UCLA School of Law professor Joanna Schwartz, a leading scholar on police accountability and public interest lawyering, has been appointed to the Honorable Harry Pregerson Endowed Chair in Law.

A former civil rights attorney, Schwartz has been a member of the UCLA Law faculty since 2006, and she won UCLA’s highest teaching honor, the Distinguished Teaching Award, in 2015. Among her areas of expertise is the doctrine of qualified immunity, which she has written and spoken about in numerous publications and media appearances. Her recent book Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable (Viking, 2023) won the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award for excellence in the media and the arts. She has served as UCLA’s Vice Dean for Faculty Development and faculty director of the David J. Epstein Program for Public Interest Law and Policy.

Faculty chairs acknowledge the distinction of the law school’s outstanding professors and are made possible by the generosity of UCLA Law’s alumni and friends. UCLA Law has 70 full-time faculty members and 42 endowed chairs.

The Pregerson Chair was previously held by Professor Devon Carbado, who retired in 2025.