UCLA School of Law professor Scott Cummings has won the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award for 2023, with an additional citation for distinction in teaching at the graduate level. The honor is UCLA’s highest recognition for excellence in the classroom.

During the two years since she made her first Instagram post – in which she asked her followers to weigh in on how to navigate the law school application process – UCLA School of Law student Luz Murillo ’24 has emerged as a popular storyteller, sharing many of the ups and downs of her law school journey.

For more than two decades, UCLA School of Law professor Joanna Schwartz has been a leading authority on civil rights, with a focus on police misconduct. In 2020, with the murder of George Floyd and the national reckoning that followed, her work was thrust into the national spotlight.

A candidate’s messaging, charisma and likability may all factor into a voter’s decision on election day. But the rubber hits the road when those candidates get sworn into office and begin to write, pass and block legislation that affects citizens’ everyday lives. Beyond the legislation that elected officials may pass, other issues loom large in the midterms, including election integrity and the evolving role of social media.

Here, UCLA School of Law’s faculty experts share what they’re paying attention to.

In September, Salvador Mendoza Jr. ’97 was sworn in as a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judge in Richland, Washington. Geographically, he wasn’t far from the orchards where he worked picking apples as a teen, but he was worlds away in other respects.

Mendoza brings 25 years of legal and judicial experience to this new role and joins five other UCLA Law alumni currently serving on the Ninth Circuit.

Joel Handler, Richard C. Maxwell Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus at UCLA School of Law and a seminal interdisciplinary scholar who helped define the field of poverty law, died on September 22, 2022. He was 89 years old.