. Wade, Professor Aaron Tang writes in a May 5 Los Angeles Times opinion piece headlined “The Supreme Court flunks abortion history.”

Professor Irene Oritseweyinmi Joe discusses her forthcoming article, “Learning from Mistakes,” where she explores the role of the public defender in wrongful convictions in death row cases. To start with, she points out that unlike medical, aviation and military systems, there is no national or formal process in place to review wrongful convictions. Professor Joe looks at the role prosecutors, judges and other system actors can play in helping public defenders learn from their mistakes.

On April 20, UC Davis Law hosted the panel discussion “Looking in the Mirror: Exploring the Racial History of the Western Academy.” The event was sponsored by the Aoki Center for Critical Race and Nation Studies and UC Davis' Department of History and Humanities Institute.

The discussion featured distinguished scholars who have entered the terrain of investigating racism in western U.S. universities, exploring topics including antisemitism at Stanford and the naming of buildings at public universities after oppressors of Tribal Nations and Black and Asian people.

Professor Menesh Patel recently presented his paper, “Fraud on the Cryptomarket,” at the University of California, Irvine and virtually at the University of Pennsylvania.

On April 15, UC Davis Law’s Aoki Center for Critical Race and Nation Studies joined UCLA’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy and the Southern Poverty Law Center in filing an amicus brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in United States v. Carrillo-Lopez.

Professor of Environmental Practice Richard Frank made a presentation on April 14 to the Schwartz/Levi Inn of Court in Davis.

His presentation focused on California’s antiquated system of water rights law, and the efforts that he and other water experts are recommending to the Legislature and Gov. Newsom’s administration to reform that system in light of climate change and other 21st century conditions.

Professor of Environmental Practice Richard Frank was quoted in the April 20 Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journals, in a story on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s ruling that a climate change damage lawsuit brought by several California local governments against the fossil fuel industry should be pursued in state -- rather than federal -- court.

The Honorable Stacy Boulware Eurie, a Sacramento Superior Court judge and a King Hall alumna from the class of 1995, will deliver the keynote address at UC Davis Law’s 2022 commencement on Saturday, May 14. 

Congratulations to Wayne Bartholomew ’71 and his wife, Jacque Bartholomew, who are among the recipients of this year's UC Davis Medals! Both longtime supporters of UC Davis Law and other campus units and initiatives, the pair met at UC Davis and both received their undergraduate degrees in 1964.

The campus' highest honor for individuals, the UC Davis Medal recognizes “extraordinary contributions that embody the campus’ Vision of Excellence.”

Another married pair of UC Davis alums, Pam Rohrich and Karl Gerdes, also will receive UC Davis Medals this year.

On April 8, Professor Alan Brownstein spoke on a panel about religious liberty and education during the Loyola University of Chicago Law Journal symposium “Religious Liberty at a Historic Crossroads.”

In an April 11 op-ed for The Hill headlined “The Problem with ‘Gotcha’ Textualism,” Professor Emeritus Alan Brownstein suggests some key ideas to keep in mind in discussing how to think about the lack of plain language in the Constitution’s text on important issues. Read the op-ed.

On April 14, Dean Kevin R. Johnson took part in the “Exploring Immigration Reform” public forum presented by San Francisco’s World Affairs global affairs organization.  

Johnson, the nation’s most-cited immigration law scholar, offered expert insights during a program moderated by Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy.

Professor Peter Lee recently presented a forthcoming article at a workshop at Boston University School of Law. The paper, “Patent Law’s Asymmetry,” explores patent law’s ability to internalize positive externalities but not negative externalities from technological innovation. The article will be published later this year in the Cardozo Law Review.

TechCrunch quoted Professor Elizabeth Joh’s 2019 New York University Law Review Online piece, “Automated Seizures: Police Stops of Self-Driving Cars,” in an April 11 story exploring interactions between autonomous vehicles and police.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit recently cited Professor Gabriel “Jack” Chin’s 2002 Cornell Law Review article  Effective Assistance of Counsel and the Consequences of Guilty Pleas.