The California Law Review is the preeminent legal publication at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. Founded in 1912, the California Law Review publishes six times annually on a variety of engaging topics in legal scholarship. The California Law Review is edited and published entirely by students at Berkeley Law.

The California Law Review was the first student law journal published west of Illinois and the ninth law review in the United States. The chief architects of the California Law Review were turn-of-the-century California progressives who saw the California Law Review as a vehicle for reform. As stated by the first Editor-in-Chief and later Dean of Berkeley Law Orrin McMurray, “it is not expected that the Review will occupy a place by the side of the great national reviews of this country and of Europe, but it is hoped, that it may in a slight degree, meet the needs . . . presented in California and the other Pacific Coast states.” McMurray added that he hoped the California Law Review would take the lead in “the inevitable development of a western type of jurisprudence.”

Time proved McMurray’s ambitions modest, and indeed today the California Law Review is among the top law journals in the United States. Over the past century, the California Law Review has published some of the most influential pieces of legal scholarship, including The Equal Protection of the Laws by Joseph Tussman and Jacobus tenBroek, 37 Calif. L. Rev. 341 (1949), Privacy by William Prosser, 48 Calif. L. Rev. 383 (1960), Legal Implications of Network Economic Effects by Mark A. Lemley and David McGowan, 86 Calif. L. Rev. 479 (1998), and Law and Behavioral Science: Removing the Rationality Assumption from Law and Economics by Russell B. Korobkin and Thomas S. Ulen, 88 Calif. L. Rev. 1051 (2000). CLR editors have gone on to take leadership positions in the highest levels of government, public interest and business sectors, and academia. Among its alumni are Chief Justice Roger J. Traynor, Chief Justice Rose Bird, Justice Kathryn Werdegar, Justice Allen Broussard, Judge Marsha Berzon, Solicitor General Theodore Olson, Michael Tigar, and Professor Barbara Armstrong, the first female law professor in the United States.

The California Law Review does not stand on its reputation alone. Unique among its peers, the California Law Review has used its reputation to give voice to the most critical and cutting-edge scholarship in legal academia. Pieces such as The Dual Lives of Rights: The Rhetoric and Practice of Rights in America by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, 98 Calif. L. Rev. 277 (2010), and Masculinity as Prison: Sexual Identity, Race, and Incarceration by Russell K. Robinson, 99 Calif. L. Rev. 1309 (2011), have called into question some of the most basic assumptions in the law. And indeed, with the publication of Silence at the California Law Review by Amy DeVaudreuil, 91 Calif. L. Rev. 1183 (2003), the California Law Review has not shied away from exposing institutional racism in its own ranks. The California Law Review is not just a leading law journal; it is a leading law journal that embodies the spirit of civic engagement that is the hallmark of the University of California, Berkeley.