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 School of Law. He was also Interim Dean of the Berkeley School of Education, 2022-24. His academic work and teaching are 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 held senior positions in five presidential campaigns, including his part time service during 2007-08 as a senior policy adviser for candidate Barack Obama. 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 Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. In 2011-13, Dean Edley was co-chair of the congressionally chartered National Commission on Equity and Excellence in Education. Before U.C. Berkeley, he was a professor at Harvard Law School for 23 years. 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).