Erwin Chemerinsky

Raised in a working-class Jewish family on Chicago's South Side, Chemerinsky attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools for high school.[5] He earned a bachelor's degree in communications from Northwestern University in 1975, where he competed as a debater. He then attended Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. He graduated from Harvard Law with a Juris Doctor cum laude in 1978.

Chemerinsky taught for over 20 years at the University of Southern California Law School and at DePaul University College of Law before moving to Duke University on July 1, 2004, and then UC Irvine in July 2008. In July 2017, he started a five-year term as dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law.[6]

In 1995, Chemerinsky was a commentator on the O.J. Simpson trial on KCBS-TV, KNX, and CBS News.

Chemerinsky has published six books (three of which have been printed in multiple editions), numerous articles, and a regular column on the United States Supreme Court carried by California Lawyer, the Los Angeles Daily Journal, and Trial Magazine. Chemerinsky has also argued several cases before the United States Supreme Court, including United States v. Apel, Scheidler v. NOW, Tory v. Cochran, Van Orden v. Perry and Lockyer v. Andrade.

In March 2011, The National Jurist: The Magazine for Law Students named Chemerinsky one of the "23 Law Profs to Take Before You Die".[7]

Other notable work included:

• Los Angeles Police Department panel reviewing the Rampart Scandal.
• Los Angeles commission reviewing irregularities in city contracting.
• Helped write the Los Angeles city charter.
• Helped draft the Constitution of Belarus.
• Helped found the Progressive Jewish Alliance.[8]

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.[9] George Will specifically mentioned and responded to Chemerinsky's argument in a column that ran four days later.[10]

Chemerinsky believes that Roe v. Wade was correctly decided.[11] He says, "Judicial activism is the label for the decision that people don't like."[11] He also believed that gay marriage should be legal many years prior to the decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.[11]

Chemerinsky also represents a client held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center.[11] He supports affirmative action.[11] In January 2017, Chemerinsky, along with other high-profile lawyers, sued President Donald Trump for refusing to "divest from his businesses".[12]

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." He writes 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."[13]

Chemerinsky's hiring as dean of the UCI School of Law was controversial. After signing a contract on September 4, 2007, the hire was rescinded by UCI Chancellor Michael V. Drake, who felt the law professor's commentaries were "polarizing." Drake claimed the decision was his own and not the subject of any outside influence.[17]

The action was criticized by both liberal and conservative scholars, who felt it hindered the academic mission of the law school and violated principles of academic freedom, and few believed Drake's claims that it was not the result of outside influence.[17][18] The issue was the subject of an editorial in The New York Times on Friday, September 14.[19] Details emerged revealing that the university had received criticism on the hire from the California Supreme Court's Chief Justice Ronald M. George, who criticized Chemerinsky's grasp of death penalty appeals and a group of prominent local Republicans, including Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who wanted to stop the appointment. Drake traveled over a weekend to meet with Chemerinsky in Durham, North Carolina, where he was a professor at the Duke University School of Law at the time, and the two reached an agreement late Sunday evening.[20]

On September 17, Chemerinsky issued a joint press release with Drake indicating that Chemerinsky would head the law school. The release stated that the chancellor was "commit[ted] to academic freedom."[21] On September 20, 2007, Chemerinsky's hire was formally approved by the Regents of the University of California.[22]

Chemerinsky is married to Catherine Fisk,[23] the Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law.[24]

• Chemerinsky, Erwin (1985). "Rethinking State Action". Northwestern University Law Review. 80 (3): 503–57.
• ——— (1987). Interpreting the Constitution. New York: Praeger Publishers. ISBN 978-0-275-92674-8.
• ——— (1988). "Parity Reconsidered: Defining a Role for the Federal Judiciary". UCLA Law Review. 36 (2): 233–328.
• ——— (1989a). Federal Jurisdiction. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.; 2nd edition (1994); 3rd edition (1999); 4th edition (2003), Aspen Publishers; 5th edition (2007); 6th edition (2012), Wolters Kluwer; 7th edition (2016).
• ——— (1989b). "Foreword: The Vanishing Constitution". Harvard Law Review. 103 (1): 43–104.
• ——— (1995). "The Values of Federalism". Florida Law Review. 47 (4): 499–540.
• ———; Fisk, Catherine (1997a). "The Filibuster". Stanford Law Review. 49 (2): 181–254. doi:10.2307/1229297. JSTOR 1229297.
• ——— (1997b). Constitutional Law: Principles and Policies. New York: Aspen Law and Business; 2nd edition (2002); 3rd edition (2006); 4th edition (2011); 5th edition (2015), Wolters Kluwer.
• ——— (2001). "Against Sovereign Immunity". Stanford Law Review. 53 (5): 1201–24. doi:10.2307/1229540. JSTOR 1229540.
• ——— (2005). Constitutional Law (2nd edition). New York: Aspen Publishers; 3rd edition (2009); 4th edition (2013); 5th edition (2017).
• ——— (2008). Enhancing Government: Federalism for the 21st Century. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-804-75199-5.
• ——— (2011). The Conservative Assault on the Constitution. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1416574675.
• ——— (2014). The Case Against the Supreme Court. New York: Viking; (2015), New York: Penguin Books.
• ——— (2018). We the People: A Progressive Reading of the Constitution for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Picador. ISBN 9781250166005.

• Duke University School of Law biography
• University of Southern California Law School biography
• UCI Faculty
• BerkeleyLaw Faculty
• Appearances on C-SPAN