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The Bay Area is home to several world-class law schools that produce terrific talent valuable to BASF

and the legal community. In this issue of San Francisco Attorney, we continue with our profiles ofthe deans of some of these law schools, featuring the great

work they’re doing to train new attorneys.

UC BERKELEY SCHOOL OF LAW—Dean Christopher Edley Jr.

Nina Schuyler

THE BAR ASSOCIATION OF SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO ATTORNEY 45

In 1978, Christopher Edley Jr. joined the Carter ad-ministration as assistant director of White House do-mestic policy. He was responsible for coordinating the

president’s multibillion dollar welfare reform proposal.That entailed leading the efforts of five cabinet depart-ments and working with diverse professionals—social sci-entists, lawyers, and job training and health experts, mostof them older and vastly more ex-perienced than he was. At thetime, he was only twenty-five.

“I was a child; it was absurd, butI had my law degree, my publicpolicy degree (both from HarvardUniversity), my BA in mathemat-ics, and a White House title,” saysEdley in a quiet, thoughtful voice.“It was a wonderful challenge tolead without arrogance and tohave humility without beingnaïve.” What helped him tremen-dously, he says, was “usinglawyerly skills to effectively act asan adjudicator and structure ar-guments that would allow us toexpose the weaknesses in compet-ing arguments and flaws in com-peting policy research.”

Flash forward thirty years, and now Edley is a seasoned ex-pert in many disciplines, including civil rights law and ad-ministrative law. He’s also well versed in politics. And he’sonce again leading—this time to make Boalt Hall (nowcalled UC Berkeley School of Law) a top-ten law schoolagain. While controversial, school rankings do get people’sattention. Since December 2003 when he was nameddean, Boalt has risen five spots in the US News & World Re-port’s rankings: from number thirteen to number eight(tied with University of Michigan Law School). His goalis to take the school to number five. As Edley puts it, “Ididn’t come to Boalt to patch the roof.” So far, he’s on hisway: he’s hired more professors, expanded the school’smultidisciplinary research centers and clinics, and raised

more money from alumni. Above all, Edley wants Boalttackling society’s most complex, demanding problems.“That’s the role of a public law school,” he says.

Since the age of five, Edley wanted to be a lawyer. His fatherwas one of the few African American graduates in HarvardLaw School’s class of 1953. Growing up, Edley thought a

lawyer was synonomous with acrime fighter—cops and robbers.“My father was at the district attorney’s office in Philadelphia inthe late ’50s,” he says. Later on,when his father was a member ofPhiladelphia’s Human RightsCommision and then a consultantfor the U.S. Civil Rights Com -mission in the early 1960s andtook over leadership of the UnitedNegro College Fund in 1973 (until1990), a lawyer was someone whohad “the power of the law to improve people’s lives.” Thoughhis father discouraged him fromgoing into the law (“He thoughtI’d have more influence over theworld if I went into business andbecome a private sector leader,”says Edley), the younger Edley hasnever regretted his decision.

And why should he? He’s had a remarkable career. Notonly was he part of the Carter administration, in 1987–88he was national issues director for Michael Dukakis andthen in 1992 served as a senior advisor on economic pol-icy for President Bill Clinton’s transition team. In the Clin-ton administration, he worked as associate director foreconomics and government at the White House Office ofManagement and Budget. He oversaw a staff of seventycivil servants responsible for White House oversight ofbudget, legislative, and management issues in five cabinetdepartments (Justice, Treasury, Transportation, Housingand Urban Development, and Commerce) and a diversegroup of more than forty autonomous agencies. (He also

All photos by Jim Block

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met his wife, Maria Echaveste, who served as assistant tothe president and deputy chief of staff for Clinton. In Jan-uary 2005, she began teaching part-time at the law schooland UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy.)

In 1995 he was also special counsel to the president, direct-ing the White House review of affirmative action. In 1997he served as a consultant to the president’s advisory boardon the race initiative.

At Harvard, where he was alaw professor for twenty-threeyears, he cofounded the Har-vard Civil Rights Project, arenowned multidisciplinaryresearch and policy thinktank focused on issues ofracial justice.

Currently, he’s serving as sen-ior advisor to the presidentialcampaign of Senator BarackObama, who was a formerstudent of Edley’s at Harvard.Edley’s wife is a senior advisorto Senator Hillary Clinton’scampaign. “Politics are con-stantly discussed at the dinnertable,” he says, “as well as lov-ing arguments.”

That he’s found himself in somany different roles is in partdue to his legal education. “It’s no accident that you findso many lawyers in leadership positions in private andpublic sectors apart from the core craft of lawyering,” hesays. Edley credits legal education with instilling “a certainfearlessness about tackling subject matter that is un -familiar.” It also hones a sense of making analogies, ofthinking laterally. “Beyond that, there’s a basic intellectualstrategy of constantly thinking about counterargumentand missing evidence so that you are disciplined to an -ticipate the opposing argument and search for the infor-

mation that will help you make a better decision. The fun-damental lawyering skills turn out to be helpful in count-less contexts.”

Edley wants to provide Berkeley law students with a count-less array of opportunities—including tackling society’smost difficult and important questions. To do that, he be-lieves a multidisciplinary approach is needed. “The most

difficult challenges are, by theirvery nature, multidisciplinary incharacter,” he says. It’s a naturalfit for the law school; Berkeley isunique among law schools inthat for more than thirty-fiveyears it has been home to a mul-tidisciplinary Ph.D. program,Jurisprudence and Social Policy.Consequently, there’s a traditionof faculty who are not justlawyers but Ph.D.’s in social sci-ences and humanities. “The re-sult is tremendous openness to arange of intellectual aesthetics,”says Edley.

To that end, Edley has createdfive new centers and institutes,each of which has a multidisci-plinary flavor: the Berkeley Cen-ter for Law, Business, and theEconomy; the California Centerfor Environmental Law and Pol-icy; the Institute for Global

Challenges and the Law; the Chief Justice Warren Insti-tute on Race, Ethnicity, and Diversity; and Berkeley Cen-ter for Criminal Justice.

The list of current topics is wide ranging: climate change,racial and ethnic justice, criminal justice reform, K–12 ed-ucation reform, the future of intellectual property bothdomestically and internationally, globalization, and start-ing next year, health care.

“These are not topic headings oneordinarily associates with a lawschool,” he says, “but my mantra islawyers are problem solvers and agreat law school should be engagedin helping solve these problems.”

Moreover, these are topics that agreat public university should be ad-dressing. Edley sees a critical distinc-tion between private and public lawschools. “Coming from one of theworld’s great private institutions, Iunderstand they, too, make a valu-able contribution, but my strong be-lief is that it happens almost byaccident. What distinguishes ourpublic mission is the intentionalitywith which we try to harness our ex-cellence. Its not accidental or inad-vertent, it is our central purpose.”

This distinction has been most evident to Edley in hiswork related to racial and ethnic justice. “At Harvard, mywork at the Civil Rights Project was tolerated but receivedno support from the university,” he says. “At Berkeley,there is an institutional commitment from the chancellor

on down to the proposition that deal-ing with the challenges of multiracialdiversity in a democracy is a hugequestion of global proportions.Nothing could be more appropriatefor one of the world’s great researchuniversities to tackle precisely becauseit’s so difficult, and who else will do it?”

The biggest challenge he faces now isconvincing alumni to help financehis new vision. With state fundingdwindling, Edley launched, in Janu-ary 2006, a $125 million fundraisingcampaign. In January 2007, Edleysupported a student fee increase tokeep improving the school. Taxpay-ers pay about 27 percent of theschool’s budget, which covers 75 per-cent of the annual faculty salary costs

and nothing more. “We are making significant gains, butthe alumni has to step up to the plate as full equity owners,” he says. “They have to share responsibility withthe campus community for the continued leadership of Boalt.”

THE BAR ASSOCIATION OF SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO ATTORNEY 47

UC Berkeley School of Law library