UC College of Law lecture examines the constitutional battleground in education

Erwin Chemerinsky became the 13th Dean of Berkeley Law in 2017, when he joined the faculty as the Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law. Prior to assuming this position, he was the founding Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law, and Raymond Pryke Professor of First Amendment Law, at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.  Before that he was the Alston and Bird Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke University, and a professor at the University of Southern California Law School, including as the Sydney M. Irmas Professor of Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics, and Political Science. He also served as an assistant professor at DePaul College of Law.

Dean Chemerinsky is the author of 16 books, including leading casebooks and treatises about constitutional law, criminal procedure, and federal jurisdiction. His most recent books are Worse than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism (2022) and Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights (2021).

He is the author of more than 200 law review articles. A contributing writer for the Opinion section of the Los Angeles Times, he also writes regular columns for the Sacramento Bee, the ABA Journal and the Daily Journal, and produces op-eds in newspapers across the country. He frequently argues appellate cases, including in the United States Supreme Court.  

Dean Chemerinsky is one of the most cited constitutional law scholars in the country. In 2016, he was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  In 2017, National Jurist magazine again named Dean Chemerinsky as the most influential person in legal education in the United States.  Finally, in 2022, he was named President of the Association of American Law Schools. He received his B.S. from Northwestern University and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.