Faculty Initiatives

The Center for Business Law at UC Law SF was founded with the mission of bringing together leading scholars, business leaders, practitioners, regulators and students to engage in the study, teaching and practice of business law at UC Law SF. The Center aims to be the leading business law venue in San Francisco, one of the world’s great centers of commerce, finance and technology. The Center for Business Law Scholars Program (CBL Scholars Program) is one effort to meaningfully address the lack of equity and equality in America, and to narrow the diversity and opportunity gap in the profession of business law.

The Center for Gender and Refugee Studies (CGRS) founded in 1999, is the nation’s leading advocacy organization on the issue of women asylum-seekers fleeing gender-related violence. CGRS protects the fundamental human rights of refugee women, children, LGBT individuals, and others who flee persecution in their home countries. They provide legal expertise, training, research and publications, engage in appellate litigation and policy development, and use international human rights instruments to address the root causes of persecution and to advance human rights.

The Center for Racial and Economic Justice (CREJ) works to advance equity through legal education, scholarship and collaboration. CREJ enriches UC Law SF by providing our intellectual community with access to nationally renowned thinkers on issues of racial and economic inequality and the space to critically examine how the law reinforces subordination. CREJ hosts visiting faculty to help match rising scholars in the area of equity and the law with veterans in the field. CREJ also advises the College on the curriculum in the degree programs, including tools to incorporate themes of equity into existing courses and helping to launching new courses.

The Center for WorkLife Law (WLL) seeks to jump-start the stalled gender revolution by focusing, at any given time, on a few projects that hold the promise of producing concrete social or institutional change within a three-to-five year time frame. They concentrate their efforts on advancing women’s leadership, developing legal protections for employees with family responsibilities, and promoting better work-life policies within institutions.

The East Asian Legal Studies Program (EALS) is preparing the next generation of global legal professionals to meet demands created by the economic and growth and legal transformation in East Asia. Building on our law school’s existing strengths in international and comparative law, EALS offers a broad range of courses, exchange programs, internships and public events on key East Asian legal systems.

UC Law SF established its Indigenous Law Center in September 2020. The Center will develop its program in collaboration with the UC Law SF Restorative Justice Advisory Board, which is charged with advising the dean on how best to implement all of its initiatives. The purpose of the Indigenous Law Center is to educate students and expand knowledge about how U.S. law affects Native and Indigenous peoples. Its central responsibilities are to enhance the school’s Indigenous Law curriculum and to promote related research opportunities.