California-Berkeley Student Chapter
Speakers:
Earl Warren Professor of Public Law (Emeritus), UC Berkeley School of Law
Jesse Choper served as law clerk to Chief Justice Earl Warren of the U.S. Supreme Court following graduation from law school. He taught at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania from 1957 to 1960, and at the University of Minnesota Law School from 1961 to 1965. He joined the Berkeley Law faculty in 1965. Choper has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, Fordham Law School, University of Milan, Free University in Amsterdam, Autonoma University in Barcelona, University of New South Wales in Sydney, University of Lucerne in Switzerland, and Catholic University of Portugal in Lisbon and Porto. He served as Berkeley Law’s dean from 1982 to 1992.
From 1979 to 1998, Choper was one of the three major lecturers at U.S. Law Week’s Annual Constitutional Law Conference in Washington, D.C. He has delivered 20 titled lectures at major universities throughout the country, including the Cooley Lectures at Michigan, the Stevens Lecture at Cornell, the Baum Lecture at Illinois, and the Lockhart Lecture at Minnesota. He has served on the executive committee of the Association of American Law Schools, and on the executive council of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (of which he was vice president for more than ten years). He was national president of the Order of the Coif and is a member of the American Law Institute. In 1998 he received the UC Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award and the Rutter Award for Teaching Distinction at Berkeley Law in 2006. In 2005 the Berkeley Law Alumni Association presented Choper with the Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award and the University of Pennsylvania Law School gave him the James Wilson Award, its highest award for alumni.
Choper’s major publications include the books, Judicial Review and the National Political Process: A Functional Reconsideration of the Role of the Supreme Court, which received the Order of the Coif Triennial Book Award in 1982, and Securing Religious Liberty: Principles for Judicial Interpretation of the Religion Clauses. His recent publications include the thirteenth edition of his Constitutional Law casebooks; the eighth edition of his Corporations casebook; the second edition of The Supreme Court and Its Justices; “The Political Question Doctrine: Suggested Criteria,” in Duke Law Journal (2005); “Wartime Process: A Dialogue on Congressional Power to Remove Issues From the Federal Courts,” in California Law Review (2007) (co-author); and “Who’s Afraid of the Eleventh Amendment? The Limited Impact of the Court’s Sovereign Immunity Rulings,” in Columbia Law Review (2006) (co-author).
Associate Professor of Law, Emory Law
Fred Smith Jr. is associate professor at Emory University School of Law. He is a scholar of the federal judiciary, constitutional law, and local government. In 2019, he was named Emory Law's Outstanding Professor of the Year.
Smith clerked for Judge Myron Thompson of the Middle District of Alabama; Judge Barrington D. Parker Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; and Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the United States Supreme Court. Prior to teaching, he also worked for Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore LLP in Atlanta.
Smith's research focuses on accountability, federal jurisdiction, and state sovereignty. His work has appeared, or will appear, in Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, Michigan Law Review, New York University Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Stanford Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, among other academic journals. Notable articles include: “On Time, (In)equality, and Death,” 120 Mich. L. Rev. ___ (2021) (forthcoming); “The Constitution After Death,” 121 Colum. L. Rev. 1471 (2020); “Abstention in the Time of Ferguson,” 131 Harv. L. Rev. 2283 (2018); "Undemocratic Restraint," 69 Vand. L. Rev. 845 (2017); "Local Sovereign Immunity," 116 Colum. L. Rev. 409 (2016), and "Due Process, Republicanism, and Direct Democracy," 89 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 582 (2014). He has given lectures on related topics across the United States and internationally, including in Istanbul, Shanghai, and Warsaw. He also has been interviewed as an expert by major media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and various affiliates of National Public Radio.
In a range of volunteer capacities, Smith promotes equity and social justice. He serves on the board of Invest Atlanta, which serves as the economic and community development authority of City of Atlanta. He also serves the national board of Lambda Legal; the national board of Civil Rights Corps; and the LGBT Advisory Board of Historic Atlanta. He served as an inaugural member of Atlanta’s Mayoral LGBTQ Advisory Board. He also served as an inaugural advisory board member for the Harvard Debate Council Diversity Project, which annually trains black Atlanta youth in critical thinking and public speaking.
Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Senior Research Fellow, School of Civic Leadership, Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin; Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law. He is also Distinguished Visiting Scholar, School of Civic Leadership and Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
His most recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, co-authored with Robert Delahunty, was published in 2023. Professor Yoo’s other books include Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War, Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare, and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.
Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.
Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, Keio University in Japan, Trento University in Italy, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
Professor Yoo supervises the Public Law and Policy Program and the California Constitution Center. He also serves on the boards of the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. He is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award and been the Edwin Meese III Originalism Lecturer at the Heritage Foundation.
Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.
