Digital Commons Network^™

Until The Cages Are Empty: Transgender Criminal Defense As A Necessary Tactic Of Prison-Industrial Complex Abolition, Lark Mulligan

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

This article is a practical guide in the fight to abolish the prison-industrial complex as well as institutionalized transphobia and cissexism. Focusing specifically on the practice area of criminal defense, this article proposes a model that must be replicated across jurisdictions wherever transgender people are criminalized. By instituting an interdisciplinary team approach that is non-hierarchical, strengths-based, trauma-informed, community focused, holistic, harm-reductionist, and abolitionist, practitioners will find their role in this movement as one of consensus building, knowledge sharing, community empowerment, institutional navigation, and access distribution. As discrimination and violence against trans people continues to rise, practitioners must learn to not …

Bruen, Levels Of Generality, And Our Historical Tradition Of The Regulatory “Why”, Kevin K. Wang

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

To pass Second Amendment muster under New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, gun laws encompassed by the Amendment’s plain text must align with our nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. A challenged law comports with history and tradition when it is sufficiently analogous to historical regulations along two metrics: “how” and “why” the regulation burdens the right to keep and bear arms.

One glaring ambiguity leftover from Bruen is the level of generality at which courts, when analogizing between laws past and present, must frame a regulation’s “how” and “why”—an issue of major consequence. Characterizing the “how” …

The Private Prison Problem: Finding Pathways To Justice In HawaiʻI, Nathan Lee

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

This article considers the many obstacles in place to challenging private prison operation. Given decades of meaningful scholarship and legal activism on the “private prison problem”, it is puzzling that successful challenges to privatized incarceration remain elusive. This article seeks to introduce the lengthy and tragic history of Hawaiʻi’s use of out of state private prisons, stretching from 1995 to the present. For 30 years, people have been sent thousands of miles from home, effectively banished. Worse, Hawaiʻi has failed to take appropriate action to implement oversight or to bring individuals back home. Moreover, despite Hawaiʻi’s prominent involvement in private, …

Infinite Justice: A Critique Of Capitalism & Capital Punishment, Anthony P. Farley

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

Capitalism began in murder. Bodies were marked by slavery, colonialism, and genocide, white to have, and black to have not. Capitalism, “covered in dirt and dripping with blood,” was born of these three “primitive accumulations.” Slavery is death, and just like colonialism and genocide, it is a capital sentence. The law of capital punishment continues this legacy of murder and racism, as if on “rails to infinity.” This article uses insights from the critique of political economy to examine the death penalty, and the role of law generally, in maintaining racial and other inequalities. Law’s Justice enacts an endless repetition-&-forgetting …

Chancellor & Dean Search Committee - Open Session Book 03/20/2026, Uc Law Sf

2026 Board of Directors Agenda and Materials

No abstract provided.

Chancellor & Dean Search Committee - Open Session Book 03/13/2026, Uc Law Sf

2026 Board of Directors Agenda and Materials

No abstract provided.

Disarming Data: An Empirical Take On The Loaded Debate About Felon-In-Possession Of A Firearm, Jonathan Abel

UC Law Journal

This Article answers a crucial empirical question at the heart of the scholarly and judicial debates about the laws governing felon-in-possession of a firearm: How often do defendants charged with this offense have violent felony convictions? Using a comprehensive dataset of over 27,000 defendants charged in California from 2021 through 2024, the study provides a novel, large-scale analysis of how prosecutors deploy this most-common gun charge. The findings substantiate longstanding concerns that felon-in-possession is overbroad in its application to nonviolent felons—only 8.5% of defendants had a “violent felony” conviction as defined by California law, rising to just 28.8% under a …

Finance Committee Meeting - Open Session Book 02/19/2026, Uc Law Sf

2026 Board of Directors Agenda and Materials

No abstract provided.

Prevention Beyond Deterrence, Benjamin A. Barsky

Faculty Scholarship

This Article reconceptualizes preventive justice—the public safety paradigm that seeks to prevent harm before it occurs. Scholars have long documented how cities have advanced this paradigm through largely punitive measures, notably variants of broken windows policing, which posit that aggressive misdemeanor enforcement deters more serious crime. Yet in the aftermath of the 2020 George Floyd protests, and as underscored recently in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, these measures have faced a legitimacy crisis—prompting calls for nonpunitive responses to nonviolent incidents.

This Article establishes a preventive justice approach that advances health and safety without emphasizing crime deterrence. It draws on …

Freedom Of Expression In Next-Generation Computing, Brittan Heller

UC Law Journal

Extended reality (XR)—the integration of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality technologies—creates immersive, embodied, and behaviorally integrated forms of communication that challenge traditional understandings of freedom of expression. While XR offers new opportunities for creativity, civic engagement, and cross-cultural participation, its immersive nature introduces risks of censorship, surveillance, biometric profiling, algorithmic manipulation, and inequitable access.

This Article situates XR within the framework of European human rights law. It begins by identifying the technical and psychological features that distinguish XR from conventional platforms, particularly presence, immersion, and embodiment, which transform speech into multisensory and interactive experiences. It then evaluates how existing legal …

Wide Nets, Heavy Burdens: Unpacking Executive Order 14105’S Final Rule, Breanna Li

UC Law Journal

Executive Order 14105 “Addressing United States Investments in Certain National Security Technologies and Products in Countries of Concern” was enacted to protect U.S. national security interests in light of China’s military technological growth. This Executive Order creates an outbound investment review program that restricts investments by a U.S. person into companies in specified countries operating in certain technology sectors. This Note will discuss the background of geopolitical tensions between the United States and China, review E.O. 14105, and argue that the program it creates results in burdensome unintended consequences to the U.S. economy. These unintended circumstances include: (1) high regulatory …

Uc Law Sf 2025 Long Range Campus Plan, Uc Law Sf

Long Range Campus Planning Archive

No abstract provided.

To Insure Domestic Tranquility And Provide For The Common Defence: The Preamble’S Concern With Internal And External Threats, Stuart Ford

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Dobbs, State Policies, And Minors’ Interests In An Open Future, Lois A. Weithorn

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

The United States Supreme Court discarded five decades of established federal constitutional doctrine with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Following Dobbs, legislators in some states rushed to restrict the decisions of pregnant persons. Litigation, executive actions, and voter initiatives, including attempts to amend state constitutions, quickly followed. At the time of this writing, access to abortion is severely restricted in large swaths of the country. Increasing numbers of pregnant persons have sought out-of-state services through telehealth or cross-border travel. Some states have created new forms of criminal or civil liability in an effort to prevent its …

In Place Of Prison, Grace Y. Li

UC Law Journal

A new, previously unstudied institution is addressing felonies, including violent felonies of the highest levels, without imposing incarceration as the sanction. Attempts to abolish prisons, or at least reduce racialized mass incarceration, must consider how to respond to serious and violent crimes. This Article offers an analysis of a real-world, ongoing experiment in doing so.

The Manhattan Felony Alternative-to-Incarceration Court (“ATI Court”) is the first and, thus far, the only court in the country that systematically offers defendants of any demographic and any charge the opportunity to be diverted from the traditional criminal legal system and to avoid prison. Defendants …

Finance Committee Meeting - Open Session Book 05/22/2025, Uc Law Sf

2025 Board of Directors Agenda and Materials

No abstract provided.

Hate Groups And The Charitable Tax Exemption, Miriam Galston

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Finance Committee Meeting - Open Session Book 02/27/2025, Uc Law Sf

2025 Board of Directors Agenda and Materials

No abstract provided.

California’S Bug Problem: The Backup Generation Information Gap And Its Impact On Vulnerable Communities, Andrew H. Jacobs

UC Law Journal

California’s electricity system has faced unprecedented challenges in recent years. Extreme heat, wildfires, and additional severe weather events stressed the system to a breaking point. The state’s electric grid operator repeatedly called for rolling blackouts on hot summer days to preserve the integrity of the electric grid. Electric utilities proactively shut off power during dry and windy conditions to prevent their equipment from sparking wildfires. Strings of powerful winter storms left hundreds of thousands across the state without power for multiple days.

In response to the poor reliability of the electrical grid, demand for backup generation has skyrocketed. Both residents …

Targeted And Ticketed: Student Ticketing And The Perpetuation Of The School-To- Prison Pipeline, Jasmine Richardson-Rushin, Angelica Jimenez, Gwendolyn Walker, Hannah Benton Eidsath

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

The National Center for Youth Law (NCYL) is a non-profit organization working to end the harms of the juvenile, municipal and criminal legal systems, including by decriminalizing normal adolescent behavior, ending financial consequences, and improving children’s access to adequate developmentally appropriate treatment. Our work prioritizes eradicating the school-to-prison pipeline, and abolishing harmful fines, fees and economic sanctions through the Debt Free Justice Campaign (DFJ).

In school districts across the nation, students receive fees and fines as consequences for school-based behavior. Students are policed and ticketed for age-appropriate behaviors and disciplinary matters such as littering, truancy, and underage drinking and smoking. …

Legislatively Erased: The Failure Of Privacy Legislation To Protect People Connected To The Criminal Legal System, Kate Weisburd, Chaz Arnett

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Criminal Procedure Without Consent, Kate Weisburd

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars and advocates have long argued that a person’s consent to a warrantless police search is often so inherently coerced, uninformed, and shaped by race, class, gender, citizenship status, and disability that to call it a “choice” is fiction. This critique is not limited to police searches based on consent. Waiving rights and consenting to otherwise unconstitutional state action permeates criminal procedure. The definition of a seizure, the third-party doctrine, custodial confessions, plea bargains, and agreements to alternatives to incarceration (such as GPS ankle monitoring) all hinge on the idea of voluntary choices—choices that are often just as coerced and …

Secretive Sheriffs: Opacity And Variation In California's Jail Responses To Covid-19, Hadar Aviram, Aparna Komarla

Faculty Scholarship

Agnotology is the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data. In this Article, we draw attention to a disturbing site of agnotology: healthcare in California jails. Often obscured because of the attention to state prisons, jails were sites of opacity and misinformation, largely because of sheriffs’ refusal to collaborate with data collection efforts—both coordinated by the state and solicited through non-profits.

Building on the data collection effort of the Covid In-Custody Project and on public advocacy efforts of the #StopSanQuentinOutbreak coalition and its off-shoots, we show the chasm between data on …

Finance Committee Meeting - Open Session Book 11/21/2024, Uc Law Sf

2024 Board of Directors Agenda and Materials

No abstract provided.

Board Of Directors Special Meeting - Open Session Book 10/22/2024, Uc Law Sf

2024 Board of Directors Agenda and Materials

No abstract provided.

Subcommittee On Audit Meeting – Open Session Book 10/15/2024, Uc Law Sf

2024 Board of Directors Agenda and Materials

No abstract provided.

The Uncertain Future Of Restorative Justice: Anti-Woke Legislation, Retrenchment And Politics Of The Right, Thalia González, Mara Schiff

Center for Racial and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Will The New Roberts Court Revive A Formalist Approach To Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence?, Roger Antonio Tejada

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

While all Chief Justices leave behind distinctive periods of judicial thought and practice, the quantitative and qualitative data presented in this article show that the Roberts Court in particular stands out in the development of Fourth Amendment precedent. The key cases that shaped the search and seizure doctrine before and during his rise show that, contrary to what many may expect, Chief Justice Roberts will likely oversee limited, pro-defendant decisions that could grant additional legitimacy to the Court’s crime-control jurisprudence. On the other hand, the new Justices’ voting records and writings suggest that there are several potential coalitions that could …

Finance Committee Meeting - Open Session Book (6) 08/22/2024, Uc Law Sf

2024 Board of Directors Agenda and Materials

No abstract provided.

Finance Committee Meeting - Open Session Book (1) 08/22/2024, Uc Law Sf

2024 Board of Directors Agenda and Materials

No abstract provided.