UC Hastings

Hastings professor Joan C. Williams has been called a “rock star” in the field of gender studies. For more than a quarter of a century, her work in the areas of pregnancy discrimination and work-family accommodation have helped define the issue of gender equality under the law. At Hastings, in 1997, she founded—and still runs—the Center for WorkLife Law, and she’s written

In 1970, as a 20-year-old college student, Eva Paterson famously debated Vice President Spiro Agnew on The David Frost Show. She went on to become a fierce advocate for civil rights, eventually working for 26 years at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights – including more than a dozen years as its executive director. In 2003 Paterson co-founded the Oakland-based Equal Justice

John Henry Browne is a criminal defense attorney in Seattle who is best known for his work on behalf of the notorious. One of his first clients was Ted Bundy—a vicious, serial killer who murdered scores of women in at least a half-dozen states. More recently, he represented Robert Bales, a former U.S. Army sergeant who is now serving a life prison sentence for the murder of 16 Af

Over the 67-year history of the CIA, no agency staff attorney has ever wielded more influence or power than John Rizzo. A self-described “company man,” Rizzo joined the Central Intelligence Agency back in 1976 and over the next three-and-a-half decades helped guide the agency through a host of controversies and scandals—from Iran-Contra to the extraordinary rendition of suspe

Over the last two decades no criminal defense lawyer in America has had a more profound impact on advancing the rights of the convicted than has Barry Scheck. In 1992, when DNA testing was still in its infancy, Scheck, along with his colleague Peter Neufeld, founded The Innocence Project, which has since figured prominently in the release of hundreds of prison inmates. Scheck also

Kenneth Feinberg is best known for the work that he did as the Special Master of the Victim Compensation Fund that was established by Congress to distribute billions of taxpayer dollars to those who were either injured or lost loved ones during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Since then he has presided over the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund to compensate the victims of the Virginia Tech s

As both a diplomat and a scholar, Dennis Ross has had a truly extraordinary career. Under President George H.W. Bush, he led the U.S. State Department's Policy Planning Staff. He also served as a Special Envoy to the Middle East under President Bill Clinton, and was a Special Advisor to President Barack Obama before stepping down in 2011 to become a full-time fellow at the Washingt

As the 46th Solicitor General of the United States, Donald B. Verrilli Jr. is best known for the case he made before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2012 in which he successfully defended the constitutionality of President Obama's Affordable Care Act. Also that year, he scored a big victory when the High Court largely struck down an immigration law passed by the state of Arizona. Verrill

In late 2012, an NSA contractor named Edward Snowden leaked to the press almost 200,000 classified documents exposing secrets about the scope and methods of American intelligence gathering. To some this made him a hero; to others a traitor. In this very special edition of Legally Speaking we pose a set of hypotheticals to an all-star panel of experts including New York Times report

During the waning days of South Africa's apartheid era, Judge Richard Goldstone led a series of investigations that exposed the human rights abuses committed by his own country's security forces--an effort that may well have prevented a full blown civil war. He then went on to serve as the chief prosecutor for two international war crimes tribunals; one for the former Yugoslavia, t