Elisabeth Semel '75 Wins UC Berkeley Teaching Award

Elisabeth Semel '75 is the latest recipient of UC Berkeley School of Law's annual Rutter Award for Teaching Distinction. Semel, a clinical professor at Berkeley, is the founding director of the school's Death Penalty Clinic (DPC), which launched in 2001.

A former deputy public defender, Semel entered private practice in 1980. Three years later, she formed Semel & Feldman, where she defended criminal cases including capital murder trials.  In 1997, she became director of the American Bar Association Death Penalty Representation Project in Washington, D.C. She taught a capital punishment seminar at Georgetown for three years, then joined Berkeley Law's faculty in 2001 and founded the clinic.