King Hall Academic Centers Assess Their Many Accomplishments

King Hall's academic centers -- the California Environmental Law and Policy Center, California International Law Center at King Hall, and Center for Science and Innovation Studies -- brought added strength to UC Davis School of Law's programs in environmental law, international law, and intellectual property during 2011, significantly contributing to intellectual vitality of King Hall.

Launched in January 2011 under the direction of Professor of Environmental Practice Richard Frank '74, the California Environmental Law and Policy Center (CELPC) was created to promote environmental scholarship, initiatives, and events within the Law School, facilitate linkages between environmental scholarship and research on the UC Davis campus and elsewhere, and advance informed environmental law and policy at all levels of government.  CELPC already has hosted highly successful events, including "CEQA at 40," a November conference on the history and future of the California Environmental Quality Act that was one of the most well-attended events in the Law School's history, drawing about 350 participants to King Hall.  (Frank also served as faculty advisor for the UC Davis Law Review's highly successful March 2011 symposium on "The Public Trust Doctrine: 30 Years Later.")  In addition, CELPC has launched a speaker series to bring environmental law scholars, attorneys, and policymakers to King Hall during the spring and fall 2011 semesters.  A CELPC Advisory Board of Directors has been formed with members including more than a dozen prominent King Hall environment law alumni, Professors Albert Lin and Christopher Elmendorf, and Professor Emeritus Harrison "Hap" Dunning.

The UC Davis Center for Science and Innovation Studies (CSIS) engages the many dimensions of the process of techno-scientific innovation under the direction of Professor Mario Biagioli, an internationally renowned expert in the fields of intellectual property and the history of copyright who left Harvard University to join the King Hall faculty and found CSIS in 2010.  The center has hosted dozens of lectures and symposia at King Hall and around campus during 2011, including "Bayh-Dole @ 30," a major conference on intellectual property and patent law that took place in April and featured Biagioli, Dean Kevin R. Johnson, and Professors Anupam Chander, Peter Lee, and Madhavi Sunder, and "Getting Famous of Getting Scooped?", a publishing workshop featuring Biagioli, UC Davis evolutionary biologist, microbiologist, and genomics researcher Jonathan Eisen, and genomics researcher, and Jon Wilbanks, who runs the Science Commons project for Creative Commons. In addition, CSIS co-sponsored the 2011 Sheffrin Lecture in Public Policy featuring Peter Galison, the Pellegrino University Professor in History of Science and Physics at Harvard University.  Other CSIS events included Professor Sunder speaking at King Hall on "iP: YouTube, MySpace, Our Culture" in February and "Intangibles: Immaterial Vectors, Agents and Effects,"  a conference co-sponsored by CSIS, the Department of Law at the London School of Economics, and the Harvard Humanities Center, held at Harvard in April. In addition, Professor Chander was the featured speaker in the CSIS event "How Law Made Silicon Valley" in April, and Professor Edward Imwinkelried participated in "Forensic Performances: Tracing Crime, Constructing Evidence" in October.  Plans are in place for CSIS to co-sponsor a conference in April 2012 on "Gaming the Game: Tweaking, Creeping, Hacking, Cheating," which will feature Professors Biagioli and Chander, as well as a spring workshop on breast cancer gene patenting.

Since its January 2009 launch, the California International Law Center at King Hall (CILC) has served to foster the work of faculty, students, and alumni in international, comparative, and transnational law.  CILC has inaugurated the UC Human Rights Fellowship Competition and, working in collaboration with the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights, published Toward Peace with Justice in Darfur: A Framework for Accountability, a joint report providing a comprehensive analysis of key transitional justice issues facing the Darfuri people.  During 2011, CILC hosted faculty workshops and career panels for students interested in working in international law as well as a series of lecture events with speakers including Judge Christopher Greenwood of the International Court of Justice; Justice Richard Goldstone, formerly of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and Chief Prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda; Judge Joan E. Donoghue of the International Court of Justice; David Caron, the C. William Maxeiner Distinguished Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law and President of the American Society for International Law, and UC San Diego political scientist David Victor.  CILC was also a co-sponsor of the highly successful Wine Law Conference held at King Hall in June, and is working with the UC Davis School of Law Immigration Law Clinic on the Haiti Project, a joint effort to assist Haitians in the wake of the catastrophic 2010 earthquake. 

During 2011, Professor Anupam Chander was appointed CILC's director, succeeding its founding director, Professor Diane Marie Amann.  Plans are in place for a series of CILC-sponsored lecture events during winter 2012, and CILC and CSIS are in the process of collaborating to host a major international conference on the changing role of brands in society and the economy planned for October 3-5, 2012.