Registration for this event is now closed.

If you would like to attend virtually, please use the livestream link below:

https://uclalaw.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=f5e5b601-bf86-4a72-a362-b3fb000a70dc

This year’s Melville B. Nimmer Memorial Lecture will feature a keynote address by Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

Event Details

• Date: Wednesday, March 18, 2026
• Lecture: 6:00–7:30 p.m. PT
• Reception: 7:30–8:30 p.m., immediately following in Shapiro Courtyard
• Location: UCLA School of Law (Room 1430) & Livestream
  

Event Abstract

When is the government’s burdening of the exercise of a right sufficient to be deemed an infringement?  This issue arises frequently in First Amendment cases and indeed throughout constitutional law. But the Supreme Court has never articulated a test for determining this. One of its frequent approaches, especially in First Amendment speech and religion cases, is to draw a distinction between incidental and non-incidental effects. But this usually appears just as a conclusion, generally with decisive consequences, not as a method of analysis. Constitutional analysis, and the protection of speech and religion in particular, would be improved by developing a better approach for determining when the burdening of a right should be deemed an infringement.