Berkeley Law

Infobox Law School


name = University of California, Berkeley School of Law
established = 1894
type = Public
endowment =
parent endowment = $2.894 billion cite web |url=http://www.ucop.edu/treasurer/foundation/foundation.pdf |title=UC Annual Endowment Report, Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2007 |accessdate=2008-03-28 |publisher=Office of the Treasurer of the Regents of the University of California|date=2008|format=PDF]
head = Christopher Edley, Jr.
city = Berkeley
state = California
country = USA
students = 879 [http://officialguide.lsac.org/SearchResults/SchoolPage_PDFs/ABA_LawSchoolData/ABA4833.pdf Berkeley School of Law Official ABA Data] ]
faculty = 166
ranking = 6 [ [http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/grad/law Law - Best Graduate Schools - Education - US News and World Report] ]
bar pass rate = 82% [ [http://calbar.ca.gov/calbar/pdfs/admissions/Statistics/JULY2007STATS.pdf General Statistics Report July 2007 California Bar Examination] ]
annual tuition = $26,896
homepage = [http://www.law.berkeley.edu www.law.berkeley.edu]
motto = "Fiat lux" (Latin)
aba profile = [http://officialguide.lsac.org/SearchResults/SchoolPage_PDFs/LSAC_LawSchoolDescription/LSAC4833.pdf Berkeley School of Law]

The University of California, Berkeley School of Law, commonly referred to as Berkeley Law and Boalt Hall, is one of 14 schools and colleges at the University of California, Berkeley. Boalt Hall is consistently ranked both as one of the top 10 law schools and the top public law school in the United States, [Cynthia L. Cooper, "The Insider's Guide to the Top Fifteen Law Schools" (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 178-179. ] making it one of the most elite law schools in the country. Over the past several years, Boalt Hall has had an acceptance rate of around 10%, the lowest of any law school in the United States except Yale Law School and Stanford Law School. Admitted applicants generally have an undergraduate GPA of between 3.7 and 3.9 and a Law School Admission Test (LSAT) score of between 163 and 170 (90th and 98th percentile of all test-takers). The 2009 "U.S. News & World Report" ranked Boalt Hall sixth overall among all law schools in the country. [ [http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/grad/law/search Law School Rankings (Brief)] , U.S. News & World Report.] Boalt Hall is renowned for having what is regarded as the best intellectual property program in the world, a discipline in which it has held the top spot in the "U.S. News and World Report" rankings for 11 years running. [ [http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/grad/law/intellectual_prop Law Specialty Rankings: Intellectual Property Law] , "U.S. News & World Report"] [ [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/news/2008/ip040908.html U.S. News & World Report Again Ranks Boalt IP Program No. 1] ]

In April 2008, the law school's name was officially changed to "UC Berkeley School of Law", with "Berkeley Law" as its shortened form, in order to more closely tie the law school's name with the campus upon which it resides. The administration hopes that this move will further increase the law school's prestige, since people will now associate it with the world-renowned Berkeley campus. [Tanya Schevitz, [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/11/BAFASNOKF.DTL UC Berkeley dropping Boalt Hall from law school's official name] , "San Francisco Chronicle", October 11, 2007.] [ [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/identity/edley-letter.html Berkeley Law/ Boalt Hall / Naming Convention] , Christopher Edley, Jr., Dean of Berkeley Law]

History

The Department of Jurisprudence was founded at Berkeley in 1894. In 1912, the department was elevated to the School of Jurisprudence, which was then renamed the School of Law in 1950.

The School was originally located in the center of the main UC Berkeley campus in the Boalt Memorial Hall of Law, built in 1911 with funds largely from Elizabeth Josselyn Boalt donated in memory of her late husband, John Henry Boalt. In 1951, the School moved to its current location in the new Boalt Hall, at the southeast corner of the campus, and the old Boalt Hall was renamed Durant Hall. The current structure is notorious for its bland architecture:

Academics

Boalt Hall has approximately 850 J.D. students, 100 students in the LL.M. and J.S.D. programs, and 45 students in the Ph.D. program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy. The School also features specialized curricular programs in Business, Law and Economics, Comparative Legal Studies, Environmental Law, International Legal Studies, Law and Technology, and Social Justice.

The JD program's admissions process is highly selective. Boalt Hall is known to value high undergraduate GPAs, perhaps even more than high LSAT scores (whereas the opposite is considered the norm at other top law schools). According to U.S. News and World Report, Boalt has the third-lowest acceptance rate among American law schools; approximately 10% of applicants are admitted.

The teaching style of Boalt's conservative faculty relies heavily on the Socratic method, a standard curriculum, and a "stone-heavy work load." [Cooper, 178-183.]

Boalt's grading system for the JD program is unusual among law schools. Students are graded on a High Honors (HH), Honors (H), and Pass (P) scale. [Cooper, 180.] Approximately 60% of the students in each class receive a grade of Pass, 30% receive a grade of Honors, and the highest 10% receive a grade of High Honors; lower grades of Substandard Pass (or Pass Conditional, abbreviated PC) and No Credit (NC) may be awarded at the discretion of professors. The top student in each class or section receives the Jurisprudence Award, while the second-place student receives the Prosser Prize.

For a typical class in the JD program, the average age of admitted students is 24 years old, over a range of ages from 20 to 48 years old. Approximately 88% of JD students receive financial aid. As state institutions, Boalt and UCLA had the lowest tuition of the top 15 law schools in the country in 2005. The tuition for the 2008-09 school year is $30,944 for California residents ($43,189 for nonresidents), though the sum has been rising each year.

Rankings

US News ranks Boalt Hall 6th among top law schools in the US.cite web | title=America's Best Graduate Schools 2008 | url= http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/law/brief/lawrank_brief.php | publisher= US News | accessdate= 2007-10-23] [cite web | title=America's Best Graduate Schools 2008, Law School Diversity Index | url= http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/law/brief/lawdiv_brief.php | publisher= US News | accessdate= 2007-10-20] It has the second smallest student body and the smallest student/faculty ratio of all the UC schools. [cite web | title=America's Best Graduate Schools 2008, What are the largest and smallest law schools? | url= http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/usnews/edu/grad/webextras/brief/sb_law_size_brief.php | publisher= US News | accessdate= 2007-10-20] While it is the most expensive law school in the UC system, it is only slightly more expensive than UCLA. [cite web | title=America's Best Graduate Schools 2008, Who's the priciest? Who's the cheapest? | url= http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/usnews/edu/grad/webextras/brief/sb_law_cost_public_brief.php | publisher= US News | accessdate= 2007-10-20] However, it grants a median amount in financial aid for the system, and students tend to graduate with the least amount of debt on average than most of the other UC schools, with the exception of Davis. [cite web | title=America's Best Graduate Schools 2008, Which public schools award the most and the least financial aid? | url= http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/usnews/edu/grad/webextras/brief/sb_law_finaid_public_brief.php | publisher= US News | accessdate= 2007-10-20] [cite web | title=America's Best Graduate Schools 2008, Whose graduates have the most debt? The least? | url= http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/usnews/edu/grad/webextras/brief/sb_law_debt_brief.php | publisher= US News | accessdate= 2007-10-20]

According to Brian Letier's Law School rankings, Boalt ranks 7th in the nation in terms of scholarly impact as measured by academic citations of tenure-stream faculty. [cite web | title= Top 35 Law Faculties Based on Scholarly Impact, 2007 | url= http://www.leiterrankings.com/faculty/2007faculty_impact.shtml |publisher= Brian Leiter's Law School Rankings | accessdate=2007-10-21] In terms of student numerical quality, Boalt ranks 14th in the nation. [cite web | title= Brian Leiter's Law Schools Ranked by Student (Numerical) Quality, 2007 | url= http://www.leiterrankings.com/students/2007student_quality.shtml |publisher= Brian Leiter's Law School Rankings | accessdate=2007-10-21]

Boalt Hall in popular culture

*Sandy Cohen, a character on the popular television series "The O.C.", is a lawyer and a Boalt Hall alumnus. [http://oc.boalt.org/ The O.C. at Boalt] is a student group that, in addition to screening episodes of "The O.C." during the lunch period, offers the Sandy Cohen Fellowship, a summer grant for students who plan to work as public defenders (on "The O.C.", Sandy Cohen worked as a public defender while living in Orange County). In recent years, The O.C. at Boalt has also managed to bring Peter Gallagher, the actor who plays Sandy Cohen, to Boalt to speak on an annual basis.
*Matthew Perry played a Republican graduate of Boalt Hall on multiple episodes of "The West Wing".
*Kelly Rutherford played lawyer Samantha 'Sonny' Liston, a graduate of Boalt Hall, on "E-Ring".
*Joanie Caucus, a character in Garry Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury, attended Boalt Hall.
*In Catch Me if You Can, Martin Sheen plays Roger Strong, the District Attorney of New Orleans and a Boalt Hall alumnus.
*In the movie Intolerable Cruelty, a copy of the "California Law Review" is featured prominently on a table in the senior partner's office.

Centers at Boalt Hall

* [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/centers/bccj/ Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice (est. 2006)]
* [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/centers/bclt/ Berkeley Center for Law & Technology (est. 1996)]
* [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/centers/bclbe/ Berkeley Center for Law, Business, and the Economy (est. 2004)]
* [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/centers/envirolaw/ California Center for Environmental Law and Policy]
* [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/centers/clinicaled/ Center for Clinical Education (est. 1998)]
* [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/centers/csls/ Center for the Study of Law and Society (est. 1961)]
* [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/centers/ewi/ Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity]
* [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/clinics/dpclinic/ Death Penalty Clinic (est. 2001)]
* [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/centers/gcl/ Institute for Global Challenges and the Law]
* [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/centers/ilr/ Institute for Legal Research (formerly the Earl Warren Legal Institute) (est. 1963)]
* [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/clinics/ihrlc/ International Human Rights Law Clinic (est. 1998)]
* [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/centers/kadish/ Kadish Center for Morality, Law and Public Affairs (est. 2000)]
* [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/centers/burch/ Robert D. Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance (est. 1994)]
* [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/clinics/samuelson/ Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic (est. 2000)]
* [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/centers/csj/ Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice (est. 1999)]

Law Journals at Boalt Hall

* [http://www.boalt.org/ALJ/ "Asian American Law Journal"]
* [http://boalt.org/bblj/ "Berkeley Business Law Journal"]
* [http://bjalp.boalt.org/ "Berkeley Journal of African-American Law & Policy"]
*"Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law"
* [http://www.boalt.org/bwlj/ "Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice"]
* [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/journals/bjil/ "Berkeley Journal of International Law"]
* [http://jmeil.boalt.org/ "Berkeley Journal of Middle Eastern & Islamic Law"]
* [http://www.boalt.org/LRLJ/ "Berkeley La Raza Law Journal"]
*"Berkeley Technology Law Journal"
* [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/students/jrnlorgs/journals/bjcl/ "Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law"]
*"California Law Review"
* [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/journals/elq/ "Ecology Law Quarterly"]

List of noted alumni

*Earl Warren, 1914 - Governor of California, Chief Justice of the United States
*Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong, 1915 - professor at Boalt from 1919 to 1957, the first woman law professor at a major American law school
*Walter Gordon, 1922 - Governor of the Virgin Islands, judge, member of National Football Foundation Hall of Fame
*Roger J. Traynor, 1927 - Chief Justice, California Supreme Court, 1964-1970
*Melvin Belli, 1929 - attorney known as The King of Torts
*Dean Rusk, 1940 - United States Secretary of State, 1961-1969
*Harry Pregerson, 1950 - Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
*G. William Miller, 1952 - U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Chairman of the Federal Reserve
*Allen Broussard, 1953 - Associate Justice, California Supreme Court, 1981-1991
*Jess Jackson, 1955 - Notable Attorney in the '70s; founder of Kendall-Jackson Wines
*J. Clifford Wallace, 1955 - Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
*Cruz Reynoso, 1958 - Associate Justice, California Supreme Court, 1982-1987
*Edwin Meese III, 1958 - U.S. Attorney General
*Pete Wilson, 1962 - U.S. Senator, Governor of California
*Thelton Henderson, 1962 - Judge, United States District Court for the Northern District of California
*Kathryn M. Werdegar, 1962 - Associate Justice, California Supreme Court, 1994-present
*Henry Ramsey, 1963 - former Alameda County Superior Court judge and former dean of Howard Law School
*Rose Bird, 1965 - Chief Justice, California Supreme Court, 1977-1987
*Howard Lincoln, 1965 - Chairman and CEO of the Seattle Mariners; former chairman of Nintendo of America
*Theodore Olson, 1965 - U.S. Solicitor General, 2001-2004
*Michael Tigar, 1966 - Notable Attorney, Professor at Washington College of Law, American University
*Larry W. Sonsini, 1966 - Chairman of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
*Neil Goldschmidt, 1967 - U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Governor of Oregon
*David B. Frohnmeyer, 1967 - Oregon Attorney General, University of Oregon President
*Robert K. Tanenbaum, 1968 - novelist and former Mayor of Beverly Hills, CA
*David Weissbrodt, 1969 - Former head of United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and U.N. Special Rapporteur on the rights of non-citizens
*André Coutrelis, 1971 - French attorney, pioneer in the area of antitrust in France
*Mary C. Dunlap, 1971 - feminist and queer activist and co-founder of Equal Rights Advocates
*Dale Minami, 1971 - leader of legal team that overturned the wrongful conviction of Fred Korematsu
*Mario G. Olmos, 1971 - former presiding judge of Fresno County Superior Court and notable attorney
*Neil Gotanda, 1972 - professor at Western State University College of Law and expert in constitutional law and Asian American jurisprudence
*Marsha L. Berzon, 1973 - Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
*John L. Burris, 1973 - civil rights attorney
*Leigh Steinberg, 1973 - sports agent
*Richard Delgado, 1974 - professor at University of Pittsburgh School of Law and expert in civil rights law and critical race theory
*Barry Scheck, 1974 - Co-founder of the Innocence Project
*Christopher Schroeder, 1974 - professor at Duke University School of Law
*Lance Ito, 1975 - California Superior Court judge, presided over O.J. Simpson criminal trial
*Katharine Bartlett, 1975 - dean of Duke University School of Law
*Zoë Baird, 1977 - Bill Clinton's first unsuccessful nominee for attorney general in 1993
*Elizabeth Cabraser, 1978 - partner at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP
*André Bertrand, 1978 - French attorney, successful author of many treatises in the area of Intellectual Property
*Nancy K.D. Lemon, 1980 - domestic violence law expert, lecturer at Boalt Hall
*Catherine Fisk, 1986 - professor at Duke University School of Law
*Pierre Mousseron, 1991 - French attorney and professor of Law, author of many business law treatises
*Reynato S. Puno, - Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines

List of noted faculty

*Bob Berring – leading law librarian
*Robert Cooter – leading scholar in Law and Economics
*Maria Echaveste – former deputy chief of staff to President Bill Clinton
*Christopher Edley, Jr. – Dean of Boalt Hall (2004-); co-founder of The Civil Rights Project formerly at Harvard University, now at UCLA.
*Melvin A. Eisenberg – author of a leading Contracts casebook and chief reporter for the "Principles of Corporate Governance", issued by the American Law Institute
*William A. Fletcher – Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
*Phillip P. Frickey – pioneer in the study of legislation and statutory interpretation
*Lucas Guttentag – founding director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Immigrants' Rights Project
*Ian F. Haney Lopez – influential critical race theorist and author of "White By Law"
*Angela P. Harris – leading scholar of feminist legal theory and critical race theory
*Michael Heyman – Chancellor of the Berkeley campus (1980 to 1990), Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution (1994 to 1999)
*Phillip E. Johnson – one of the fathers of intelligent design
*Amy Kapczynski – co-founder of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines
*Herma Hill Kay – former Dean of the School of Law (1992-2000), instrumental in the battle for no-fault divorce in California
*Hans Kelsen – one of the preeminent jurists of the 20th century
*Linda H. Krieger – employment discrimination law expert
*Paul J. Mishkin – former author of the popular casebook on Federal Courts, Hart and Wechsler's "The Federal Courts and the Federal System"
*John T. Noonan, Jr. – Senior Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
*William L. Prosser – former Dean of the School of Law (1948-1961), author of several well-known treatises and pioneer in the field of strict products liability
*Pamela Samuelson – intellectual property law expert
*Sho Sato – first Asian American law professor at a major American law school
*Eleanor Swift – led the establishment of Boalt's Center for Clinical Education, which brings clients in need of legal advice to Boalt, where students and faculty provide counsel.
*John Wilkins– first African American professor at Boalt
*John Yoo – co-author of the USA PATRIOT Act and author of the memo defending expansive presidential wartime powers.

References

External links

* [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/ Official website]
* [http://soalsucberkeley.org/ Student Organization for Advanced Legal Studies]
* [http://boalt.org/ boalt.org] - Website for student groups and journals
* [http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/1994/1102/boalt.html Boalt Hall Turns 100] - Berkeleyan, November 11, 1994