Christopher F. Edley

Christopher F. Edley, Jr. is former Dean and the Honorable William H. Orrick, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law, where he serves as Faculty Director of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy and Faculty Co-Director of the Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law. His academic work is primarily in the areas of administrative law, civil rights, education policy, and domestic public policy. Edley served in White House policy and budget positions in the late 1970s under President Jimmy Carter and in the 1990s under President Bill Clinton. His Clinton service included time at the Office of Management and Budget, where he oversaw the budgets and legislative policy initiatives for five cabinet departments and over 40 independent agencies. He has held senior positions in five presidential campaigns, including his part time service during 2007-08 as a senior policy adviser for candidate Barack Obama, whom he taught at Harvard Law. Edley's past civic activities include: six years on the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; board vice chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation; the Carter-Ford National Commission on Federal Election Reform following the Florida debacle in 2000; the Aspen Institute Blue Ribbon Commission on Reform of the No Child Left Behind Act; California's Commission on Tax Reform and the 21st Century Economy; the Commission on the Future of the University of California; and board member for the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition in 2008, with responsibility for education, immigration and health care reform. He devotes considerable time to service on committees of the National Research Council; for seven years he was on the board of the NRC's Division on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Since February 2011, Dean Edley has been co-chair of the congressionally chartered National Commission on Equity and Excellence in Education, appointed by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. He is the author of Not All Black and White: Affirmative Action, Race and American Values (1998) and Administrative Law: Rethinking Judicial Control of Bureaucracy (1992).