欧文·切默林斯基

Erwin Chemerinsky (born May 14, 1953) is an American legal scholar and author known for his studies of U.S. constitutional law and federal civil procedure. Since 2017, Chemerinsky has been the 13th dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, replacing interim dean Melissa Murray. Previously, he was the founding dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law from 2008 to 2017.

Chemerinsky was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016. National Jurist magazine named him the most influential person in legal education in the United States in 2017. In 2021 Chemerinsky was named president-elect of the Association of American Law Schools.

Early life and education

Chemerinsky was born in 1953 in Chicago, Illinois. He grew up in a working-class Jewish family in the South Side of Chicago and attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools for high school.

He studied communications at Northwestern University, where he competed on the debate team. He graduated in 1975 with a Bachelor of Science. Chemerinsky then attended Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. He graduated in 1978 with a Juris Doctor.

Career

After law school, Chemerinsky worked as an honors attorney in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 1978 to 1979, then entered private practice at the Washington, D.C., law firm Dobrovir, Oakes & Gebhardt. In 1980, Chemerinsky was hired as an assistant professor of law at DePaul University College of Law. He moved to the Gould School of Law at the University of Southern California (USC) in 1983. Chemerinsky taught at USC from 1983 to 2004, then joined the faculty of Duke University School of Law from 2004 to 2008.

In 1995, Chemerinsky provided commentary on the murder trial of O. J. Simpson for KCBS-TV, KNX, and CBS News. He assisted in drafting the Constitution of Belarus and was a founding member of the Progressive Jewish Alliance. He served on a panel within the Los Angeles Police Department tasked with investigating the Rampart scandal, and participated in a commission examining irregularities in city contracting processes. He played a role in drafting the Los Angeles city charter.

In 2008, Chemerinsky was named the inaugural dean of the newly established University of California, Irvine School of Law. In 2017, he became dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, where he is also the Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law.

As of November 2022, Chemerinsky has authored sixteen books, including a constitutional law textbook, and over two hundred law review articles. He also writes a regular column for The Sacramento Bee and monthly columns for the ABA Journal and Los Angeles Daily Journal, and frequently pens op-eds for prominent newspapers across the country. Chemerinsky has also argued several cases at the United States Supreme Court, including United States v. Apel, Scheidler v. National Organization for Women, Lockyer v. Andrade, and Van Orden v. Perry, and has written numerous amicus briefs.

In 2011, National Jurist magazine described Chemerinsky one of the "23 Law Profs to Take Before You Die".

He is the co-chair of the UC Free Speech Center's National Advisory Board. He was appointed to Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón's transition team in 2020. He was the president of the Association of American Law Schools for the term spanning 2021–2022.

Legal thought

Chemerinsky supports gun control and disagreed with the decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. He thinks that even if an individual's right to bear arms exists, the District of Columbia was justified in restricting that right because it believed that the law would lessen violence. George Will responded to Chemerinsky's argument in a column that ran four days later.

Chemerinsky believes that Roe v. Wade was correctly decided. He says: "Judicial activism is the label for the decision that people don't like." He also believed that gay marriage should be legal many years prior to the decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.

Chemerinsky also represents a client held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. He supports affirmative action. In January 2017, Chemerinsky, along with other high-profile lawyers, sued President Donald Trump for refusing to "divest from his businesses".

In an opinion piece following the 2020 presidential election, Chemerinsky wrote that "the Electoral College makes no sense as a way for a democracy to choose a president" and that it was intentionally designed to be anti-democratic and came about as part of "compromises concerning slavery that were at the core of the Constitution's drafting and ratification."

In a New York Times op-ed in August 2021, Chemerinsky argued that California's recall process is unconstitutional. This process called for a two-part ballot, with a yes-no question on whether to remove the governor from office, and then second question to select the candidate to replace the governor, with the governors name absent from that ballot. Chemerinsky argued that a governor receiving just below 50% support in the first question could be removed and replaced by a candidate receiving a much smaller plurality in the second question. This would replace a sitting governor with a candidate that received fewer votes than they did in the same election. Chemerinsky wrote: "[The court] could simply add Mr. Newsom’s name on the ballot to the list of those running to replace him. That simple change would treat his supporters equally to others and ensure that if he gets more votes than any other candidate, he will stay in office".