Boalt Hall

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Boalt Hall

The UC Berkeley School of Law, commonly referred to as Boalt Hall, is one of 14 schools and colleges at the University of California, Berkeley.

Boalt Hall is consistently regarded both as one of the top 10 law schools and the top public law school in the country.^[1] Recently, Boalt has had the third-lowest acceptance rate among American law schools, with approximately 10% of applicants being admitted. Admitted applicants generally have an undergraduate GPA of between 3.7 and 3.9 and an LSAT score of between 164 and 169 (92nd and 99th percentile). The 2008 U.S. News & World Report ranked Boalt Hall eighth overall among all law schools in the country. It was also tied with the University of Michigan Law School for the distinction of top public law school. [1] Boalt Hall is renowned for having what is regarded as the best intellectual property program in the world, and has held the top spot in U.S. News and World Report rankings for several years running. [2]

1 History
2 Academics
3 Boalt Hall in popular culture
4 Centers at Boalt Hall
5 Law Journals at Boalt Hall
6 List of noted alumni
7 List of noted faculty
8 External links
9 References

[edit] History

Boalt Hall's law library was expanded in 1996 with the North Addition, pictured above.

The Department of Jurisprudence was founded at Berkeley in 1894. In 1913, the department was elevated to the School of Jurisprudence, which was then renamed the School of Law in 1951.

The School was originally located in Boalt Memorial Hall of Law, built in 1911 with funds largely from Elizabeth Josselyn Boalt donated in memory of her late husband, John Henry Boalt. In 1951, the School moved to its current location in the new Boalt Hall, at the southeast corner of the central campus, and the old Boalt Hall was renamed Durant Hall. The current structure is notorious for its bland architecture:

“

At its best, Boalt Hall has the comfort of an old couch—it's a serviceable place one can sink into without having to worry about ruining the upholstery. And at its worst, Boalt Hall is still an adequate facility, even if it is downright homely. Inside the building, spareness predominates, and the clearest design message is that this is a state university.^[2]

”

[edit] Academics

A view of San Francisco and the Bay from Boalt Hall.

Boalt Hall has approximately 850 J.D. students, 30 students in the LL.M. and J.S.D. programs, and 45 students in the Ph.D. program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy. The School also features specialized curricular programs in Business, Law and Economics, Comparative Legal Studies, Environmental Law, International Legal Studies, Law and Technology, and Social Justice.

The JD program's admissions process is highly selective. Boalt Hall is known to value high undergraduate GPAs, perhaps even more than high LSAT scores (whereas the opposite is considered the norm at other top law schools). According to U.S. News and World Report, Boalt has the third-lowest acceptance rate among American law schools; approximately 10% of applicants are admitted.

The teaching style of Boalt's conservative faculty relies heavily upon the Socratic method, a standard curriculum, and a "stone-heavy work load."^[3]

Boalt's grading system for the JD program is unusual among law schools. Students are graded on a High Honors (HH), Honors (H), and Pass (P) scale.^[4] Approximately 60% of the students in each class receive a grade of Pass, 30% receive a grade of Honors, and the highest 10% receive a grade of High Honors; lower grades of Substandard Pass (or Pass Conditional, abbreviated PC) and No Credit (NC) may be awarded at the discretion of professors. The top student in each class or section receives the Jurisprudence Award, while the second-place student receives the Prosser Prize.

When calculating grade-point averages (GPAs), which determine admission to the Order of the Coif and class ranks, a Pass grade is worth 2 points, an Honors grade is worth 3 points, and a High Honors grade is worth 5 points. (Boalt makes class ranks available to JD students only for the purpose of applying to judicial clerkships and academic positions.)

For a typical class in the JD program, the average age of admitted students is 24 years old, over a range of ages from 20 to 48 years old. Approximately 88% of JD students receive financial aid. As state institutions, Boalt and UCLA had the lowest tuition of the top 15 law schools in the country in 2005. The tuition for the 2006-07 school year is $25,380.00 for California residents ($37,625.00 for nonresidents), though the sum has been rising each year.

[edit] Boalt Hall in popular culture

Sandy Cohen, a character on the popular television series The O.C., is a lawyer and a Boalt Hall alumnus.

The O.C. at Boalt is a student group that, in addition to screening episodes of The O.C. during the lunch period, offers the Sandy Cohen Fellowship, a summer grant for students who plan to work as public defenders (on The O.C., Sandy Cohen worked as a public defender while living in Orange County). In recent years, The O.C. at Boalt has also managed to bring Peter Gallagher, the actor who plays Sandy Cohen, to Boalt to speak on an annual basis.

Matthew Perry played a Republican graduate of Boalt Hall on an episode of The West Wing.

Kelly Rutherford played lawyer Samantha 'Sonny' Liston, a graduate of Boalt Hall, on E-Ring.

Joanie Caucus, a character in Garry Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury, attended Boalt Hall.

In Catch Me if You Can, Martin Sheen plays Roger Strong, the District Attorney of New Orleans and Boalt Hall alumnus.

In the movie Intolerable Cruelty, a copy of the California Law Review is featured prominently on a table in the senior partner's office.

[edit] Centers at Boalt Hall

[edit] Law Journals at Boalt Hall

[edit] List of noted alumni

Earl Warren, 1914 - Governor of California, Chief Justice of the United States
Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong, 1915 - first woman law professor at a major American law school
Walter Gordon, 1922 - Governor of the Virgin Islands, judge, member of National Football Foundation Hall of Fame
Roger J. Traynor, 1927 - Chief Justice, California Supreme Court, 1964-1970
Melvin Belli, 1929 - attorney
G. William Miller, 1952 - U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Chairman of the Federal Reserve
J. Clifford Wallace, 1955 - Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Cruz Reynoso, 1958 - Associate Justice, California Supreme Court, 1982-1987
Edwin Meese III, 1958 - U.S. Attorney General
Pete Wilson, 1962 - U.S. Senator, Governor of California
Thelton Henderson, 1962 - United States District Judge
Rose Bird, 1965 - Chief Justice, California Supreme Court, 1977-1987
Theodore Olson, 1965 - U.S. Solicitor General
Michael Tigar, 1966 - Notable Attorney, Professor at Washington College of Law, American University
Larry W. Sonsini, 1966 - Chairman of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
Neil Goldschmidt, 1967 - U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Governor of Oregon
David B. Frohnmeyer, 1967 - Oregon Attorney General, University of Oregon President
Robert K. Tanenbaum, 1968 - novelist and former Mayor of Beverly Hills, CA
David Weissbrodt, 1969 - Former head of United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and U.N. Special Rapporteur on the rights of non-citizens
Dale Minami, 1971 - leader of legal team that overturned the wrongful conviction of Fred Korematsu
Marsha L. Berzon, 1973 - Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Harry Pregerson, 1950 - Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
John L. Burris, 1973 - civil rights attorney
Leigh Steinberg, 1973 - sports agent
Barry Scheck, 1974 - Co-founder of the Innocence Project
Lance Ito, 1975 - judge, presided over O.J. Simpson criminal trial
Christopher Schroeder, 1974 - professor at Duke University School of Law
Katharine Bartlett, 1975 - dean of Duke University School of Law
Zoë Baird, 1977 - Bill Clinton's first unsuccessful nominee for attorney general in 1993
Elizabeth Cabraser, 1978 - partner at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP
Nancy K.D. Lemon, 1980 - domestic violence law expert, lecturer at Boalt Hall
Catherine Fisk, 1986 - professor at Duke University School of Law

[edit] List of noted faculty

Robert Cooter – leading scholar in Law and Economics
Christopher Edley, Jr. – Dean of the School of Law (2004-), co-founder of The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University
Melvin A. Eisenberg – author of a leading Contracts casebook and chief reporter for the Principles of Corporate Governance, issued by the American Law Institute
William A. Fletcher – Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Phillip P. Frickey – pioneer in the study of legislation and statutory interpretation
Lucas Guttentag – founding director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Immigrants' Rights Project
Ian F. Haney Lopez – influential critical race theorist and author of White By Law
Angela P. Harris – leading scholar of feminist legal theory and critical race theory
Michael Heyman – Chancellor of the Berkeley campus (1980 to 1990), Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution (1994 to 1999)
Phillip E. Johnson – one of the fathers of intelligent design
Herma Hill Kay – former Dean of the School of Law (1992-2000), instrumental in the battle for no-fault divorce in California
Paul J. Mishkin – former author of the popular casebook on Federal Courts, Hart and Wechsler's The Federal Courts and the Federal System
John T. Noonan, Jr. – Senior Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
William L. Prosser – former Dean of the School of Law (1948-1961), author of several well-known treatises and pioneer in the field of strict products liability
Pamela Samuelson – intellectual property law expert
John Yoo – Co-Author of the USA PATRIOT Act and author of a controversial memo defending expansive presidential wartime powers and even torture (if authorized by the president).

[edit] External links

Boalt Hall's Official Site
boalt.org - Website for student groups and journals

[edit] References

^ Cynthia L. Cooper, The Insider's Guide to the Top Fifteen Law Schools (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 178-179.
^ Cooper, 192.
^ Cooper, 178-183.
^ Cooper, 180.