Joan Dempsey Klein ’54 was a member of UCLA School of Law’s third graduating class, the law school’s first graduate to become a judge, and the first woman to serve as presiding justice on the California Court of Appeal.

UCLA School of Law Professor Khaled Abou El Fadl received the American Academy of Religion’s Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion in a virtual ceremony on Dec. 7.

UCLA School of Law Professor Laura E. Gómez has been honored with the 2021 Outstanding Scholar Award from the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation. She will receive the award – among the nation’s highest honors for scholarship in law or government – at the ABF’s annual banquet, which will be held virtually on Feb. 16.

UCLA School of Law Distinguished Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw has been named the recipient of the 2021 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award by the Association of American Law Schools’ Section on Women in Legal Education.

Continuing UCLA School of Law’s proud and long-term commitment to public service and public interest legal work, students Nicole Hansen ’21, Amaris Montes ’21 and Anusha Ravi ’21 have received Skadden Fellowships – among the most prestigious and competitive awards for public interest law students – to pursue public interest law after they graduate.

Against the backdrop of ongoing national conversations about police brutality and its roots in systemic racism, President Trump in September 2020 issued a ban on Critical Race Theory. The directive barred training within the federal government related to CRT, calling it “divisive, anti-American propaganda,” and aimed to prohibit the honest discussions about racism, sexism, and systemic violence that are necessary for working toward a more equitable nation.

After the Trump administration eviscerated federal climate rules and rolled back more than 100 regulations that protected the environment, President-elect Joe Biden’s administration has significant work ahead to rebuild the nation’s climate policies, says UCLA School of Law Professor Ann Carlson.

UCLA School of Law’s Human Rights Litigation Clinic is part of a litigation team representing child victims of forced labor in the chocolate industry in Nestle USA, Inc. v. Doe I and Cargill, Inc. v. Doe I, two consolidated petitions concerning an Alien Tort Statute lawsuit that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear on Dec. 1.

Kate Mackintosh, the executive director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law, has joined a panel of leading international lawyers and judges who will work to draft a definition of “ecocide” as a potential international crime alongside terms including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

UCLA School of Law’s trailblazing Law Fellows Program has received a generous gift of $25,000 from the litigation firm Larson LLP to provide robust support to the program’s approximately 100 new law fellows and other initiatives in 2021.