On January 20, 2023, faculty at the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit supporting the right of the Environmental Protection Agency to grant a long-held waiver to California to regulate vehicle emissions more stringently than the federal government.

UCLA School of Law’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, the leading environmental law and policy program in the country, has received a new $5 million commitment from the Emmett Foundation. The contribution includes a matching opportunity and is the latest of several transformative gifts that the foundation, which is led by Dan and Rae Emmett, has made during nearly 15 years of dedicated engagement with UCLA Law.

UCLA School of Law’s A. Barry Cappello Trial Team is the national champion for a second straight year. The squad secured victory while repeating a previously unprecedented feat: winning the nation’s two biggest law school trial advocacy competitions in the same year.

In our Student Spotlight series, we hear from UCLA Law students about what brought them to law school, what they love about being on campus, and where they hope their UCLA Law education will take them. This month, we spoke to Ariana Bustos '22, the president of the Moot Court Honors Board and the co-chief production editor of the Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs. The Arizona native has been involved in moot court competitions—and winning them!—since her middle school days, and loves the professional and personal skills it teaches.

UCLA School of Law students Akruti Chandrayya ’22 and Jenna Finkle ’22 have earned Gideon’s Promise fellowships. Both are students in the law school’s David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy, and they are just two of six law students across the country to whom the Gideon’s Promise fellowship program awarded the prestigious fellowships this year.

When the United States withdrew the last of its troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, many were captivated by images of Afghan citizens clamoring to leave the country, even hanging from the landing gear of U.S. military planes.