Albany Law School is proud to announce that Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, renowned scholar of constitutional law and one of the foremost legal experts on the First Amendment, is coming to campus for a special "First Mondays" discussion, "The Constitution in 2020: Challenges in the Modern Age," on March 23, 2020.

Dean Chemerinsky will engage in a wide-ranging conversation on the constitutional themes that overlay the pressing social, cultural, and economic issues of our time, including free speech on campus, a topic about which he has extensively written. He will be joined by Prof. Ted De Barbieri and Prof. Patricia Reyhan, the moderators of Albany Law School's "First Mondays" series.

While on campus, Dean Chemerinsky will also discuss research and scholarship with faculty, participate in a lunch with student leaders and faculty, and visit a class on family law.

"We are so excited to host Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, a widely cited scholar and highly respected leader in our profession," said President and Dean Alicia Ouellette. "To hear from—and spend time with—someone of Dean Chemerinsky's stature will be an incredible learning experience for our students as well as our faculty. His visit will be one to remember."

Albany Law School's "First Mondays" series, launched in 2019, brings students together with scholars and noteworthy guests to talk about the legal overlay on newsworthy issues of the day.

About Dean Erwin Chemerinsky

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 to 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 to 2008, and from 1983 to 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 11 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.