Racial Justice

“It is time for a powerful new approach that creates possibilities for students with perspectives and experiences across race and ethnicity; across socio economic status; across gender; and across rural and city centers alike,” write Berkeley Law Professor John Powell and Yasmin Cader, deputy legal director and the director of The Tone Center for Justice and Equality at the American Civil Liberties Union.   

Berkeley Law, which has an acceptance rate of under 13%, collects detailed financial data from accepted students through need-based scholarship applications in order to direct financial aid to them in hopes they will enroll. But bolstering economic diversity does not yield the same level of racial diversity as considering race directly, Chemerinsky said.

Three Jewish students at Berkeley Law received a standing ovation in a Tel Aviv ballroom while receiving an award for Campus Advocacy from the American Jewish Committee.

The International Human Rights Law Clinic’s 2020 Living with Impunity report is cited in the article. 

The Asian American Law Journal, in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Fred Korematsu’s coram nobis case, hosted its annual symposium, entitled “Let’s Get Going!: Lessons from the Young Lawyers Who Overturned Korematsu, Hirabayashi, and Yasui” at Berkeley Law. The symposium featured a panel with Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law discussing the continued impact the coram nobis cases have today.

“Why must we wait for the next death of another unarmed Black man to galvanize the public?” writes Dean Chermerinsky. “The problems are well-documented and many solutions are apparent. If the courts and the legislatures continue to do nothing, nothing will change.”

“Slang amongst Black people is a love language and I am frustrated when that slang becomes appropriated and used by others and the meaning morphs,” said Khiara M. Bridges, author and professor of law at UC Berkeley School of Law. “There’s something really sinister about this term not only being taken from us but also deployed against us. It’s a double violation.”

“We know that the vast majority of people in pretrial detention in California are people of color, particularly Black and brown individuals,” said Rachel Wallace, clinical supervisor at UC Berkeley Law’s Policy Advocacy Clinic. “And so we know that this is not only an economic issue, but a racial justice issue as well.”

“The long history of racial discrimination in America and current inequalities in educational opportunity make affirmative action essential,” writes Dean Chemerinsky. “Affirmative action works.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes The California Legislature should strengthen the Racial Justice Act, passed two years ago to discourage racial bias in sentencing. He says a bill on the Senate floor would do just that, but it still needs work.