News

Professor Raquel Aldana has been appointed to a second yearlong term as special advisor to the Latin American Council of the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative.

In this role, Aldana advises a team of lawyers who implement rule of law projects, and at times engages in specific projects. Aldana recently advised a team of lawyers in Paraguay who were considering adopting a bar exam.

Professor Shayak Sarkar spoke to Newsweek for a June 22 story asking whether increasing the number of foreign-born workers contributing to the U.S. tax system could help save Social Security from an uncertain future.

Sarkar told Newsweek that including more immigrants into the tax system will help provide additional funds. 

Professor Elizabeth Joh and co-host Roman Mars have released five new episodes of their What Roman Mars Can Learn About Con Law podcast over the past few months.

Episode 79, "Law-Free Zone," explores the implications of the Supreme Court having created what Justice Sonia Sotomayor called a “law-free zone around the president.” 

Professor Nila Bala is an expert on children and the law. She has published in the Michigan Law Review, the Boston College Law Review, the Federal Sentencing Reporter, and other prestigious journals. She presented her article “Parent-Child Privilege as Resistance” at the 2024 Harvard/Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum. She also publishes essays in mainstream outlets, including the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Professor Brian Soucek has been elected to the American Law Institute, the nation’s premier non-governmental law reform organization. UC Davis Law now counts 26 current or emeriti faculty in the ALI.

On July 10, Professor Afra Afsharipour participated in the webinar “Corporate DEI in the Time of Polarization.” 

On Sunday, Aug. 18, the New York Times highlighted a 2010 political debate, held at King Hall, that ignited the political career of now-Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit cited an article by Professor David Horton in affirming a district court decision that an arbitration agreement could not be enforced in the hostile work environment case Olivieri v. Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.

On Aug. 22, Professor Raquel Aldana participated in a roundtable of experts organized by the UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy and El Colegio de México (Colmex) titled “Bridging Borders: Immigration Policy and Legal Perspectives on Migration Between the USA and Mexico.”

The workshop convened Mexican and U.S. scholars and other experts and stakeholders to identify ways to engage in transnational collaboration to improve the plight of migrants in Mexico.

Bloomberg Tax visited King Hall to interview Professor Darien Shanske for a video (watch below) about how California’s Bradley-Burns Uniform Local Sales and Use Tax Law allows cities that hold big retailers’ warehouses to share local tax revenues with the corporations.

Professor Lisa Pruitt spoke to reporter Catarina Maldonado Vasconcelos for an Aug.

Professor Nila Bala has been named a 2024-25 Public Scholarship Faculty Fellow by UC Davis’ Office of Public Scholarship and Engagement. 

As part of the fellowship, Bala will write public scholarship pieces critiquing “civil Miranda” warnings, which inform parents of their rights during child welfare investigations.

On Aug. 28, outgoing UC Davis Law Dean Kevin R. Johnson was honored with a joint resolution from California Senator Bill Dodd and Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry. 

Dean Kevin R. Johnson is the third most-cited dean at the 64 most-cited law schools. The ranking was recently posted on Pepperdine Caruso School of Law Dean Paul Caron's TaxProf Blog. 

Dean Kevin R.

Former President Donald Trump’s notice of $100 million claim against the U.S. Department of Justice regarding the 2022 raid on his Florida home in his classified-documents case is “terribly weak,” Professor Gabriel “Jack” Chin told Salon.com

From Dean Jessica Berg: 

Welcome, Class of 2027, transfer and LL.M. students. And welcome back, second- and third-year students.

Today marks the start of the academic year and a new chapter for me, as the incoming dean of UC Davis School of Law. I am so honored to lead a law school that stays true to its foundational principle of equal access to justice while finding new and innovative ways to pursue it.

Multiple media outlets have interviewed Professor David Horton about Disney’s attempt to send a wrongful death claim to arbitration.

The UC Davis Law faculty finished No. 18 in the latest “scholarly impact rankings” of 
top law faculties in the United States. UC Davis rose four places since 2021, the last time rankings were released.

This week, UC Davis School of Law welcomed one of the most accomplished and diverse first-year classes in the law school’s history.

The Class of 2027 consists of 198 students, with a median undergraduate GPA of 3.68 and median LSAT score of 163. A remarkable 68% of the class are students of color, with enrollment of African American (14%) and Latinx (26%) first-year students at their highest levels in at least a decade. The class includes four Native American students. Women compose 54% of the class, and 24% of 1L students identify as LGBTQ+.

International media outlets have sought Professor Lisa R. Pruitt’s perspective on what the selections of Republican Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance and Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as vice presidential candidates might mean from a rural, working-class perspective.

On Aug. 1, the Los Angeles Times published an expansive story on Woodland’s Chicago Cafe focused on the impact of Professor Gabriel “Jack” Chin’s multidisciplinary UC Davis study that identified the café to be the oldest Chinese restaurant in California and likely the United States.

Professor Darien Shanske spoke to Jacobin magazine about the Tax Foundation’s TaxEDU, a high school and college curriculum program promoting pro-business messages, including one that big companies paying fewer taxes helps protect employee jobs. 

Subjecting incarcerated people to extreme temperatures is “akin to torture,” Professor Carter White told the Washington Post in a July 30 story about a lack of air conditioning or other cooling measures in many state and federal prisons.

Dean Kevin R. Johnson spoke to the Sacramento Bee about then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ role in Sergio Garcia’s long struggle to become the first undocumented licensed attorney in California.