*This Event was not Recorded
Erwin Chemerinsky became the 13th Dean of Berkeley Law on July 1, 2017, when he joined the faculty as the Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law.
Prior to assuming this position, from 2008-2017, he was the founding Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law, and Raymond Pryke Professor of First Amendment Law, at University of California, Irvine School of Law. Before that he was the Alston and Bird Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke University from 2004-2008, and from 1983-2004 was a professor at the University of Southern California Law School, including as the Sydney M. Irmas Professor of Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics, and Political Science. From 1980-1983, he was an assistant professor at DePaul College of Law.
He is the author of sixteen books, including leading casebooks and treatises about constitutional law, criminal procedure, and federal jurisdiction. His most recent books are Worse than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism (2022) and Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights (2021).
He also is the author of more than 200 law review articles. He is a contributing writer for the Opinion section of the Los Angeles Times, and writes regular columns for the Sacramento Bee, the ABA Journal and the Daily Journal, and frequent op-eds in newspapers across the country. He frequently argues appellate cases, including in the United States Supreme Court.
In 2016, he was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017, National Jurist magazine again named Dean Chemerinsky as the most influential person in legal education in the United States. In 2022, he is the President of the Association of American Law Schools.
Blake D. Morant is the Robert Kramer Research Professor of Law and served as Dean of the law school from 2014-2019. Professor Morant was also Dean of the Wake Forest University School of Law, where he built a national reputation as an exceptional law school administrator, a tireless advocate for students, and respected legal scholar. He has published extensively in his areas of scholarly focus, including contract theory, media law, and administrative law. He also has been active in national professional legal organizations throughout his career. Professor Morant was the President of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) in 2015.
Professor Morant was named the John R. Kramer Outstanding Law Dean by Equal Justice Works and was recognized three times by National Jurist magazine as one of the most influential people in legal education. He was twice named professor of the year by the Women Law Students Organization at Washington and Lee University and received five awards for outstanding teaching at the University of Toledo College of Law. He has taught at the law schools of American University, University of Toledo, University of Michigan, University of Alabama, and Washington and Lee University. He also served as a visiting fellow of University College, Oxford. Prior to becoming a legal academic, he served in the Army’s Judge Advocate General Corps, as a senior associate with a Washington, D.C., law firm, and as an Assistant General Counsel for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.
Sudha Setty joined the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law as dean and professor of law on July 1, 2022. She is the first person of South Asian descent to lead a CUNY campus and is the first woman of South Asian descent to serve as dean of any ABA-accredited law school. Under her leadership, CUNY Law has revived the W. Haywood Burns Chair in Human and Civil Rights, launched the path-breaking First Impressions Youth Legal Collaborative, created a new Emerging Needs Clinic to serve asylum seekers and other vulnerable New Yorkers, and launched its first strategic planning process in nearly a decade.
Dean Setty is a nationally recognized scholar in national security and comparative law, writing more than two dozen articles and the monograph, National Security Secrecy: Comparative Effects on Democracy and the Rule of Law (Cambridge 2017). She currently serves on the Deans Steering Committee of the Association of American Law Schools, on the editorial board of the Journal of National Security Law and Policy, and on the New York State Bar Association Task Force on Artificial Intelligence.
In 2021, Dean Setty co-founded the inaugural Workshop for Asian-American Women in Legal Academia, now an annual event, in which participants to engage in professional development, scholarship support, and building community. Dean Setty is the recipient of the National Conference for Community and Justice 2021 Human Relations Award; was on the Lawyers of Color Power List in 2020; was recognized as a Top Woman in the Law by the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly in 2019; was named a Trailblazer by the South Asian Bar Association of Connecticut in 2015; and received the 2017 Tapping Reeve Legal Educator Award from the Connecticut Bar Association. In 2018, Dean Setty was elected to membership in the American Law Institute and as a fellow of the American Bar Foundation.
From 2018 to 2022, she served as dean of Western New England University School of Law, during which time she led the creation of its Center for Social Justice and led the faculty in commitments to antiracism across the curriculum. While on faculty there, she was awarded Professor of the Year three times. Dean Setty started her legal career as a litigation associate at Davis Polk & Wardwell. She earned an A.B. in History (with honors) from Stanford University, and a JD from Columbia Law School, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.
Hari M. Osofsky is dean and Myra and James Bradwell Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and Professor of Environmental Policy and Culture (courtesy) at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
As dean, her leadership has focused on advancing the innovation that is needed at this time of change in the legal profession and society. This has included ambitious faculty hiring, cutting-edge interdisciplinary research and teaching initiatives, and concrete action to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion and social and racial justice. She also is very involved in mentorship and sponsorship to support greater diversity in law school and university leadership. The American Bar Association’s Legal Technology Resource Center recognized her as one of the 2019 Women of Legal-Tech.
Dean Osofsky’s over 50 publications focus on improving governance and addressing injustice in energy and climate change regulation. Her scholarship includes books with Cambridge University Press on climate change litigation, textbooks on both energy and climate change law, and articles in leading law and geography journals. Dean Osofsky’s Emory Law Journal article, Energy Partisanship, was awarded the 2018 Morrison Prize, which recognizes the most impactful sustainability-related legal academic article published in North America during the previous year. Dean Osofsky has collaborated extensively with business, government, and nonprofit leaders to make bipartisan progress on these issues through her leadership roles and teaching. She is a fellow of the American College of Environmental Lawyers.
Her professional leadership roles have included, among others, serving as president of the Association for Law, Property, and Society and as a member of the Dean’s Steering Committee of the American Association of Law Schools, Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, International Law Association’s Committee on the Legal Principles of Climate Change, Board of Governors of the Society of American Law Teachers, and editorial board of Climate Law. Her leadership and mentorship work was recognized by the Association for Law, Property, and Society’s 2016 Distinguished Service Award and the University of Minnesota 2015 Sara Evans Faculty Woman Scholar/Leader Award.
Dean Osofsky received a PhD in geography from the University of Oregon and a JD from Yale Law School. She clerked for Judge Dorothy W. Nelson of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Prior to joining Northwestern University, Dean Osofsky served as dean of Penn State Law and the Penn State School of International Affairs and on the faculties of University of Minnesota Law School, Washington and Lee University School of Law, the University of Oregon School of Law, and Whittier Law School.
Michael Scharf has been Co-Dean of Case Western Reserve University School of Law since 2013. He is also the Joseph C. Hostetler—BakerHostetler Professor of Law and serves as Managing Director of the Public International Law & Policy Group, a Nobel Peace Prize-nominated NGO.
Before becoming a law professor 30 years ago, Scharf served in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State, where he held the positions of Attorney-Adviser for Law Enforcement and Intelligence, Attorney-Adviser for United Nations Affairs and delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
In 2004, Scharf trained the judges for the trial of Saddam Hussein and during a sabbatical in 2008, he served as Special Assistant to the Prosecutor of the Cambodia Genocide Tribunal. In February 2022, Scharf presented an Amicus Argument before the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court in The Hague on the question of who has the burden of proof on the insanity defense in a case involving a former child soldier.
Scharf is the author of 20 books, five of which have won national book of the year honors. A recipient of the Case Western Reserve University School of Law Alumni Association’s “Distinguished Teacher Award” and Ohio Magazine’s “Excellence in Education Award,” Scharf continues to teach International Law and was ranked as among the most cited authors in the field since 2010 by the Sisk/Leiter study.
Since 2011, Scharf has been the producer and host of “Talking Foreign Policy,” a radio program broadcast on Cleveland’s NPR station and other NPR affiliates across the country, which is also available as a podcast. In 2019 Scharf was selected for life membership in the Council on Foreign Relations, in 2020 he was elected President of the American Branch of the International Law Association, and in 2021 he was elected to the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law.
