Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law, UC Berkeley School of Law
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, with a joint appointment in Political Science. 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. He also has taught at DePaul College of Law and UCLA Law School.
He is the author of eleven books, including leading casebooks and treatises about constitutional law, criminal procedure, and federal jurisdiction. His most recent books are, We the People: A Progressive Reading of the Constitution for the Twenty-First Century (Picador Macmillan) published in November 2018, 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 Howard Gillman).
He also is the author of more than 200 law review articles. He writes a regular column for the Sacramento Bee, monthly columns for 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.
Dr. John Eastman is the former Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and former Dean at Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1999, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He is a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute that he founded in 1999. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage.
Prior to joining the Chapman law faculty, Dr. Eastman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and to the Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Dr. Eastman has also represented numerous clients in important constitutional law matters and has argued before the Supreme Court. On behalf of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, he has participated as amicus curiae before the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and State Supreme Courts in more than one hundred cases of constitutional significance, including Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (the school vouchers case), Kelo v. New London, Ct. (eminent domain), and Van Orden v. Perry (the 10 Commandments case). He has also appeared as an expert legal commentator on numerous television and radio programs, including C-SPAN, Fox News, PBS, NewsHour, and The O'Reilly Factor.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Sandra Segal Ikuta was confirmed as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on June 19, 2006. She filled a judgeship vacant since September 1, 2000, when Chief Judge Emeritus James R. Browning took senior status.
Before becoming a U.S. Circuit Judge, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed her to be deputy secretary and general counsel of the California Resources Agency in January 2004.
Prior to her political appointment, Judge Ikuta was a partner at the Los Angeles office of O'Melveny & Myers LLP. She joined the law firm in 1990 as an associate and became a partner in 1997. She specialized in environmental and natural resources law and co-chaired the firm's environmental practice group. She previously served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, 1989-90, and Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 1988-89.
Prior to her legal career, Judge Ikuta took an unorthodox career path, which included serving as the first female editor-in-chief of a national martial arts magazine.
She received her J.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law and a Master of Science from Columbia University School of Journalism. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1976.
In addition to her duties as an active U.S. Circuit Judge, Judge Ikuta was an appointed member of the Judicial Conference of the U.S. Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules.
Shareholder, Jackson Lewis PC
Paul DeCamp is a Shareholder in the Washington, D.C. Region office of Jackson Lewis P.C. and leader of the firm’s Wage and Hour Practice Group. His practice focuses exclusively on management-side wage and hour law.
Mr. DeCamp devotes much of his practice to complex litigation, including class, collective, and hybrid actions. He has served as lead or co-counsel in scores of class and putative class cases around the country involving such industries as restaurants, pharmaceutical sales, financial services, retail, medical supplies, security, health care, information technology, and aerospace. Mr. DeCamp also defends federal and state agency investigations, conducts preventive compliance reviews, and provides day-to-day advice and counsel regarding such issues as exempt/non-exempt classification, permissible pay deductions, measuring working time, regular rate calculations for premium overtime pay, determining proper pay and duties for tipped employees, complying with state laws concerning meal and rest periods, and independent contractor status. He has provided extensive wage and hour guidance in a variety of industries including restaurants and hospitality, retail, wholesale distribution, health care, financial services, oil and gas, and government contracting.
Before joining Jackson Lewis, Mr. DeCamp served as Administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, the chief federal officer responsible for interpreting and enforcing the Nation’s wage and hour laws on behalf of roughly 135 million workers in 7.3 million workplaces around the country. Appointed by the President, he was in charge of a federal agency with close to 1,300 employees in more than 220 offices nationwide, operating on an annual budget of more than $170 million.
Mr. DeCamp has testified in Congress on a variety of wage and hour topics, most recently in 2014. He is a frequent speaker at seminars and conferences across the country, as well as an author of numerous articles and book chapters regarding wage and hour law and litigation. He is a member of the American Employment Law Council and the editorial advisory board for Thompson Publishing Group’s four Fair Labor Standards Act publications. Since 2011, Mr. DeCamp has been listed as one of the country's leading labor and employment lawyers in Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business. He has also been selected for inclusion in Virginia Super Lawyers since 2013, after having been listed twice in Virginia Super Lawyers Rising Stars. OS Restaurant Partners (now Bloomin’ Brands), which operates Outback Steakhouse and Carrabba’s Italian Grill, among other restaurant concepts, has twice recognized Mr. DeCamp’s team at Jackson Lewis as “Purveyor of the Year.”
Mr. DeCamp received his A.B. in Government, magna cum laude, from Harvard College in 1992. In 1995, he earned his J.D. from the Columbia University School of Law, where he was a Notes Editor for the Columbia Law Review and the Director of the First-Year Moot Court Program. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Alan E. Norris of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Partner, Seyfarth & Shaw LLP
Mr. Passantino is a Co-Chair for Seyfarth & Shaw LLP’s Wage and Hour Litigation Practice Group. Mr. Passantino, the former Acting Administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, focuses his practice on all aspects of wage and hour law, including advising employers on federal and state wage and hour compliance issues, auditing payroll and employee classification practices, representing employers before the U.S. Department of Labor, and defending class and collective action litigation.
In his national practice, Mr. Passantino provides day-to-day advice and assistance to employers in their efforts to comply with the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and the state laws that require employers to pay overtime and minimum wages to their employees. In addition, Mr. Passantino provides guidance and counseling to government contractors who are subject to the Service Contract Act and the Davis-Bacon Act. He advises clients on implementing compliance programs, auditing and correcting wage and hour issues, and responding to the ever-changing wage and hour legal landscape. Mr. Passantino has also defended numerous wage and hour lawsuits, including both individual claims and class and collective actions.
Mr. Passantino is active in the hospitality, construction, retail, financial services, and energy industries, and regularly assists trade associations and individual employers in those industries with public policy, legislative, regulatory, and administrative issues. He has testified before a number of congressional committees, including the House Committee on Education and Workforce and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He is a frequent speaker on wage and hour issues, at conferences, webinars, and client-specific training sessions.
Prior to joining the Firm, Mr. Passantino served as the Deputy and Acting Administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division (WHD) from 2006 until 2009. In this role, he led the WHD in its interpretation and enforcement of the FLSA, the FMLA, the Davis-Bacon Act, the Service Contract Act, and numerous other federal statutes. Nominated by the President, Mr. Passantino was responsible for enforcement policy, field operations, strategic planning, budgeting, media relations, legislation, regulations, opinion letters, compliance assistance, and personnel matters.
Mr. Passantino joined the Department of Labor in 2005 as a Senior Policy Advisor to the Honorable Victoria A. Lipnic, former Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment Standards. In that capacity, Mr. Passantino was a member of the WHD’s Executive Team and provided legal and policy advice on a range of wage and hour matters, with emphasis on the FLSA and the FMLA.
Before his work at the Department of Labor, Mr. Passantino served as a law clerk to the Honorable John F. Nangle in the Southern District of Georgia, after which he practiced law for eight years in Atlanta and Nashville, focusing on FLSA, employment discrimination, First Amendment, and consumer and financial services litigation. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law, where he served as an Honor Court Justice and Notes Editor on the Georgia Law Review.
Professor of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh
Chris W. Bonneau is Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he has been since 2002. His research is primarily in the areas of judicial selection (specifically, judicial elections) and judicial decisionmaking. Professor Bonneau’s work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and he has published numerous articles, including in the American Journal of Political Science and Journal of Politics. He is also the coauthor of three books: Strategic Behavior and Policy Choice on the U.S. Supreme Court (2005), In Defense of Judicial Elections (2009), and the award-winning Voters’ Verdicts: Citizens, Campaigns, and Institutions in State Supreme Court Elections (2015).
Professor Bonneau teaches undergraduate classes in constitutional law, judicial politics, and research methods, as well as graduate classes in judicial politics and research design.
Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise, Vanderbilt University Law School
Brian Fitzpatrick is the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, where his research focuses on class action litigation, federal courts, judicial selection, and constitutional law. He is best known for his empirical studies of class action settlements as well as his book The Conservative Case for Class Actions (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Professor Fitzpatrick joined Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2007 after serving as the John M. Olin Fellow at New York University School of Law. He graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School and went on to clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Professor Fitzpatrick practiced commercial and appellate litigation for several years at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and served as Special Counsel for Supreme Court Nominations to U.S. Senator John Cornyn. Before earning his law degree, Fitzpatrick graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's of science in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He has received the Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award, which recognizes excellence in classroom teaching, for his Civil Procedure and Federal Courts courses.
Dr. John Eastman is the former Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and former Dean at Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1999, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He is a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute that he founded in 1999. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage.
Prior to joining the Chapman law faculty, Dr. Eastman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and to the Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Dr. Eastman has also represented numerous clients in important constitutional law matters and has argued before the Supreme Court. On behalf of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, he has participated as amicus curiae before the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and State Supreme Courts in more than one hundred cases of constitutional significance, including Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (the school vouchers case), Kelo v. New London, Ct. (eminent domain), and Van Orden v. Perry (the 10 Commandments case). He has also appeared as an expert legal commentator on numerous television and radio programs, including C-SPAN, Fox News, PBS, NewsHour, and The O'Reilly Factor.
Shareholder, Jackson Lewis PC
Paul DeCamp is a Shareholder in the Washington, D.C. Region office of Jackson Lewis P.C. and leader of the firm’s Wage and Hour Practice Group. His practice focuses exclusively on management-side wage and hour law.
Mr. DeCamp devotes much of his practice to complex litigation, including class, collective, and hybrid actions. He has served as lead or co-counsel in scores of class and putative class cases around the country involving such industries as restaurants, pharmaceutical sales, financial services, retail, medical supplies, security, health care, information technology, and aerospace. Mr. DeCamp also defends federal and state agency investigations, conducts preventive compliance reviews, and provides day-to-day advice and counsel regarding such issues as exempt/non-exempt classification, permissible pay deductions, measuring working time, regular rate calculations for premium overtime pay, determining proper pay and duties for tipped employees, complying with state laws concerning meal and rest periods, and independent contractor status. He has provided extensive wage and hour guidance in a variety of industries including restaurants and hospitality, retail, wholesale distribution, health care, financial services, oil and gas, and government contracting.
Before joining Jackson Lewis, Mr. DeCamp served as Administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, the chief federal officer responsible for interpreting and enforcing the Nation’s wage and hour laws on behalf of roughly 135 million workers in 7.3 million workplaces around the country. Appointed by the President, he was in charge of a federal agency with close to 1,300 employees in more than 220 offices nationwide, operating on an annual budget of more than $170 million.
Mr. DeCamp has testified in Congress on a variety of wage and hour topics, most recently in 2014. He is a frequent speaker at seminars and conferences across the country, as well as an author of numerous articles and book chapters regarding wage and hour law and litigation. He is a member of the American Employment Law Council and the editorial advisory board for Thompson Publishing Group’s four Fair Labor Standards Act publications. Since 2011, Mr. DeCamp has been listed as one of the country's leading labor and employment lawyers in Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business. He has also been selected for inclusion in Virginia Super Lawyers since 2013, after having been listed twice in Virginia Super Lawyers Rising Stars. OS Restaurant Partners (now Bloomin’ Brands), which operates Outback Steakhouse and Carrabba’s Italian Grill, among other restaurant concepts, has twice recognized Mr. DeCamp’s team at Jackson Lewis as “Purveyor of the Year.”
Mr. DeCamp received his A.B. in Government, magna cum laude, from Harvard College in 1992. In 1995, he earned his J.D. from the Columbia University School of Law, where he was a Notes Editor for the Columbia Law Review and the Director of the First-Year Moot Court Program. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Alan E. Norris of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Partner, Seyfarth & Shaw LLP
Mr. Passantino is a Co-Chair for Seyfarth & Shaw LLP’s Wage and Hour Litigation Practice Group. Mr. Passantino, the former Acting Administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, focuses his practice on all aspects of wage and hour law, including advising employers on federal and state wage and hour compliance issues, auditing payroll and employee classification practices, representing employers before the U.S. Department of Labor, and defending class and collective action litigation.
In his national practice, Mr. Passantino provides day-to-day advice and assistance to employers in their efforts to comply with the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and the state laws that require employers to pay overtime and minimum wages to their employees. In addition, Mr. Passantino provides guidance and counseling to government contractors who are subject to the Service Contract Act and the Davis-Bacon Act. He advises clients on implementing compliance programs, auditing and correcting wage and hour issues, and responding to the ever-changing wage and hour legal landscape. Mr. Passantino has also defended numerous wage and hour lawsuits, including both individual claims and class and collective actions.
Mr. Passantino is active in the hospitality, construction, retail, financial services, and energy industries, and regularly assists trade associations and individual employers in those industries with public policy, legislative, regulatory, and administrative issues. He has testified before a number of congressional committees, including the House Committee on Education and Workforce and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He is a frequent speaker on wage and hour issues, at conferences, webinars, and client-specific training sessions.
Prior to joining the Firm, Mr. Passantino served as the Deputy and Acting Administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division (WHD) from 2006 until 2009. In this role, he led the WHD in its interpretation and enforcement of the FLSA, the FMLA, the Davis-Bacon Act, the Service Contract Act, and numerous other federal statutes. Nominated by the President, Mr. Passantino was responsible for enforcement policy, field operations, strategic planning, budgeting, media relations, legislation, regulations, opinion letters, compliance assistance, and personnel matters.
Mr. Passantino joined the Department of Labor in 2005 as a Senior Policy Advisor to the Honorable Victoria A. Lipnic, former Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment Standards. In that capacity, Mr. Passantino was a member of the WHD’s Executive Team and provided legal and policy advice on a range of wage and hour matters, with emphasis on the FLSA and the FMLA.
Before his work at the Department of Labor, Mr. Passantino served as a law clerk to the Honorable John F. Nangle in the Southern District of Georgia, after which he practiced law for eight years in Atlanta and Nashville, focusing on FLSA, employment discrimination, First Amendment, and consumer and financial services litigation. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law, where he served as an Honor Court Justice and Notes Editor on the Georgia Law Review.
Deputy District Attorney, Philadelphia District Attorney's Office
Ronald Eisenberg heads the Law Division of the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office. The 60 lawyers in the division handle appeals, habeas corpus and civil litigation, and legislative matters. Mr. Eisenberg has appeared at all levels of the state and federal court system, and has argued several cases in the United States Supreme Court.
Mr. Eisenberg is a member of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Investigating Grand Jury Task Force and the Advisory Committee for the Pennsylvania Suggested Standard Criminal Jury Instructions. He has represented his office on the Pennsylvania Advisory Committee on Wrongful Convictions, was an adjunct professor at Temple University School of Law, teaching legal writing and research, and has served on the Pennsylvania Criminal Rules and Appellate Rules Committees. He is a past president and current board member of the Association of Government Attorneys in Capital Litigation, a national organization of capital prosecutors.
Mr. Eisenberg received his bachelor's degree from Haverford College in 1978 and his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1981.
J.D., University of Pennsylvania
B.A., Haverford College
Dr. John Eastman is the former Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and former Dean at Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1999, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He is a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute that he founded in 1999. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage.
Prior to joining the Chapman law faculty, Dr. Eastman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and to the Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Dr. Eastman has also represented numerous clients in important constitutional law matters and has argued before the Supreme Court. On behalf of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, he has participated as amicus curiae before the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and State Supreme Courts in more than one hundred cases of constitutional significance, including Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (the school vouchers case), Kelo v. New London, Ct. (eminent domain), and Van Orden v. Perry (the 10 Commandments case). He has also appeared as an expert legal commentator on numerous television and radio programs, including C-SPAN, Fox News, PBS, NewsHour, and The O'Reilly Factor.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
United States Supreme Court Round-Up
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