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
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.
Mariana Viviescas Maldonado LLM ’26 and María Paula Herrera Duque LLM ’26 first met as law school classmates at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia 11 years ago. “We started as classmates, became close friends, and then we started dating. We’ve been together ever since,” says Herrera Duque.
Joshua Wooten ’27 and Ilu Tefera ’27 are the 2025-26 co-chairs of the Black Law Students Association (BLSA), one of UCLA School of Law’s oldest and most active student organizations.