URAP

Kathryn Abrams - Professor, Law

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

This project examines the mobilization of undocumented immigrants in Phoenix, beginning with resistance to SB 1070 and "enforcement by attrition" and continuing through the Trump administration. It seeks explain the emergence of a social movement of undocumented immigrants and analyze the practices through which social movement organizations support...

Kathryn Abrams - Professor, Law

Status: Check back for status     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

This project will focus on social movement activity, and analyze the legal strategies, tactical choices, and coalition building involved in rebuilding reproductive rights and attacking structural sources of reproductive inequality (including inequality on the basis of race, socioeconomic status, and immigration status) in abortion restrictive states. The primary focus of...

Anne Bloom - Executive Director, Law

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: Off Campus

The Civil Justice Research Initiative (CJRI) is a think tank that explores, through interdisciplinary, academically-based and independent research, how the civil justice system can be made more available to everyone seeking relief. The CJRI is chaired by Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and directed by Anne Bloom, an attorney...

Ofer Eldar - Professor, Law

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Surprisingly, many large corporations across the world, are controlled and managed by nonprofit foundations, including Ikea, Carlsberg, and Rolex. These firms differ from standard profit-maximizing corporations because they are managed by nonprofits. The project explores the impact of foundation control on the performance of for-profit corporations, and the...

Michael Kiparsky - Associate Director, Law

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

California faces major challenges with groundwater governance. Groundwater is a crucial source of water for Californians, but Californians are pumping more groundwater than is naturally replenished. That leads to growing aquifer depletion, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley, with a variety of negative human health, environmental, and economic consequences. Some...

Michael Kiparsky - Associate Director, Law

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

In 2014, California passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). This law tasks local government agencies with developing and implementing groundwater sustainability plans (GSPs) to achieve sustainable groundwater management within their groundwater basins. Among other things, GSPs explain what management actions local agencies will take to achieve sustainability (for example...

Kristin Luker - Professor, Law, Sociology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: Off Campus

This project is part of an forthcoming book on how contraception and abortion, common parts of American family life throughout much of American history, came to be regulated in the late 19th century, became liberalized a century later, and are now the focus of intense political controversy. That regulation has...

Chandra Middleton - Staff Researcher, Center for Law, Energy and the Environment

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: Off Campus

The Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment’s (CLEE) Climate Break podcast brings listeners stories of climate progress and interviews with climate innovators from California and around the world, in under 2 minutes. Our episodes are solution-oriented and almost entirely produced by Berkeley students—including undergraduates, law students, and journalism...

Chandra Middleton - Staff Researcher, Center for Law, Energy and the Environment

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Want a chance to help communities adapt to climate change? Want to support people as they engage with environmental law to help make their world more livable and communities more resilient to environmental hazards? Join the Forging Resilience team! Forging Resilience, a project of the Center for Law, Energy, & the...

David Oppenheimer - Professor, Law

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

The Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality Anti-Discrimination Law brings together academics, advocates and activists from six continents to address issues of systemic inequality and discrimination. Much of our research, administration and leadership is done by Berkeley students, including URAP students. Our current projects include working groups on Sexual Harassment...

Manisha Padi - Professor, Law

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

The Biden administration has prioritized a crackdown on "junk fees"; which proliferate across industries in modern times. The banking industry has been specifically targeted by federal regulators, resulting in a sea change in bank business models. This project studies bank fees and their effect on consumers using a hybrid qualitative...

Manisha Padi - Professor, Law

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

This project studies public programs that subsidize investment in early stage ventures. The goal is to compile data on these "public purpose" venture capital projects, and compare them to traditional forms of venture capital. An ideal research assistant will have both quantitative data analysis skills in Stata, R, and/or...

Victoria Plaut - Professor, Law

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: Off Campus

Despite the enormous impact of the Venture Capital (“VC”) industry—it has helped anoint the world’s four most valuable companies—there is effectively no legal backstop that ensures non-dominant groups (e.g., women and Black people) have an equal opportunity to share in its wealth creation and innovation. Furthermore, while...

Victoria Plaut - Professor, Law

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

This project seeks to uncover the social psychological underpinnings of the debate around inclusion policies and free speech. As college campuses nationwide have instituted policies designed to promote inclusion (e.g., safe spaces, trigger warnings, hate speech codes, and pronoun usage policies), furor and debate have ignited. On the one hand...

Victoria Plaut - Professor, Law

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: Off Campus

This study will examine judicial decision making at summary judgment (a particular phase of trial) in race and gender-based employment discrimination cases. RAs will assist with legal research and qualitatively code judicial opinions. RAs will gain experience using LexisNexis and Westlaw legal research databases (which are routinely used in...

Victoria Plaut - Professor, Law

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: Off Campus

This series of projects examines equity, diversity, and inclusion across various institutional domains (e.g., tech, education, etc.). Some areas of interest include understanding how diversity is perceived by both dominant and non-dominant groups and how this affects belonging, and how people interact with policies that may or may not...

Diana Reddy - Professor, Law

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

This project explores the relationship between the many laws that regulate work in the United States, social movement activism, and changing American political economic commitments. Specifically, it investigates line-drawing in popular discourse about the meaning of work and how best to regulate it from the 1950s through today, during...