In recent years, legal scholars and practitioners alike have expressed major misgivings about the advice that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) provided to former President George W. Bush following the attacks of September 11, 2001. On February 19, 2010, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. released internal communications of the Justice…

Approximately 200,000 divorce petitions are filed annually in California. Seventy percent of those cases involve at least one self-represented litigant at the beginning of the case. That figure increases to 80 percent by the time of judgment. This is not simply a California issue. Utah, for example, reports that 49 percent of petitioners and 81 percent of respondents in divorce…

I would like to thank UC Berkeley School of Law for inviting me here today. This is, of course, an opportunity that any person who has appeared before the California Supreme Court dreams about. It may be my only chance to address so many members of the Court without being stopped repeatedly, asked difficult questions, or losing. I can also say things like that without being concerned…

For many years David Cole has been grappling, both in the courtroom and in the pages of the law reviews, with the difficult task of maximizing civil liberties while adequately addressing concerns related to terrorism and other national security threats. By and large, he has played the role of government critic in these debates, highlighting perceived abuses and drawing particular attention…

In 2007, the California Supreme Court faced a difficult question: were procedures used in a family law court, intended to make the process easier for the litigants, in fact violating their rights to due process? Deciding that they were, the Court declared: "[t]hat a procedure is efficient and moves cases through the system is admirable, but even more important is for the courts to provide fair and…