The UC Berkeley School of Law has announced a $5.5 million gift from the estate of Barry Tarlow—a prominent criminal defense lawyer in California, who died in 2021—which will be used to endow a tenured professorship in the field of criminal justice.

The Barry Tarlow Chair in Criminal Justice will expand the reach of the school’s teaching and research in the field, enabling the school to offer advanced courses in criminal justice and a clinical program to expose students to the work of practicing attorneys. Marcia Morrissey—successor advisor to Tarlow’s charitable trust, who directed the gift to Berkeley Law—noted that exposure to the complexities of the criminal justice system is essential to the ethical and moral education required for a career in criminal justice. “This experience can be professionally life-changing…and, hopefully, it will inspire students to participate in and generate meaningful change in the criminal justice system,” said Morrissey.

“This [gift] will allow us to strengthen our already outstanding criminal justice faculty, which are widely regarded as among the very best in the country,” said UC Berkeley School of Law dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “Barry Tarlow was an eminent criminal defense attorney, and I am thrilled that we will honor his legacy by having a permanent chair named in his memory.”

(Photo credit: UC Berkeley School of Law)