DCSIMG

Brian K. Landsberg

Professor of Law
B.A., University of California, Berkeley
LL.B., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law
Certificate in African Law , University of London



 E-mail Professor Landsberg
Tel:  916.739.7103

Professor Landsberg worked for the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, from 1964 to 1986. As a trial attorney, he was associate counsel in the Selma, Alabama civil rights cases. He later supervised the division’s Education Section for five years and then headed the Appellate Section for 12 years.

Professor Landsberg was an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University for four years. He has been a professor Pacific McGeorge School of Law since 1986. In 1993, Professor Landsberg took a six-month leave of absence to serve in the No. 2 post in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, where he was an Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General.

He has taught at the Pacific McGeorge Institute on International Legal Studies in Salzburg, Austria and the International Law Institute in Kampala, and served as Program Director, Summer Law Institute, Kenneth Wang School of Law, Suzhou, China. He is Program Director for the Pacific McGeorge Rule of Law Program in China, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. He has also taught as a visiting professor at University of California, Berkeley. Professor Landsberg is the author of the books Alabama and the Origins of the Voting Rights Act and Enforcing Civil Rights: Race Discrimination and the Department of Justice and co-authored Global Issues in Constitutional Law with Professor Leslie Jacobs.

Courses:  Constitutional Law  |  Federal Anti-Discrimination Legislation  |  State Constitutional Law  |  First Amendment  |  Critical Race Theory  |  Federal Courts  |  Comparative Constitutional Law

Recent Publications: Alabama and the Origins of the Voting Rights Act (University Press of Kansas, 2007).
Global Issues in Constitutional Law, co-authored with Leslie Jacobs (2007)
Global Issues in Employment Discrimination Law, co-authored with Samuel Estreicher (2007)
The Role of Judicial Independence, 19 Pac. McGeorge Global Bus. & Devel. J. 331 (2007)
Major Acts of Congress [Editor in Chief] (Macmillan Reference USA 2003);
"Sumter County, Alabama and the Origins of the Voting Rights Act," 45 Ala. L. Rev. 877 (2003).
 John Doar Witkin Schaber Lecture Video 

Curriculum Vitae:

LEGAL EXPERIENCE:

Academic

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs , University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, 2001-02
Professor of Law , Pacific McGeorge, 1986-present; Distinguished Professor and Scholar, 2008-
Visiting Professor of Law , Pacific McGeorge (on sabbatical from Department of Justice), 1984-85
Courses Taught: Federal Courts, Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Appellate Advocacy, State Constitutional Law, Civil Rights Litigation, Antidiscrimination Legislation, Comparative Antidiscrimination Law, Complex Civil Litigation, Professional Responsibility, Fair Employment Law in Europe and the United States, Critical Race Theory and First Amendment
Program Director , Summer Law Institute, Kenneth Wang School of Law, Suzhou, China, summer 2005
Visiting Professor , International Law Institute, Kampala, Uganda, The Role of National and Judicial Institutions in Peace Building and Security, winter 2006
Program Director , USAID Grant for Enhancing the Rule of Law by Building Professional Legal Skills, 2006-present
Visiting Professor , University of California, Berkeley, School of Law [Boalt Hall], spring 1995 and spring 1997
Adjunct Professor , Georgetown University Law School, 1981-84

Government

Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General , Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice, June 1993-January 1994
Chief, Appellate Section , Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice, September 1974-June 1986
Chief, Education Section , Civil Rights Division, October 1969-August 1974
Trial Attorney and Supervisory Attorney , Civil Rights Division, 1964-1969

EDUCATION:

B.A. , University of California, Berkeley, 1959
LL.B. , University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 1962
Certificate in African Law , University of London, 1962-63

BAR MEMBERSHIP AND ACTIVITIES:

  • United States Supreme Court Bar
  • Bar of District of Columbia (inactive)
  • California State Bar (inactive)
  • Ethics Committee, D.C. Bar, 1981-1984
  • American Bar Association
  • Board of Trustees, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under Law
  • Member, Chief Justice George’s Working Group to commemorate the Fiftieth Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, 2003-04

HONORS:

  • Order of Coif
  • California Law Review
  • Ford Foundation International Legal Studies Fellowship, 1962-63
  • National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar Fellow, 1979
  • Attorney General's John Marshall Award for Appellate Litigation, 1979
  • Assistant Attorney General's Special Commendation Awards, 1972 and 1978
  • Attorney General's Special Commendation Award, 1967
  • Distinguished Speaker, University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, 2000
  • Eberhardt Teacher-Scholar Award, University of the Pacific, May 2007
  • Honorary Professor of Law, Zhejiang Gongshang University School of Law, July 2007

PUBLICATIONS:

Books

  • Global Issues in Employment Discrimination Law (Thomson West 2007)(with Samuel Estreicher)
  • Global Issues in Constitutional Law (Thomson West 2007)(with Leslie Gielow Jacobs)
  • Free at Last to Vote: Alabama and the Origins of the Voting Rights Act (University Press of Kansas 2007)
  • Major Acts of Congress [Editor in Chief] (Macmillan Reference USA, 2003)
  • Enforcing Civil Rights — Race Discrimination and the Department of Justice (University Press of Kansas, 1997)

Law Review Articles

  • The Role of Judicial Independence, 19 Pac. McGeorge Global Bus. & Devel. J. 331 (2007)
  • Report Regarding the Pacific McGeorge Workshop on Globalizing the Law School Curriculum, 19 Pacific McGeorge Global Business & Devel. J. 267(co-author; 2006)
  • Sumter County, Alabama and the Origins of the Voting Rights Act, 54 Ala.L.Rev. 877 (2003)
  • Safeguarding Constitutional Rights: The Uses and Limits of Prophylactic Rules, 66 Tennessee L.Rev. 925 (1999)
  • Balanced Scholarship and Racial Balance, 30 Wake Forest L.J. 819 (1995)
  • Symposium: The Department of Justice and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 26 Pacific L.J. 766 (April 1995)
    -author of Introduction
    -member of panel on Vindicating the Promise of Brown -- School Desegregation and the Civil Rights Act — Past, Present, and Future
  • Equal Educational Opportunity: The Rehnquist Court Revisits Green and Swann, 42 Emory L.J. 821 (1993)
  • The Role of Civil Service Attorneys and Political Appointees in Making Policy in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, 9 Journal of Law and Politics 275 (1993)
  • Race and the Rehnquist Court, 66 Tulane L. Rev. 1267 (1992)
  • Review Essay, Caplan, The Tenth Justice, 6 Constitutional Commentary 165 (1989)
  • The Desegregated School System and the Retrogression Plan, 48 La. L. Rev. 789 (1988)

Other articles

  • Did We Always Care About Voting Rights?, published in History News Network, <http://hnn.us/articles/39158.html>, June 11, 2007.
  • How Will Alito Shape the Court, Legal Affairs Debate Club, http://www.legalaffairs.org/webexclusive/debateclub_sg0106.msp, Jan. 9-13, 2006
  • Brown v. Board of Education and the Role of the Lawyer, 104 Sacramento Lawyer 12 (2004)
  • Affirmative-Action Decision Indicates Shifts in Position, San Francisco Daily Journal, June 29, 2003, p. 4 [also in Los Angeles Daily Journal]
  • Stay the Civil Rights Course, Legal Times, March 19, 2001, p. 66
  • Good for Civil Rights; Good for U.S.A., National Law Journal, Dec. 8, 1997
  • The Federal Government and the Promise of Brown, 96 Teachers College Record 627 (1995), reprinted in Brown v. Board of Education : The Challenge for Today's Schools (Ellen Lagemann and Lamar Miller, eds.) (1996)
  • The 'racist' caricature of Guinier, The Sacramento Bee, June 2, 1993, B7
  • Civil Rights Enforcement After Ed Meese, The Sacramento Bee, July 31, 1988; The National Law Journal, Sept. 12, 1988 [in slightly altered form]
  • Student Pieces, 49 Calif. L.Rev. 558 (copyright), 368 (employment), 50 Calif. L. Rev. 515 (1962)( Viet Nam intervention)

Book reviews

  • Howard Ball, Murder in Mississippi ( Univ. Press of Kansas, 2004), 36 Journal of Interdisciplinary History 298 (2005)
  • James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy ( Oxford Univ. Press 2001), 107 American Historical Review 247 (2002)
  • David E. Bernstein, Only One Place Of Redress: African Americans, Labor Regulations, and The Courts From Reconstruction To The New Deal, 11 The Law and Politics Book Review 243 (2001)
  • Paul D. Moreno, From Direct Action to Affirmative Action: Fair Employment Law and Policy in America, 1933-1972, 18 Law and History Review 240 (2000)
  • David Ray Papke, Heretics in the Temple: Americans Who Reject the Nation’s Legal Faith, 8 Law and Politics Book Review 443 (1998)
  • Starck (ed.), New Challenges to the German Basic Law, 41 Am. J. Comp. Law 145 (1993)
  • Ellis, European Community Sex Equality Law, 40 Am. J. Comp. Law 997 (1992)
  • Ripple, Constitutional Litigation, 2 Constitutional Commentary 535 (summer 1985)