Author: Erwin Chemerinsky

Erwin Chemerinsky is the dean and Jesse H. Choper distinguished professor of law at UC Berkeley School of Law since 2017. He was previously the founding dean and distinguished professor of law and Raymond Pryke professor of First Amendment law at UC Irvine School of Law, with a joint appointment in political science. Before this, he was the Alston and Bird professor of law and political science at Duke University and a professor at the University of Southern California Law School, DePaul College of Law and UCLA Law School. He is the author of 19 books and more than 200 law review articles and writes for the opinion section of the Los Angeles Times, along with regular columns for the ABA Journal, the Sacramento Bee and the Daily Journal and other frequent op-eds in newspapers across the country. He frequently argues appellate cases, including in the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2024, National Jurist magazine again named Dean Chemerinsky as the most influential person in legal education in the United States.

The Legal Status of the Equal Rights Amendment

Former President Joe Biden’s statement that the Equal Rights Amendment has been ratified and should be deemed part of the Constitution is welcome and correct as to the law. But it also is likely to engender great confusion and unfortunately has no legal effect.

The law is clear: It is for Congress to decide whether an amendment has been properly ratified—not the president, not the archivist, and not the courts.

After Justice Scalia’s Death, What Happens for Women?

No justice in recent decades has had a worse record on women’s issues than Antonin Scalia, who died this weekend in Texas at age 79 of apparent natural causes. Replacing him offers an opportunity to move the law in a progressive direction that must not be squandered. Most obviously, Justice Scalia repeatedly and emphatically urged […]

What the Supreme Court Didn’t Decide This Week

The most important thing to know about the Supreme Court’s decision on June 1 in Elonis v. United States is that it does not resolve the question of when the First Amendment allows people to be punished for speech threatening others. Facebook and other social media have made it much more common for people to make […]