Introducing the Inaugural Issue of The Judges' Book

UC Law SF is pleased to announce the publication of the inaugural edition of The Judges’ Book, featuring excerpted scholarship from UC Law SF Faculty geared specifically towards judges, judicial business, and issues likely to come before courts for resolution.

Introduction, by Chancellor & Dean David Faigman

Welcome to The Judges’ Book.

When we at UC Law SF produce the public good of legal scholarship, we seek to promote meaningful and enduring change. To do that, our best scholarship speaks to those on the front lines of the law: the members of the bench and bar. For it is in the courts that legal change can have immediate and direct impact on real people and litigants.

This inaugural issue of The Judges’ Book features excerpted scholarship from UC Law SF faculty members geared specifically toward judges, judicial business, and issues likely to come before courts for resolution.

We at UC Law SF take special pride in having produced scholarship that judges find useful in fulfilling their demanding role. We endeavor to continue to build on this reputation for producing works of scholarly excellence that have practical benefit.

Key summaries in this volume feature the certification of class actions, the division of responsibility between judge and jury for expert evidence, the application of diversity jurisdiction in multiparty civil litigation, and the judicial enforceability of executive inaction, among many others.

An appendix lists our faculty’s major works from 2016, including treatises such as the seminal Wright & Miller’s Federal Practice and Procedure, amicus briefs filed in federal court, and leadership roles in judicial conferences.

The essence of the mission of legal education-from students to the bench and bar-is thought leadership in the law. We at UC Law SF strive to take the next step of turning that leadership into practical results. The Judges’ Book is part of that step. I hope you enjoy it.

Foreword, by The Honorable Marsha S. Berzon

The Judges’ Book is the first compendium of legal scholarship I have seen specifically selected for its usefulness by the judiciary. Theproject is an important and welcome one.

Increasingly in recent years, it has become commonplace for judges to complain that the articles published in law reviews are abstract, abstruse, and self-absorbed. They often consist of dialogues among academics, not conversations meant to include the rest of the legal community-lawyers, judges, and policy makers, for example.

I have encountered the problem most directly when I have a novel legal issue about which there is little judicial precedent. I sometimes ask my law clerks to gather what I call secondary literature on the question, meaning articles and books by legal scholars. The quest is rarely successful. The available material is off pitch, one might say-it is either too theoretical and does not directly do business with the case law and statutory or constitutional language, or it consists of law student notes, which usually just tell me and my clerks what we have already figured out.

The articles in The Judges’ Book do not have this pitch problem-they are pitched just right. I expect the Book will therefore be useful to my colleagues on the bench, and I look forward to future editions.