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 Defending Our Political Rights
By Frances Presma
In a roundabout way, Erwin Chemerinsky credits the O.J. Simpson case for helping make him a better constitutional law scholar.
Already well known in academic and legal circles when the Simpson trial began, Chemerinsky developed a high public profile through his televised legal commentary on the case. In the late 1990s, when voters recruited him to run for election to the commission that would revise the city charter of Los Angeles, that public profile helped him win.
Chemerinsky describes the year-and-a-half he spent as chairman of the city charter commission as “all-consuming” and often frustrating — the commission was deadlocked with a rival city council commission until Chemerinsky and his counterpart in the other group worked out a single proposal through lengthy one-on-one negotiations. Still, the new charter, which was approved by Los Angeles voters in June 1999, is the work of which he is most proud. “I learned a lot about constitutions,” says Chemerinsky, who had earlier served as an adviser to Belarus on the drafting of its constitution. “I really got a sense of how everything in a city charter is a compromise. Nothing in that document is exactly the way I’d want it to be. Now I realize that every part of the U.S. Constitution is also a compromise.”
Chemerinsky’s civic work continued in 2000 when he was tapped by the Los Angeles Police Protective League to head an independent investigation into the LAPD’s Rampart scandal, involving corruption in the anti-gang unit of its Rampart precinct. Currently Chemerinsky, who the L.A. Weekly calls “incorruptible,” is heading a panel to reform L.A.’s contracting practices at the airport, harbor and Department of Water and Power. Chemerinsky will complete the job, which he took on “before Duke was on the horizon,” after relocating to Durham.
Chemerinsky says he’s loved his civic work. “I’ve learned so much from the things I’ve done. My teaching and scholarship have all been enriched as a result.”
A prolific writer, Chemerinsky brings his expertise to the public through frequent contributions of articles and opinion editorials to newspapers and magazines.
“I contribute in part because it is a way of educating a broader audience, getting
my opinion across, and also because I love to write.”
Chemerinsky remains active as a public interest lawyer, saying that was his goal in choosing law as a profession.
“Law is the most powerful tool for social change there is. I still believe that, although I’ve found that social change is a lot harder to achieve than I originally imagined.” He currently is co-counsel in one case in which the Supreme Court has granted review, and three others are pending where he is seeking a hearing in the high court.
The call for social justice embodied in the core Jewish principle of tikkun olam—“healing a broken world”—has always resonated deeply with Chemerinsky, who grew up on the south side of Chicago in a “fairly traditional” Jewish family.
“There was a commitment to social justice that I saw in my father’s beliefs,” he said. “I was also strongly influenced by growing up in the ’60s and by the civil rights lawyers in that era.”
Teaching, inside and outside the classroom, is his greatest professional joy. At the University of Southern California, where he was on the faculty for 21 years, he taught both in the law school and at the undergraduate level. He also lectures around the country to judges and in bar review classes. Duke Law students raved about his style when he was a visiting professor in the fall of 2002.
“He made sure we learned not just the law, but its social implications, as well,” says Sam Forehand ’05, a member of the Federalist Society who was in Chemerinsky’s constitutional law class as a 1L. “He would query us for policy arguments for and against the status quo, always making sure that the class’s political leanings didn’t keep us from considering all points of view.”
Forehand also praises Chemerinsky’s accessibility, including his invitation to students to join him for “brown bag lunches.”
“By the end of the semester, I think he’d had lunch with the whole class. His office door was always open — and more than once I caught him in the hallway for a random greeting-turned-extended discussion,” says Forehand. “Professor Chemerinsky definitely brings to Duke Law School an exceptional love for students and teaching.”
Chemerinsky is the inaugural Alston & Bird Professor at Duke Law School.
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