University of California, Berkeley, School of Law: Difference between revisions

The UC Berkeley School of Law, formerly referred to as Boalt Hall, is one of 14 schools and colleges at the University of California, Berkeley.

Boalt Hall is regarded as one of the most elite law schools in the United States. It is consistently ranked both as one of the top 10 law schools and the top public law school in the country. (Cynthia L. Cooper, The Insider's Guide to the Top Fifteen Law Schools (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 178-179.) 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 164 and 169 (92nd and 99th percentile). The 2008 U.S. News & World Report ranked Boalt Hall eighth overall among all law schools in the country. It was also tied with the University of Michigan Law School for the distinction of top public law school. [1] Boalt Hall is renowned for having what is regarded as the best intellectual property program in the world, and has held the top spot in U.S. News and World Report rankings for 10 consecutive years running. [2]

History[edit | edit source]

The Department of Jurisprudence was founded at Berkeley in 1894. In 1913, the department was elevated to the School of Jurisprudence, which was then renamed the School of Law in 1951.

The School was originally located in 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 central campus, and the old Boalt Hall was renamed Durant Hall. The current structure is notorious for its bland architecture:

At its best, Boalt Hall has the comfort of an old couch—it's a serviceable place one can sink into without having to worry about ruining the upholstery. And at its worst, Boalt Hall is still an adequate facility, even if it is downright homely. Inside the building, spareness predominates, and the clearest design message is that this is a state university. (Cooper, 192.)

Academics[edit | edit source]

Boalt Hall has approximately 850 J.D. students, 30 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 upon 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.

When calculating grade-point averages (GPAs), which determine admission to the Order of the Coif and class ranks, a Pass grade is worth 2 points, an Honors grade is worth 3 points, and a High Honors grade is worth 5 points. (Boalt makes class ranks available to JD students only for the purpose of applying to judicial clerkships and academic positions.)

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 2006-07 school year is $25,380.00 for California residents ($37,625.00 for nonresidents), though the sum has been rising each year.

Boalt Hall in popular culture[edit | edit source]

• Sandy Cohen, a character on the popular television series The O.C., is a lawyer and a Boalt Hall alumnus. 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 an episode 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 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[edit | edit source]

• Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice (est. 2006)
• Berkeley Center for Law, Business, and the Economy (est. 2004)
• Berkeley Center for Law & Technology (est. 1996)
• California Center for Environmental Law and Policy
• Center for Clinical Education (est. 1998)
• Center for the Study of Law and Society (est. 1961)
• Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity
• Death Penalty Clinic (est. 2001)
• Institute for Legal Research (formerly the Earl Warren Legal Institute) (est. 1963)
• International Human Rights Law Clinic (est. 1998)
• Kadish Center for Morality, Law and Public Affairs (est. 2000)
• Robert D. Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance (est. 1994)
• Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic (est. 2000)
• Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice (est. 1999)

Law Journals at Boalt Hall[edit | edit source]

• Asian American Law Journal
• Berkeley Business Law Journal
• Berkeley Journal of African-American Law & Policy
• Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law
• Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice
• Berkeley Journal of International Law
• Berkeley Journal of Middle Eastern & Islamic Law
• Berkeley La Raza Law Journal
• Berkeley Technology Law Journal
• Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law
• California Law Review
• Ecology Law Quarterly

List of noted alumni[edit | edit source]

• 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
• G. William Miller, 1952 - U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Chairman of the Federal Reserve
• Allen Broussard, 1953 - Judge, California Supreme Court, 1981 - 1991
• 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 - United States District Judge
• Kathryn M. Werdegar, 1962 - Associate Justice, California Supreme Court, 1994-present
• Rose Bird, 1965 - Chief Justice, California Supreme Court, 1977-1987
• Theodore Olson, 1965 - U.S. Solicitor General
• 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
• Dale Minami, 1971 - leader of legal team that overturned the wrongful conviction of Fred Korematsu
• Marsha L. Berzon, 1973 - Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Harry Pregerson, 1950 - Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• John L. Burris, 1973 - civil rights attorney
• Leigh Steinberg, 1973 - sports agent
• Barry Scheck, 1974 - Co-founder of the Innocence Project
• Lance Ito, 1975 - California Superior Court judge, presided over O.J. Simpson criminal trial
• Christopher Schroeder, 1974 - professor at Duke University School of Law
• 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
• Nancy K.D. Lemon, 1980 - domestic violence law expert, lecturer at Boalt Hall
• Catherine Fisk, 1986 - professor at Duke University School of Law

List of noted faculty[edit | edit source]

• Robert Cooter – leading scholar in Law and Economics
• 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
• 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
• 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 – the first Asian American law professor at a major American law school
• John Yoo – Co-Author of the USA PATRIOT Act and author of a controversial memo defending expansive presidential wartime powers and even torture (if authorized by the president).

External links[edit | edit source]

• Official website
• boalt.org - Website for student groups and journals
• Boalt Hall Turns 100 - Berkeleyan, November 11, 1994

References[edit | edit source]