UCLA School of Law has received a $15 million donation from the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria to advance the study and practice of Native American law. The gift is the largest-ever contribution that a tribe has made to a law school and one of the biggest in history from a tribe to a university. The funds will be dedicated to scholarships for Native American and other students interested in pursuing careers as tribal legal advocates.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died on Sept. 18 at age 87, is celebrated for her remarkable career as a lawyer and judge who was dedicated to fairness and equality. A trailblazing advocate for women’s rights, she was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 1980. In 1993, President Clinton appointed her to become the second woman ever to sit on the Supreme Court.

A sweeping collection of laws and legal authorities governing many aspects of the coronavirus pandemic has been published by UCLA School of Law, thanks to the quick work of law librarian Lynn McClelland.

David Binder, who served on the UCLA School of Law faculty for 50 years and gave generations of students the practical tools to succeed as lawyers, died on Sept. 15 after a long illness. He was 86.

UCLA School of Law Professor Jill Horwitz on Sept. 8 published the results of an innovative study of prescription regulations meant to address the ongoing opioid crisis. The article, “Regulating Opioid Supply Through Insurance Coverage,” appears in the September 2020 issue of Health Affairs, the nation’s premier journal covering health policy and research. The piece is one of two articles that Horwitz has recently published on her opioid-related research.

One year ago, the world seemed very different. A class of newly minted attorneys had just taken the bar exam and were on their way to budding new careers in the legal profession. Things changed drastically after a few short months, as the world adjusted to a global pandemic, shifting the legal practice and many other industries to remote operations.

The Promise Institute is appalled by the Trump Administration's attacks against Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the withdrawal of funding for racial sensitivity trainings for federal agencies. CRT interrogates the way that white supremacy and institutional racism are pervasive in our social structures, and particularly the law. Through an examination of the ways in which legal institutions perpetuate the marginalization of communities of color and legitimate racialized forms of violence, CRT provides an analytic lens to identify and begin to dismantle systemic racism backstopped by law.

Racial justice, crime prevention, bail reform and the highly publicized prosecution of Harvey Weinstein were at the forefront of an insightful and wide-ranging conversation that UCLA School of Law Dean Jennifer L. Mnookin hosted with Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. on Sept. 11. The meeting was the fifth in UCLA Law’s ongoing “From the Front Lines” series of webinars where top legal leaders and experts discuss the most prominent issues of the day.

Dear UC law school community and friends,

The American Law Institute, an "independent organization in the United States producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and improve the law," has elected Máximo Langer, Faculty Director of the Criminal Justice Program as one of its new members.