Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky visits LSU Law to deliver 2020 Rubin Lecture, lead classes

Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky delivers the 2020 Rubin Lecture in the Robinson Courtroom at LSU Law.

The Robinson Courtroom at the LSU Law Center was filled to capacity on Thursday evening as Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky delivered the 2020 Judge Alvin B. and Janice G. Rubin Visiting Professor Lecture.

Chemerinsky is one of the nation’s leading legal scholars on constitutional law. His Feb. 6 guest lecture, “Closing the Courthouse Doors,” detailed several ways in which the U.S. Supreme Court has limited individuals’ access to the court over the past decade, including: restricting who has standing to sue; expanding the immunity of governments and government workers; limiting the kinds of cases the federal courts can hear; and restricting the right of habeas corpus.

Among the more than 100 in attendance were LSU Interim President Tom Galligan; U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana Chief Judge Shelly Dick; U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana Judge John W. deGravelles; and members of the Ayan and Michael Rubin, and Robbie and David Rubin families. LSU Law Interim Dean Lee Ann Wheelis Lockridge welcomed the attendees and introduced Chemerinsky. A reception followed Chemerinsky’s lecture, which lasted about an hour and included a brief question and answer session with attendees.

On Friday, Chemerinsky was back at the LSU Law Center to spend the morning leading several classes before having lunch with faculty members and students.

The Judge Alvin B. and Janice G. Rubin Visiting Professor of Law Program provides funds to bring outstanding legal scholars to the LSU Law Center. Previous visiting professors have included U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist as well as U.S. Supreme Court Justices Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

Chemerinsky is the author of 11 books, including leading casebooks and treatises about constitutional law, criminal procedure and federal jurisdiction. His most recent books are, “We the People: A Progressive Reading of the Constitution for the Twenty-First Century” (Picador Macmillan), published in November 2018, and two books published by Yale University Press in 2017, “Closing the Courthouse Doors: How Your Constitutional Rights Became Unenforceable” and “Free Speech on Campus” (with Howard Gillman).

He also is the author of more than 200 law review articles. He writes a regular column for The Sacramento Bee, monthly columns for the ABA Journal and the Daily Journal, and frequent op-eds in newspapers across the country. He frequently argues appellate cases, including in the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 2016, he was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017, National Jurist magazine again named Dean Chemerinsky as “the most influential person in legal education in the United States.”