InsightSan Francisco Chronicle and SFGate.com | Sunday, February 26, 2012 | Section E

+BooksPullout section begins after page E6Opinion, Editorials and more

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Debra J. Saunders: GOP’s last men standing are resting on their outdated political records Page E2 | John Diaz: The unfortunate case of Peter Gleick Page E3

100 years on the cutting edge of the law Page E4

E4 Insight | San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate.com | Sunday, February 26, 2012

Boalt has a rich history among itsfaculty and alumni of drafting legalprotections for the wrongfully ac-cused, the disabled and the poor; ofprotecting our environment, our civilrights and our free speech. Our re-search centers tackle society’s tough-est challenges, including climatechange, identity theft and patent pro-tection. Some of these issues barelyexisted at the start of the 20th centu-ry. Today, they are full-blown con-cerns with global impact.

I think about the future in twoways. First, what problems will ourlawyers and the law face in the 21stcentury? In an economy ever moredependent upon technology and glob-al financial markets, lawyers are go-ing to have to understand not onlythe law but also science, economicsand business strategy.

Our teaching can’t simply echo thetraining of the past two centuries. Ithas to include a broad understandingof a range of disciplines. Second, howcan legal training produce better busi-ness and government leaders outsideof traditional legal practice?

From finance to health care to glob-al poverty, legal training will make adifference. In a global market, theneed to protect our civil liberties reso-nates on a grander scale. Take priva-cy: A breach could spew hugeamounts of our personal data to aworldwide audience. The potential for

harm is enormous, yet modern priva-cy law is still in its infancy. In thedigital information age, how do youassess the damage of data breaches,and who pays the penalty?

Our 21st century public mission isnot simply serving Californians oreven Americans but being global citi-zens. We need to think about thekind of legal culture and legal prob-lem solving that all of humanityneeds. America’s future security andprosperity depend upon it.

Every year, lawyers from dozens ofcountries enroll at our school to studyfundamentals of U.S. law. Graduatesinclude a municipal judge in Italy, abank executive in Singapore, a humanrights activist in El Salvador. Theseinternational students learn about ourconstitutional rights and laws andshare that knowledge back home. Welearn about their legal traditions andcultures, too. Globalization is in partabout bringing the world to Berkeley,but it’s also about taking Berkeley out

to the world.Whether the issue is the economic

development and the role of law inChina, reforming our immigrationstatutes here in the United States orworking on human rights in Bangla-desh, the result will be to strengthencivil liberties at home and abroad.

Christopher Edley Jr. is the dean ofBerkeley Law and co-director of BerkeleyLaw’s Chief Justice Earl Warren Instituteon Law and Social Policy.

Boalt looks to the future after a century on law’s cutting edgeBy Christopher Edley Jr.

UC Berkeley School of Law cel-ebrates its centennial this yearand its long tradition of leader-ship in legal education. What setsus apart from other great lawschools is our core mission ofpublic service and public engage-ment. We want to be excellentwith a purpose: to address themost difficult problems facing oursociety.

Paul Chinn / The Chronicle

At Berkeley Law, the 21st century public mission is to think about legal problem-solving that benefits all humanity.

100 YEARS UC Berkeley School of Law

Sunday, February 26, 2012 | San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate.com | Insight E5

op California’s data-breach notificationlaw, which was the nation’s first. Theconsequence? If a company in Californialoses your personal information, it hasto tell you exactly what happened.

Wondering about who is watchingyou online? Professor Chris Hoofnaglehas revealed new secret methods thatcompanies use to monitor users online,and he has advanced the cause of priva-cy in Web surfing.

Professor Jason Schulz and JenniferUrban of the law school’s Samuelsonclinic have played a key role in persuad-ing the California Public Utilities Com-mission to adopt the nation’s first set ofrules protecting the privacy and securityof information gathered by smart me-

When someone sues another forharm to his privacy, whether or not heknows it, he relies on the Prosser ap-proach. Prosser defined the right ofprivacy as protecting individuals againstcertain highly offensive invasions.

After publication of his article, statecourts and legislatures quickly adoptedhis framework, and today the vast ma-

jority of jurisdictions follow it. It’sProsser’s world of privacy that we livein.

Prosser’s tradition of the protection ofprivacy continues at Berkeley Law andthe Berkeley Center for Law & Tech-nology.

In 2002, Professor Deirdre Mulliganworked with Sen. Joe Simitian to devel-

ters. These rules are critical as PacificGas & Electric and other utility compa-nies install these devices in our homes.

For American businesses, one of thebiggest worries today is how interna-tional privacy regulations affect theirbottom line. Since arriving at Berkeley in2005, I have sought to bridge the gap ofunderstanding in this country and else-where concerning international privacylaw.

The protection of privacy rights mustcontinue, and Berkeley Law will be inthe vanguard of this effort.

Paul M. Schwarz is a professor of law, and afaculty director of the law school’s BerkeleyCenter for Law & Technology.

Pioneers of privacy to safeguard the publicBy Paul M. Schwartz

William Prosser, the dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, alteredthe path of American law in 1960. He did so with an article, simplytitled “Privacy,” in our law school’s California Law Review. This articlehad an unparalleled influence on the development of the law, one stillfelt today.

The law school’s most famous at-tempt to shape crime policy came inthe 1960s when professors ArthurSherry, Phillip Johnson and SanfordKadish of Boalt Hall joined with JohnKaplan and Herbert Packer of Stanfordand Murray Schwartz of UCLA towrite a new Penal Code. Hired by theLegislature in 1964, the professors werefired five years later when their pro-posals, such as reducing marijuanapossession penalties, encounteredhostility from law enforcement andlegislators. That effectively ended theattempt to create a modern Penal Codein California.

So much for hands-on legislativeimpact. But the scholars were ahead oftheir time. Nearly all of their mainproposals, such as partial decriminal-ization of small amounts of marijuanaand diversion programs for felony drugoffenders, have since become law.

Berkeley Law created a leading re-search program in 1985 to evaluatemajor changes in criminal justice,which led to landmark studies of Cali-fornia law and action. Our wide-rang-ing study of California’s 1994 “threestrikes” law became the book “Punish-ment and Democracy,” published in2001. Our research data correctly pre-dicted overcrowding in state prisonsand marked increases in state geriatricmedical bills.

But these past 25 years of criminal-justice research are a case study in boththe potential and the limits of empiricalresearch for the politically chargedarena of crime policy. The Californiaversion of “three strikes” is a dreadfullaw, but it’s still on the books long afterour critique was published.

Crime and punishment remain thethird rail of California public policy,and no amount of empirical data can

create change in an emotionallycharged political landscape. Ourwork provides a road map forintelligent reform when, and if,progress becomes a political pos-sibility.

Franklin Zimring is a Berkeley School of Lawprofessor and distinguished scholar. He’s theauthor of numerous books on criminology,including his most recent, “The City ThatBecame Safe: New York’s Lessons for UrbanCrime and Its Control.”

Creating a road map for punishment policyBy Franklin E. Zimring

Boalt Hall has had consistent success for a century in producingleaders for criminal justice in California, but our efforts to influencewhere we send convicted felons and for how long have had moremixed results. The institution that trained Justices Earl Warren, RogerTraynor and Rose Bird has had more success analyzing and evaluatingthe state’s crime policy than in changing it.

Paul Chinn / The Chronicle

Students and faculty move through the new wing at UC Berkeley School ofLaw. Academics have more success analyzing criminal law than changing it.

100 YEARS UC Berkeley School of Law

E6 Insight | San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate.com | Sunday, February 26, 2012

Steeped in progressive legal realismin its infancy, Boalt Hall attracts stu-dents with a hunger to make a differ-ence. From civil rights to environmentaljustice, criminal reform to fair-laborpractices, our students, faculty andalumni are committed to building amore just society.

Our scholarship has led to state andnational social reforms. Herma HillKay, a former dean and professor, co-authored California’s no-fault divorcelaw, calling it a “movement whose timehad come.”

It eventually spread to every state.She also seeded Equal Rights Advo-cates, a San Francisco nonprofit thatprotects women’s legal rights.

Professors John Coons and StephenSugarman argued successfully for K-12financial reform based on the Constitu-tion’s “equal protection” clause. Law-makers “embraced the idea of education

equity,” says Sugarman. Although lim-ited by Proposition 13, the legal rulingreduced financial inequalities betweenrich and poor school districts. NewJersey and other states soon followedCalifornia’s lead. Four decades later,Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed schoolfinance reform is based on an articleco-written by Justice Goodwin Liuwhen he was an associate dean.

Our public education lens today isfocused on “restorative justice.” Consid-ered unconventional by some educa-tors, that’s a disciplinary tactic thatencourages accountability and relation-ship building instead of harsh punish-ment.

Results from our first-ever empiricalstudy are dramatic: In one West Oak-land middle school, suspensionsdropped by 87 percent, and expulsionsdropped to zero.

It’s a marked improvement for

youngsters who ought to be in class, notdetention. Our results provide harddata for lawmakers seeking to reformK-12 education. It’s an innovative ideathat deserves a closer look.

Mary Louise Frampton is the UC BerkeleySchool of Law faculty director of the TheltonE. Henderson Center for Social Justice. Sendyour feedback to us through our online format sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1

Committed to building a more just societyBy Mary Louise Frampton

Generations of Berkeley Law graduates have been leaders of socialmovements and judicial pioneers. Thelton Henderson, class of ’62, wasthe first African American appointed to the Northern District federalbench; Cruz Reynoso, ’58, was the first Latino to serve on the Califor-nia Supreme Court; and Rose Bird, ’65, was the state high court’s firstfemale justice.

Paul Chinn / The Chronicle

Students learn advanced legal research techniques in a class taught byAssociate Dean Kathleen Vanden Heuvel at the UC Berkeley School of Law.

100 YEARS UC Berkeley School of Law

Sax’s strategy helped save TomalesBay in Point Reyes from commercialdevelopment. It stopped Los Angelesofficials from draining Mono Lake.His achievements stand alongside thebrilliant work of law Professor andBerkeley Chancellor Michael Heyman,who fought to protect Lake Tahoe’s

ecosystem through smart land-useplanning. Heyman also taught one ofthe first environmental law coursesin the country.

“It traces back to work done at thelaw school, to community activistsand to people in public office,” saysSax. “We need the legal basis to get

the job done, and the place wherethat happens is in the law school.”

Decades before Sax, Professor Wil-liam Colby was a guiding light in theearly days of the Sierra Club. Colbywas the Sierra Club’s secretary foralmost 50 years.

He also chaired the State ParkCommission and helped launch Cali-fornia’s renowned state park system— the first in the nation.

Today, my colleagues, our studentsand a host of law school alumni con-tinue the effort to defend endangeredspecies, promote sustainable devel-opment and protect California’s wa-ters.

The school’s Center for Law, Ener-

gy & the Environment works withbusiness leaders on ways to addressclimate change and increase sources— and storage — of renewable ener-gy.

In short, the legacy of Colby, Saxand Heyman lives on — not only inBerkeley Law itself, but also in thewetlands, lakes and mountains theyfought with such ingenuity to pro-tect.

Professor Daniel Farber co-directs UCBerkeley School of Law’s EnvironmentalLaw Program and its Center for Law,Energy, and Environment. Send yourfeedback to us through our online format sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1

School’s environmental law roots run deep By Daniel Farber

When Joe Sax joined the Berkeley Law faculty in 1986, he had al-ready pioneered a new approach to protecting natural resources. Hislegal strategy found a receptive audience in the courts. Sax’s “publictrust doctrine” fueled a series of legal efforts by Californians to protectthe state’s streams, lakes and tidelands from pollution, overdevelop-ment and private exploitation.