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Chemerinsky (Erwin) papers
MS.F.046
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Table of contents
Contributing Institution:
Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Irvine
Libraries
Title: Erwin Chemerinsky papers
Creator:
Chemerinsky, Erwin
Identifier/Call Number: MS.F.046
Physical Description:
106 Linear Feet
(127 boxes)
(89 records cartons, 25 document boxes, 7 audiovisual boxes, 6 digital media
boxes)
Date (inclusive): 1970-2017
Abstract: This collection comprises the papers of
Erwin Chemerinsky, American lawyer, scholar, and founding dean of the UC Irvine School of
Law. The papers consist of professional, scholarly, and personal materials documenting his
life and career, including publications, teaching materials, case and research files, files
related to special projects he worked on, audio and video recordings, media and publicity
materials, correspondence, and college and early professional papers. Materials are in
analog and digital formats.
Language of Material:
English .
The collection is open for research. Audiovisual material has been reformatted and have
digital preservation copies. Access to original tapes is restricted; researchers may request
listening/viewing copies. The copies may only be used in the UC Irvine Libraries Special
Collections and Archives Reading Room and may not be duplicated.
Property rights reside with the University of California. Copyrights are retained by the
creators of the records and their heirs. For permission to reproduce or to publish, please
contact the University Archivist.
Digital material is provided for private study, scholarship, or research. Transmission or
reproduction of any material protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires
the written permission of the copyright owners. The authors or their heirs retain their
copyrights to the material. Contact the University of California, Irvine Libraries, Special
Collections and Archives for more information (spcoll@uci.edu).
Erwin Chemerinsky papers. MS-F046. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine
Libraries, Irvine, California. [Date accessed].
For the benefit of current and future researchers, please cite any additional information
about sources consulted in this collection, including permanent URLs, item or folder
descriptions, and box/folder locations.
Gift of Erwin Chemerinsky, 2017; a further accrual was transferred from UCI School of Law,
2019.
Processed by Sarah Glover, 2018-2019.
Erwin Chemerinsky is an American lawyer and scholar, known for his studies in United States
constitutional law and federal civil procedure. He served as the founding dean of the
University of California, Irvine School of Law from 2009 to 2017, and is currently the dean
of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.
Chemerinsky was born in Chicago, Illinois, on May 14, 1953. He attended high school at
University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and earned his Bachelor of Science degree in
Communications from Northwestern University in 1975, where he also competed as a debater. He
then attended Harvard Law School and graduated
cum laude in 1978. Chemerinsky
married fellow law professor, Catherine Fisk, in 1993 and have two children, Alex and Mara.
He also has two sons, Jeffrey and Adam, from his first marriage to Marcy Strauss.
Chemerinsky began his academic career teaching at DePaul University College of Law from
1980-1984. During this period he was also named Director of the National High School
Institute in Speech, Forensics Division at Northwestern University (1981-1982), which
provided intensive and comprehensive summer debate experience to high school debaters. He
became a visiting Associate Professor at the University of Southern California Gould School
of Law in 1983 and joined the faculty a year later. He became a Professor in 1987 before
being appointed the Legion Lex Professor of Law (1991-1997), Sydney M. Irmas Professor of
Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics, and Political Science (1997-2004) and Director of the
Center for Communications Law and Policy (2000-2004). In 2004, Chemerinsky became the Alston
and Bird Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke University until 2008. He has also
been a lecturer for BAR/BRI bar review since 1989, teaching Constitutional Law and
Professional Responsibility.
In fall 2007, Chemerinsky was named the founding Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law of
UC Irvine School of Law, effective July 2008, where he appointed his "dream team" of faculty
and staff to form the foundation of the Law School. His expertise in First Amendment law led
to him being named as Raymond Pryke Professor of First Amendment Law with a joint
appointment in Political Science in 2013, where he taught, wrote, and spoke on First
Amendment issues, including the role of a free press in preserving democratic society. In
the highest debut ranking by a new law school, UC Irvine School of Law ranked number 30 in
its first year of eligibility. The Inaugural Class of 2012 passed the California bar at a
rate of 90 percent, second only to Stanford among state law schools. The Class of 2012 was
also ranked in the top 20 of The National Law Journal's list of Go-To Law Schools, which
measured percentage of students obtaining jobs at the nation's 250 largest law firms.
Chemerinsky became the 13th Dean of Berkeley Law in July 2017, when he joined the faculty
as the Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law.
In addition to his academic career, Chemerinsky began practicing law as a trial attorney
for the United States Department of Justice (1978-1979) and at Dobrovir, Oakes &
Gebhardt in Washington, D.C. (1979-1980). Since then he has frequently argued
pro
bono
appellate cases, including serving as counsel of record and arguing in the
Supreme Court of the United States in
United States v. Apel (2013),
Scheidler v. NOW (2005),
Van Orden v. Perry (2005),
Tory
v. Cochran
(2005), and
Lockyer v. Andrade (2003). He has briefed and
argued cases in federal courts of appeals, the California Supreme Court, and other
courts.
Over the years he has been involved in many high profile projects and professional
activities, including serving as Commissioner and Chair of the Los Angeles Elected Charter
Reform Commission (1997-1999) which proposed a new City Charter, and was adopted by voters
in June 1999; preparing and publishing an An Independent Analysis of the Los Angeles Police
Department's Board of Inquiry Report on the Rampart Scandal (September 2000), at the request
of the Los Angeles Police Protective League; serving as Chair of the Mayor's Blue Ribbon
Commission on City Contracting in Los Angeles to review irregularities, which issued its
report in February 2005; helped draft the Constitution of Belarus (1992-1993); testifying
many times before congressional and state legislative committees, including as a witness
before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the hearings of Samuel Alito for confirmation to
the Supreme Court in January 2006; and serving as a commentator on the O.J. Simpson trial on
KCBS-TV, KNX, and CBS News in 1995.
Chemerinsky is the author of 11 books including
The Case Against the Supreme
Court
, published by Viking in 2014, and two books published by Yale University
Press in 2017,
Closing the Courthouse Doors: How Your Constitutional Rights Became
Unenforceable
and
Free Speech on Campus (with Chancellor of UCI,
Howard Gillman). He is also the author of more than 200 law review articles. He writes a
weekly column for the
Sacramento Bee, monthly columns for the
American
Bar Association Journal
and the
Daily Journal, and frequent op-eds in
newspapers across the country.
In 2016, he was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In January
2017,
National Jurist magazine again named Chemerinsky as the most influential
person in legal education in the United States.
| May 14, 1953 | Born in Chicago, Illinois |
| 1975 | Graduated from Northwestern University (B.S., Communications) |
| 1978 | Graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School |
| 1978-1979 | Attorney, Attorney General's Program for Honor Law Graduates, United States Department of Justice, Civil Division, Frauds Section, Washington, D.C. |
| 1979-1980 | Attorney, Dobrovir, Oakes, and Gebhardt, Washington, D.C. |
| 1980-1984 | Taught at DePaul University College of Law |
| 1981-1982 | Director, Northwestern University, National High School Institute in Speech, Forensics Division, Evanston, Illinois |
| 1982-1983 | Debate Manager, Mayoral Campaign of Harold Washington, Chicago, Illinois |
| 1983-2004 | Taught at University of Southern California Gould School of Law |
| 1986-present | Lecturer, BAR/BRI bar review (Constitutional Law; Professional Responsibility) |
| 1987 | Published Interpreting the Constitution |
| 1989 | Published the first edition of Federal Jurisdiction |
| 1992 | Member, Technical Assistance in Constitution Drafting for the Republic of Belarus, American Bar Association, Central and Eastern European Law Initiative, Minsk, Belarus |
| 1993 | Married Catherine Fisk |
| 1995 | Commentator on the O.J. Simpson trial on KCBS-TV, KNX, and CBS News |
| 1996-1997 | President, Academic Senate, University of Southern California (President-elect, 1995-1996) |
| 1997 | Published first edition of Constitutional Law: Principles and Policies |
| 1997-1999 | Commissioner and Chair, Los Angeles Elected Charter Reform Commission |
| 2000 | Prepared An Independent Analysis of the Los Angeles Police Department's Board of Inquiry Report on the Rampart Scandal |
| 2001 | Published first edition of Constitutional Law |
| 2003 | Argued at the Supreme Court of the United States in Lockyer v. Andrade |
| 2004-2005 | Chair, Mayor's Blue Ribbon Commission on City Contracting in Los Angeles |
| 2004-2008 | Taught at Duke University |
| 2005 | Argued at the Supreme Court of the United States in Tory v. Cochran |
| 2005 | Argued at the Supreme Court of the United States in Van Orden v. Perry |
| 2005 | Argued at the Supreme Court of the United States in Scheidler v. N.O.W. |
| 2008 | Published Enhancing Government: Federalism for the 21st Century |
| 2008-2017 | Became founding Dean of UC Irvine School of Law |
| 2013 | Argued at the Supreme Court of the United States in United States v. Apel |
| 2017 | Became the 13th Dean of Berkeley Law |
| 2017 | Published Closing the Courthouse Doors: How Your Constitutional Rights Became Unenforceable and Free Speech on Campus (with Howard Gillman) |
Collection Scope and Content Summary
This collection comprises the professional and personal papers of Erwin Chemerinsky, which
documents his life and career as a scholar, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law, attorney,
as well as the numerous special projects he has engaged in outside of the legal and academic
sphere. Materials range from his early work as a student at Northwestern University in
Illinois to his recent scholarly work. He is the author of more than 200 law review articles
and the collection contains many of them up to 2011, as well as drafts of articles, books,
and speeches. His academic career is documented by a comprehensive collection of teaching
notes, evaluations, and other teaching materials, as well as correspondence and
administrative files documenting his time teaching at DePaul University (1980-1984),
University of Southern California (1983-2004), Duke University (2004-2008), and becoming the
founding dean of the UC Irvine School of Law (2008-2017).
His professional career as an attorney is also well documented in the collection, with
files from over 100 cases, including five cases he argued in front of the Supreme Court of
the United States. The collection also contains a wide-range of research files and material
related to special projects he undertook, most notably as Chair of the Los Angeles Elected
Charter Reform Commission (1997-1999) and publishing an Independent Analysis of the Board of
Inquiry Report on the Rampart Police Scandal (September 2000). Although the collection
comprises mostly paper records, there is a significant portion of digital media and audio
visual recordings. There is a small amount of personal material in the collection, including
awards and certificates, appointment books, material about his time as a student at
Northwestern and Harvard, a high school diary, private correspondence, and some
photographs.
The collection is organized in the following seven series:
- Writings, 1979-2017. 15 linear feet
- Academic career, 1980-2017. 23 linear feet
- Case files, 1979-2016. 30 linear feet
- Research and reference files, 1993-2008. 12 linear feet
- Special projects and reports, 1977-2017. 15 linear feet
- Audio visual material, circa 1984-2005. 2.5 linear feet
- Personal, 1970-2016. 5.5 linear feet
During processing the collection was reduced from 210 linear feet to 106 linear feet by
discarding duplicate materials, financial records, personnel records, material under
Attorney-Client Privilege or the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), and
materials outside of the scope of the collection.