John Coons, Stephen Sugarman write editorial letters to First Things, February 2012

John Coons: Our melange of state-funded and private schools have maintained choice for families who can afford either to locate in a desirable district or pay private tuition. Those who cannot do either get educated in a school chosen by strangers. We trust only the well-off parents.

Stephen Sugarman: Charter schools are now at the heart of the public school choice movement. But the one type of school currently not permitted to be a charter school is the religious school. This forces parents who prefer a religious education for their children either to pay for it, find financial aid, or settle for something else.

San Francisco Chronicle, February 26, 2012 by Mary Louise Frampton
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/25/IN331NAFD8.DTL

Our scholarship has led to state and national social reforms. Herma Hill Kay, a former dean and professor, co-authored California’s no-fault divorce law, calling it a “movement whose time had come.”

Professors John Coons and Stephen Sugarman argued successfully for K-12 financial reform based on the Constitution’s “equal protection” clause. Lawmakers “embraced the idea of education equity,” says Sugarman.

Our public education lens today is focused on “restorative justice.” Considered unconventional by some educators, that’s a disciplinary tactic that encourages accountability and relationship building instead of harsh punishment. Results from our first-ever empirical study are dramatic: In one West Oakland middle school, suspensions dropped by 87 percent, and expulsions dropped to zero.

The AM Law Daily, December 7, 2011 by Sara Randazzo
http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2011/12/hughes-hubbard-opens-in-kansas-city.html

With the Food and Drug Administration turning up the heat on tobacco makers in recent years, industry rivals are increasingly at odds over how far regulators should go, says Stephen Sugarman. Bans on certain types of advertising, for example, would have less impact on a nationally recognized brand such as Philip Morris’s Marlboro than on lesser known brands trying to elbow their way into the market, Sugarman says.

The New York Times, November 19, 2011 by Ira Mark Ellman and Stephen D. Sugarman
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinion/sunday/sunday-dialogue-judging-the-health-law.html?scp=6&sq=Berkeley&st=nyt

The health care “mandate” is clearly constitutional. Indeed, it’s misleading to call it a mandate at all. Everyone already uses health care services. The new law merely regulates how we buy them.

California Watch, August 11, 2011 by Stephanie Rice
http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/oakland-preschooler-molested-classmate-family-says-11969

Stephen Sugarman, who teaches tort law at the UC Berkeley School of Law, said the case, which otherwise relies on the account of a young girl, is strengthened by the social services finding of inadequate supervision. “It would not be conclusive evidence, but it’s substantial evidence in their favor,” he said. “It would be tough evidence for (the district) to overcome,” he added.

San Francisco Examiner, July 3, 2011 by Dan Schreiber
http://bit.ly/kQYYgF

“For nonprofessional league situations of willfully wrongful conduct, the criminal law system is more likely to get involved,” Sugarman said. “Of course, just because someone is badly injured or even killed while playing a sport does not mean that a crime has been committed.”

ABC News, March 17, 2011 by Sherisse Pham
http://abcn.ws/fg1xmH

“It does not strike me as an outlandish amount,” said Steve Sugarman, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “As I understand it genital herpes is a lifetime bad-news kind of deal to have.”

The New York Times, January 30, 2011 by Barry Meier
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/business/31tobacco.html

Stephen D. Sugarman … said he did not expect the St. Louis suit to be any more successful than those that had preceded it. He said that the difficulty for third-party claimants like hospitals was that they were trying to stand in the shoes of the smokers themselves.

The Christian Science Monitor, November 17, 2010 by Sara Afzal
http://bit.ly/a58mJ0

“The laws are enforceable. There are laws that protect smokers,” says Stephen Sugarman, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. For instance, “I think it’s pretty clear that all of these laws prohibit an employer from firing an employee for smoking.”

-Los Angeles Times, October 18, 2009 Editorial Board
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-passings18-2009oct18,0,3963453,print.story

Colleagues said Barnett, who retired in 2003, was a tireless advocate of free speech rights and had spent his last years as a vocal critic of the speed with which the California Supreme Court handed down its decisions and the way it went about much of its day-to-day business.

-The Recorder, October 19, 2009 by Petra Pasternak
http://www.law.com/jsp/ca/PubArticleCA.jsp?id=1202434697325&slreturn=1&hbxlogin=1

“If there is such a thing as a constructive gadfly, that was Steve,” said Berkeley law professor Richard Buxbaum, who knew him since Barnett joined the faculty in 1967…. He had an engaging way of making deans and faculty members uncomfortably aware of some of the consequences of their decisions,” Buxbaum said, “often to the betterment later.”

Choper said he often called Barnett a muckraker because the professor would uncover policies at the school he didn’t agree with and “he just wouldn’t let it go…. He wanted to do something about it.” Choper, who served for a time as the dean, said he’d receive regular memos from Barnett outlining what he could be doing better.

-San Francisco Chronicle, October 21, 2009 by Bob Egelko
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/21/BAH11A6VDB.DTL&type=printable

He was a leader in “shaping public policy concerning the industrial structure and public regulation of both print and visual media,” said Richard Buxbaum, a fellow Berkeley law professor.

“In his scholarship, Steve was a devastating critic of the practices of the California Supreme Court and the California State Bar,” said another UC Berkeley colleague, Melvin Eisenberg. “He did a lot of acute, penetrating research that no one else has done regarding judicial transparency and legitimacy.”

-The New York Times, October 21, 2009 by William Grimes
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/us/22barnett.html?_r=2

“Stephen Barnett was probably California’s leading analyst and critic of the way the California Supreme Court goes about its business,” said Stephen Sugarman, a professor and associate dean at Berkeley’s law school.

McClatchy News, September 7, 2009 by Andy Furillo
http://www.connpost.com/breakingnews/ci_13287287

While the defense plans to fight the case on the issue of foreseeability, the legal experts said the Entercom lawyers could have a difficult time making that argument … that Strange “knew as much—if not more—about the dangers of drinking water as any defendant. “She knew and they didn’t? That seems unlikely,” said Stephen D. Sugarman. “And I’m skeptical about her awareness of the danger. How many people are going to do this if they think they’re going to kill themselves?”

San Francisco Chronicle, July 17, 2009 by Mike Stobbe
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/07/17/national/a161229D59.DTL&type=printable

“The government paid out quite a bit of money,” said Stephen Sugarman, a law professor who specializes in product liability at the University of California at Berkeley. Vaccines aren’t as profitable as other drugs for manufacturers, and without protection against lawsuits “they’re saying, ‘Do we need this?’” Sugarman said.

Contra Costa Times, July 10, 2009 by Malaika Fraley
http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_12811905?source=most_emailed

As the top public defender, Coleman is proud of recruiting and maintaining a diverse staff of lawyers (60 percent women and 25 percent nonwhite) with distinguished academic records despite funding shocks to the office. Under Coleman’s leadership, the office is known for providing first-class legal representation for indigent defendants and as a great place to work, said Professor Stephen Sugarman, of UC Berkeley School of Law.

San Francisco Chronicle, April 17, 2009 by Jasper Rine and Stephen D. Sugarman
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/17/ED4K173OSA.DTL&hw=Berkeley+University+UC&sn=005&sc=168

Here’s how: Require that a substantial share of baseball salaries—say two-thirds of earnings above the league minimum guaranteed by the collective bargaining agreement—go into a trust for the duration of the player’s career…. If a player’s stored samples are clean, he would get everything in his trust and remove any suspicion about his honesty. If the samples prove he cheatedֽ after appropriate retesting and inevitable challengesֽ his share would be forfeited.

San Francisco Chronicle, March 1, 2009 by Stephen D. Sugarman
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/01/INDK164MAL.DTL

“Merely telling people to eat less salt is unlikely to do the trick. After all, people like salt for its flavor. Moreover, most of the salt we consume is not added in our home kitchens or at the table. Instead, it’s added by food processors to the food we buy…. A more creative way to attack this problem is with performance-based regulation. This approach imposes outcome targets on business by imposing financial penalties if those targets aren’t met.”

The National Law Journal, February 26, 2009 by Vesna Jaksic
http://www.law.com/jsp/law/LawArticleFriendly.jsp?id=1202428588174

The University of California, Berkeley, School of Law uses high honors, honors and pass designations and has no intention of changing that policy, said Stephen D. Sugarman…. “If you give everyone A’s and there aren’t any A-pluses, or if you don’t give honors and high honors, you just wouldn’t have a way to easily distinguish the best 25 or the best 10 percent of your students,” Sugarman said. “So I think you need in some ways to help the judges and help yourself decide who to promote as the best students.”

The Sacramento Bee, January 14, 2009 by Jim Sanders
http://www.sacbee.com/capitolandcalifornia/story/1540180.html?mi_rss=Capitol%20and%20California

Law professor Stephen D. Sugarman … said citizens are not legally required to intervene. “Careless rescuers are not good Samaritans, really,” Sugarman said. “We don’t want people interfering with other people and hurting them a lot worse, right?”

British Medical Journal, Oct. 2, by Stephen Sugarman

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/oct02_2/a1750

“Public health leaders who now distrust industry should accept that public health needs business as an ally. But public health leaders who promote self regulation by business should accept that voluntary cooperation will never achieve enough. Performance based regulation occupies the middle ground—a third way. Let society set legally enforceable goals and then let enterprises loose to accomplish them.”

Los Angeles Times, June 29, by Jeffrey Fagan and Stephen D. Sugarman
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-sugarman29-2008jun29,0,1307373.story

“We propose a new way to prod gun makers to reduce gun deaths, one that would be unlikely to put them out of business or to prevent law-abiding citizens from obtaining guns.”

San Jose Mercury News, June 9, by Lisa M. Krieger
http://www.mercurynews.com [Registration required]

“For many years now, Berkeley and Stanford students seeking high-paid jobs with big law firms seem to have little difficulty getting offers.… At schools like ours, only a small share of positions seem to require being more or less in the top 10 percent of the class.”