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Berkeley Law
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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. Berkeley Law is consistently ranked as one of the top 10 law schools, making it one of the most elite law schools in the country. 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).
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.
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Encyclopedia
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. Berkeley Law is consistently ranked as one of the top 10 law schools, making it one of the most elite law schools in the country. 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).
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.
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.
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. 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. 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. It has the second smallest student body and the smallest student/faculty ratio of all the UC schools. While it is the most expensive law school in the UC system, it is only slightly more expensive than UCLA. 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.
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. In terms of student numerical quality, Boalt ranks 14th in the nation.
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. 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
Law Journals at Boalt Hall
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
- Frederick Hertz, 1981 - notable San Francisco Bay attorney
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.
- Aaron Edlin – Richard W. Jennings '39 Endowed Chair since 2005
- 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 – former deputy assistant Attorney General and author of controversial (and subsequently withdrawn) Justice Department memoranda relating to Presidential wartime authority.
External links
- - Website for student groups and journals
- - Berkeleyan, November 11, 1994
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