Direct Democracy at King Hall

By Sue Jones

At King Hall’s Direct Democracy in California class, the hour was late but the discussion was spirited. Students jumped in with points about special interests, holding representatives accountable, keeping voters engaged, fearmongering ads. Their professor volleyed back questions that challenged and encouraged them.

“To really understand California law and policy, I think you have to understand the initiatives,” said King Hall adjunct Professor Daniel Calabretta.

Calabretta, a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of California, designed and teaches the class. Direct democracy shapes California law to an unusual degree. While the majority of U.S. states have some kind of initiative process, California’s ballot is consistently one of the longest in the nation.

When Calabretta was a Deputy Attorney General in the California Department of Justice, he drafted the titles and summaries for initiative measures and defended initiatives in state and federal courts. Later, as Governor Jerry Brown’s deputy legal affairs secretary, he saw up close and personal how the Legislature and the Governor’s Office had to work within the initiatives. Those experiences made him appreciate the impact California’s initiative process has on state law.

At King Hall, Calabretta saw an opportunity to teach students a type of writing that is unusual for law school in two ways. First, initiative summaries and pro and con arguments are directed at a primarily non-legal audience. Instead of writing for a judge or for legal scholars, students learn to write for the average voter. Second, the tight word limits force students to write with extreme precision.

“Being very careful and very precise about exactly what word to use is really the name of the game,” he said.

When he was deputy attorney general, drafting one 100-word initiative summary often took him two or three weeks.

Senior Associate Dean Afra Afsharipour helps faculty develop new classes and worked with Calabretta to create a class that would enhance students’ skills.

“Professor Calabretta has designed a novel and innovative course that provides students the opportunity to explore the powers of initiative, referendum, and recall in California through a study of some of the state’s most consequential initiatives and referendums,” said Afsharipour. “Students engage with in-depth skills-based learning as they draft, perfect, and debate their own proposed initiative to change a current aspect of California law. This is a class that stimulates student learning in so many ways — through excellent readings, vibrant and respectful discussion, and culminating in a creative assignment. We are privileged to have Professor Calabretta teach this course at King Hall.”

After students write their own initiative measures and debate them, their classmates write arguments for and against those initiatives to create a mock voter guide. At the final class of the semester, they vote on each other’s initiatives. This fall, a particularly popular initiative would require for-profit companies and government entities to pay their interns. A less popular initiative would lower the voting age to 14.

The 16 students also wrote white papers proposing improvements to the initiative, referendum, and recall processes. In the last class, they debated those proposals. Would moving the signature process online give popular initiatives without wealthy backers a better chance of making it on the ballot? Or would that create security issues and an overly crowded ballot? Would “quadratic voting” address the “tyranny of the majority” problem? Would keeping laws challenged by referendums in effect until the election stop corporate interests from using referendums as delaying tactics?

“The level of engagement is really impressive and a lot of fun,” said Calabretta.

In the last class, the students supported their arguments with everything from recent referendums by tobacco lobbyists to a quote from early 20th-century Governor Hiram Johnson.

Several proposals involved recalls. Calabretta first taught the class in 2021, during Governor Gavin Newsom’s recall election. When he designed the class, there hadn’t been a recall since Gray Davis. “Now it has become much more real,” he said wryly.

Kamyab Mashian ’25 said Direct Democracy in California was his favorite class this semester, partly because coming up with his proposition was a fun challenge and he enjoyed seeing how other students reacted to it. His initiative would implement ranked-choice voting in California.

“I want to go into California government,” he added, “so I think this has been a good opportunity to wrap my head around a lot of important California issues.”

Mashian particularly enjoyed the class visit to the Robert T. Matsui United States Courthouse in Sacramento, where students practiced oral arguments. State law allows challenges either to a measure’s title and summary or to an argument in favor or in opposition. Students challenged and defended each other’s mock summaries and arguments in a federal courtroom before their enrobed professor.

“I love the energy the students bring to the class. The discussion is always lively,” said Calabretta. “I always leave feeling energized. And I look forward to it every week.”