Image - Erwin Chemerinsky at UC Berkeley School of Law
Past Event

“The Playbook of a Dictator”: UC Berkeley’s Erwin Chemerinsky on Trump and the Rule of Law

UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky’s 2024 book No Democracy Lasts Forever examined how democracies collapse and give way to authoritarian regimes. 

Trump’s second term, Chemerinsky says, is following the playbook. 

”If one were to design a path to authoritarian rule, it would be what we have seen in the first weeks of the Trump administration,” he wrote earlier this year. One of the country’s most prominent legal scholars, Chemerinsky has been speaking out on the need to protect due process and the rule of law and to defend against attacks on academia and the media. 

Don't miss him as he returns to Commonwealth Club Word Affairs to talk about the most pressing threats to democracy—and the possible solutions.

Notes

Photo courtesy the UC Berkeley School of Law.

July 24, 2025

Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California
110 The Embarcadero
Taube Family Auditorium
San Francisco, CA 94105
United States

Speakers
Image - Erwin Chemerinsky

Erwin Chemerinsky

Dean, University of California, Berkeley School of Law; Author, No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States

Image - Kirk O. Hanson

Kirk O. Hanson

Senior Fellow of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University; Member, Silicon Valley Advisory Council, Commonwealth Club World Affairs