Before Shiu-Ming Cheer ’00 made her way to the halls of UCLA Law, she was already involved in the pursuit of social justice as an undergraduate activist at UC Berkeley. Her activism came to a head in 1995 when she, along with other student organizers, was arrested after performing a sit-in during a UC Regents’ meeting to protest the UC system’s plans to eliminate its affirmative action policy.

Can law and spirituality coexist? In Professor of Law Jonathan Zasloff’s course, “‘Foundations of Jewish Ethics,” they can, and do. Every week.

Zasloff, an expert in environmental and property law, is an ordained rabbi who teaches both undergraduate-level and law school courses on Jewish religion and thought systems. The law course is unique in its focus on Pirkei Avot, a five-chapter section of the Talmud that offers guidelines on ethics, from humility and kindness to judgment and punishment.

Charlie Kelsey ’23 came to UCLA School of Law with an international background and global perspective. Born in London to British parents, he immigrated to the United States at age seven and became a citizen at 17. Today, with many family members still living in England, Wales, Scotland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France, the recent graduate considers a matter that traverses national borders but has gained pertinence in this country: how the increasingly blurred lines between public and private power interact with broad instances of inequality.

UCLA School of Law professor Carole Goldberg has been honored with the prestigious 2022–23 Edward A. Dickson Emeritus Professorship Award for her outstanding contributions since she retired. Goldberg, a leading authority on Indian law and longtime member of the UCLA Law faculty, is Distinguished Research Professor, the Jonathan D.

On May 12, more than a thousand family members, mentors, teachers and other guests came to UCLA to celebrate the School of Law’s Class of 2023 and watch them cross the threshold from students to alumni.

Outside UCLA’s Dickson Court, guests bought flowers and leis for the graduates, among them 319 who earned juris doctor (J.D.) degrees, 227 who earned master of laws (LL.M.) degrees and 38 who earned masters of legal studies (M.L.S.) degrees.

The A. Barry Cappello Trial Team at UCLA Law has made history, winning all three trial advocacy national championships for the third consecutive year.

If Shasta Fields ’23 were to have a superhero name, it would be Earth Protector. The graduating 3L came to UCLA School of Law specifically to make waves in environmental law.

She succeeded. Fields’ experience includes clerking with a major environmental nonprofit, working on a case with the California Attorney General’s Office, researching zoning laws as part of her participation in the Environmental Law Clinic, serving as president of the Environmental Law Society (ELS) and serving as chief comment editor for the Journal of Environmental Law and Policy (JELP).

On May 2, one year after the leak of a draft Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, UCLA Law’s Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy (CRHLP) hosted a press conference to announce a new legal hotline created by the Southern California Legal Alliance for Reproductive Justice (SoCal LARJ).

California Attorney General Rob Bonta will deliver the keynote address to the Class of 2023 at UCLA School of Law’s commencement ceremony on May 12.

A trailblazing Filipino American, Bonta was born in the Philippines and raised in California before attending Yale University, Oxford and Yale Law School. He returned to California to embark on a distinguished career as a lawyer and advocate, including as a litigator in private practice, as a deputy city attorney in San Francisco, and as an elected member of the Alameda City Council and then the California State Assembly.

UCLA School of Law and its nationally renowned program in public interest law and policy solidified its position as the home of the country’s most promising public interest lawyers in 2023, as six graduating students in the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy earned prestigious fellowships to serve communities across the United States.