News

UC Davis Law ranks No. 1 among the nation’s law schools in “greatest resources for women,” according to The Princeton Review’s just-released “Best Law Schools, 2023” rankings. Davis also placed high for “best quality of life” (No. 10).

UC Davis School of Law 2023 Rising Star Alumna Award winner Rachel Ray ’11, a Managing Attorney for the UC Immigrant Legal Services Center, has been with the organization since just after its founding in 2015. The Center provides immigration legal representation to undocumented students and immediate family members of students from across the University of California.

In a Jan. 14 San Francisco Chronicle opinion piece, Professor Christopher Elmendorf wrote about the California Environmental Quality Act’s role in stifling development and how Gov. Newsom and the courts must take charge of fixing CEQA.

In the leadup to the 50th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling on Jan. 22 and the publication of her new book Roe: The History of a National Obsession (Yale University Press) on Jan. 24, Professor Mary Ziegler spoke to or wrote opinion pieces for several prominent media outlets.

On Jan. 18, Professor Brian Soucek delivered the keynote speech “Academic Freedom Dangers and Distractions” as part of pre-meeting symposium at the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ annual meeting in San Francisco.

Professors Katherine Florey, Lisa Ikemoto and Aaron Tang spoke during the Jan. 23 “Abortion & Law” event at UC Davis’ Alumni Center.

Professor Lisa Pruitt spoke to writer Elaine S. Povich of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Stateline news service for a Jan. 24 story on the rural lawyer shortage in the United States.

Professor Shayak Sarkar presented his draft article “Capital Migration” at UC College of the Law, San Francisco on Jan. 24 as part of the law school’s Center on Tax Law’s Tax Policy Colloquium.

Pepperdine Caruso School of Law Dean Paul Caron highlighted the article on his Taxprof Blog.

Professor Aaron Tang wrote a Jan. 20 opinion piece for the New York Times headlined “Did the Supreme Court’s Leak Investigation Let the Justices Off the Hook?” The piece commented on a newly released Supreme Court report based on an internal investigation of the leaked draft opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case.

On Jan. 20, Professor Courtney Joslin and Yale Law School Professor and co-author Douglas NeJaime presented “Domestic Violence and Functional Parent Doctrines” at the University of Virginia School of Law. UVA Law Professor Gregg Strauss commented on the piece.

Professor Joslin is a scholar in the field of family and relationship recognition, with a particular focus on same-sex and non-marital couples.

Professor Brian Soucek's article “The Constitutional Irrelevance of Art” was quoted and cited to the U.S. Supreme Court last week in the amicus brief filed by the Motion Picture Association in an important upcoming trademark case, Jack Daniel’s Properties v.

The American Law Institute’s Council has approved the initiation of a project to complete the remainder of Restatement of the Law Fourth, The Foreign Relations Law of the United States, for which UC Davis School of Law Professor William S. Dodge will serve as a Reporter.

The Center for Innovation, Law, and Society (CILS) at UC Davis School of Law will launch on Monday, Jan. 30 with a faculty panel exploring pressing issues at the intersection of law, technology, and innovation. After welcoming remarks by Dean Kevin Johnson, Professors Elizabeth Joh, Stacy-Ann Elvy, Lisa Ikemoto, Peter Lee, and Al Lin will address hot topics in their fields, such as facial recognition technology, the Internet of Things, developments in the fertility industry, patents on COVID-19 vaccines, and strategies to mitigate global climate change.

On Jan. 19, students, faculty, staff and alumni gathered in the King Hall courtyard for a special celebration of the California Supreme Court’s newest Associate Justice, Kelli Evans ’94.

UC Davis School of Law students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends marked Monday’s Martin Luther King Jr. holiday with the law school's fourth MLK Day of Service and Celebration. The day’s activities furthered the principle of community service so vital to the mission of King, the civil rights giant whose name graces the law school's building.

At the Wednesday, Jan. 11 meeting of the Schwartz/Levi Inn of Court, Dean Kevin R. Johnson was presented with the Judge Emily Vasquez Community Service Award. 

Professor Amelia Miazad wrote a Jan.

The European Corporate Governance Institute has selected Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Afra Afsharipour as a research member.

Professors Ashutosh Bhagwat and Brian Soucek, both constitutional law scholars, spoke to UC Davis Magazine for a Jan. 9 story on how the right to free speech applies to social media companies, public institutions like UC Davis and its faculty, and elsewhere.

UC Davis Law faculty figured prominently at last week’s annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) in San Diego. Participants included Senior Associate Dean Afra Afsharipour and Professors Karrigan Börk, Andrea Chandrasekher, Eric Fish, Courtney Joslin, Donna Shestowsky and Brian Soucek.

Brenda Quintanilla ’24 has received the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s 2022 AILA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Law Student Scholarship.

According to AILA’s website, the scholarship is intended to provide academic, professional, and financial support to law students from historically underrepresented groups who are interested in the practice of immigration law and advocating on behalf of immigrant communities.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has appointed Sacramento Superior Court Judge and UC Davis Law adjunct professor Shama Mesiwala ’98 to the Third District Court of Appeal, the governor’s office announced on Dec. 23.

Mesiwala had served as a Superior Court judge since 2017 and was a court commissioner before that. Read the governor’s press release.

More than 90% of UC Davis Law’s Class of 2022 has secured full-time legal employment, the highest job rate for a King Hall graduating class just out of law school in at least 15 years.

Career Services’ emphasis on employer recruitment and individual relationships with students has yielded positive outcomes, Assistant Dean of Career Services Craig Compton said.

“Our numbers continue to rise,” Compton said, in terms of employers participating in the law school’s many Career Services programs. “Our entire office is dedicated to recruiting employers.”

Bloomberg Law highlighted findings by Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Afra Afsharipour and Brigham Young University Law School Professor Matthew Jennejohn from their forthcoming University of Chicago Law Review article “Gender and the Social Structure of Exclusion in U.S. Corporate Law.”