In the News - October 5, 2020

Media Highlights

A Rush to Confirm Justice Nominee Can Hurt Supreme Court for Years
The Hill—October 2, 2020
James Wagstaffe: Hurriedly replacing the leading lioness of liberalism with a dogmatic conservative could threaten the critical dynamism of the Supreme Court for a generation to come.

So, Pendley is Out as BLM Acting Chief—Will His Policies Go with Him?
Adventure Journal—October 1, 2020
John Leshy: “Morris’s opinion methodically demolishes the house of cards the Trump Interior Department constructed to install Pendley as leader of the BLM.”

Female Lawyers Face Unique Challenges During the COVID-19 Pandemic
ABA Journal—October 1, 2020
Joan Williams: “Telework can systematically disadvantage women and people of color in terms of getting good work and enough hours that they aren’t let go. And unless firms are very actively managing the telework environment, they are going to end up driving mothers out.”

Deans at Five California Law Schools Defend Critical Race Theory Against Trump Administration
National Jurist—October 1, 2020
David Faigman: Five law school deans wrote a joint letter defending their Critical Race Theory scholars and programs after they were attacked by the President of the United States and the Office of Management and Budget.

Can Your Employer Require You to Get a COVID-19 Vaccine?
AARP—September 30, 2020
Dorit Reiss: “Employment in the United States is generally ‘at will,’ which means that your employer can set working conditions. Certainly, employers can set health and safety work conditions, with a few limits.”

Review: ‘Yesterday’s Monsters’ Shows Parole System’s Flaws in Manson Cases
San Francisco Chronicle—September 30, 2020
Hadar Aviram: But that doesn’t contradict the message that Aviram convincingly presents: If the parole system had worked as it was supposed to, based on the law and the policies underlying it, most of the participants in the murders, other than Manson himself, eventually would have been released.

How Operation Warp Speed’s Big Vaccine Contracts Could Stay Secret
NPR—September 29, 2020
Robin Feldman: Simplifying government bureaucracy during a crisis isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there’s a tradeoff when it comes to accountability. “We have to be careful about what we throw out in that process.”

Get Serious About the People Putting Us All at Risk
New York Times—September 29, 2020
Jaime King: “Governors absolutely have the authority during a public health emergency to make laws — to force people to wear masks, to limit gatherings. So I’m perplexed at why people say, ‘You can’t force me.’”

The Case for Accepting Defeat on Roe
New York Times—September 29, 2020
Joan Williams: Maybe it is time to face the fact that abortion access will be fought for in legislatures, not courts.

Is Uber Moral? The Ethical Crisis of the Gig Economy
Radical AI Podcast—September 28, 2020
Veena Dubal: What is precarious work and how does it impact the psychology of labor?

Why Briggs & Stratton Went Bankrupt
Urban Milwaukee—September 28, 2020
Jared Ellias: Congress in 2005 tried to curb payouts to executives when a company is in distress, restricting executive bonuses when a company declares bankruptcy. In response, these pre-bankruptcy “retention” bonuses were designed as an end-run around that law. “It’s regulatory evasion.”

CDC’s Credibility is Eroded by Internal Blunders and External Attacks as Coronavirus Vaccine Campaigns Loom
Washington Post—September 28, 2020
Dorit Reiss: Reiss is calling for the CDC director to be replaced by a board, along the lines of the Federal Reserve system, to strengthen the agency’s institutional independence. “You have to do something visible to allow the trust to be reestablished.”

Promises Kept? On Health Care, Trump’s Claims of ‘Monumental Steps’ Don’t Add Up
Kaiser Health News—September 28, 2020
Katie Gudiksen: “I don’t think there has been any meaningful action that has had meaningful effect on drug prices.”

Fact Check: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Dissent in Pharmaceutical Case Wasn’t Anti-Vaccine
USA Today—September 27, 2020
Dorit Reiss: “It’s a very practical question: Should we have state courts contemplate cases in addition to federal agencies? In part, it depends on how much you trust state courts; in part, it depends how much you trust the federal agency, but it has nothing to do with medical freedom.”

What to Know About Those $200 Drug Cards President Trump Promised
NPR—September 25, 2020
Robin Feldman: “In my mind, the question is whether the White House could bypass the considerably extensive procedures established by the agency to evaluate proposals. That’s a process that can take some time. And the White House seems to have a few weeks in mind so that it happens before the election.”

Trump to Nominate Conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett to Supreme Court Saturday
San Francisco Chronicle—September 25, 2020
Rory Little: “I think it’ll be the most conservative court since the 1920s and early ’30s.”

Congress May Want to Play a Bigger Role in Military Operations
Federal News Network—September 25, 2020
Zach Price: Price argues that Congress ought to use its authority over the structure and operation of the military more than it does, which is very little.

Coronavirus in Jails and Prisons
The Appeal—September 25, 2020
Hadar Aviram: “We’re not telling an airtight causal story here. All we are doing is dispelling the notion that locking people up is somehow keeping the surrounding county safe.”

Which Side Are You On?
Harper’s Magazine—September 2020
Veena Dubal: Police “aren’t workers even in the way that firemen are workers. Police defend property. They have historically defended white property. We’re not in a place where that is going to change.”

College and Community Stories

UC Law SF Launches Accelerated J.D. Program with Spelman College
UC Law SF has forged a partnership with Spelman College, a historically Black liberal arts college for women, on a program that will allow students to obtain their bachelor’s degree and a J.D. in six years rather than the typical seven.

Student Q&A: 3L Zaren Craddock
Each month, the alumni newsletter features a Q&A with a student. Meet 3L Zaren Craddock. He has a master’s degree in Criminology, and hopes to become a prosecutor.

Inspirations and Aspirations: Meet the BASF Diversity Scholars
Three UC Law SF students who received prestigious scholarships from the Bar Association of San Francisco’s Justice and Diversity Center took disparate paths and overcame numerous obstacles to get to law school.

Scholarly Leadership

Scott Dodson: Discussed his latest article, “The Zooming of Federal Civil Litigation,” at a symposium on litigation in the age of COVID-19, sponsored by The Civil Justice Research Initiative at Berkeley Law and the RAND Corporation.

Chimène Keitner: “All the President’s Lawsuits: Fraud, Defamation, and the Westfall Act,” Just Security

Dorit Reiss: “Institutionalizing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Independence” was accepted for publication in ConLawNow.

Upcoming Events

CREJ: Oct. 7, From Prop 209 to Prop 16: Historical, Legal and Activist Perspectives on Affirmative Action
Prop. 16, which is on the November ballot, would restore affirmative action in CA. This panel will discuss the legacies of Proposition 209 and the promise of Proposition 16.

UC Law SF: Oct. 9, Justice Ginsburg’s Life and Legacy
Join Scott Dodson, Joel Paul, Radhika Rao, Jodi Short and Joan Williams as they discuss the life and legacy of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Open to the public via YouTube live stream.

Faculty Colloquium: Oct. 13, The 2014 Unicorns: A Postmortem
Abe Cable will present a work-in-progress tentatively entitled “Time Enough for Counting: A Unicorn Retrospective.” The article tracks outcomes for the 2014 startup unicorns. Open to the public.

CREJ, UCSF/UC Law SF Consortium: Oct. 14, Racial Health Disparities: Economic Injustice as an Underlying Condition of COVID
Evelyn Rangel is among the speakers in this panel moderated by Dorit Reiss. Panelists in this program will discuss the evidence base linking economic and racial inequality to health inequity, the ways in which COVID compounds those longstanding inequities, and the role of law as both a positive and negative force in addressing them.

CNDR: Oct. 14, Lunch and Learn Series
Grande Lum, former director of CNDR, discusses his book, “America’s Peacemakers,” the story of a federal agency within the Department of Justice that assists and mediates in communities as they reconcile and recover from discrimination, hate crimes, and unrest based on issues like race and religion.

CREJ: Oct. 16, Diversity in Legal Thought and Practice Speaker Series
Adjunct Professor and Center for Racial and Economic Justice Affiliated Scholar T. Anansi Wilson will present two of their papers, “Furtive Blackness: On Blackness and Being” and “The Strict Scrutiny of Black and BlaQueer Life.” Open to the public.

Veena Dubal: Oct. 19, Precarity and the Gig Economy
Dubal in conversation with Gloria Steinem Chair Naomi Klein on the links between technology and the growing precarity of labor. Sponsored by the Institute For Women’s Leadership, Rutgers University.

CNDR: Oct. 28, Lunch and Learn Series
Professor John Lande will describe how practitioners can combine supposedly inconsistent negotiation models based on the framework his new book, “Litigation Interest and Risk Assessment: Help Your Clients Make Good Litigation Decisions.”