Law, Labor, and the Waterfront

Hon. Marsha Berzon, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals | Moderator

Judge Marsha S. Berzon is a graduate of Radcliffe College and the law school at the University of California at Berkeley, where she was Articles Editor of the California Law Review. She served as a law clerk to Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., of the United States Supreme Court and for Judge James R. Browning of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Before joining the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Berzon was an appellate and Supreme Court advocate at Altshuler, Berzon, Nussbaum, Berzon & Rubin, a San Francisco law firm. She presented cases in most of the federal circuit courts and the appellate courts of California and several other states. She filed briefs in dozen of cases in the United States Supreme Court, appearing four times as an oral advocate before the Court. Among the cases in which Judge Berzon participated were many setting important precedents in the fields of labor and employment, environmental women’s rights (including the landmark employment discrimination case, UAW v. Johnson Controls), and free speech law. While in practice, Judge Berzon served as Associate General Counsel of the AFL-CIO; as a member of the Executive Committee of the Bar Association of San Francisco’s Labor and Employment Law Section; as co-chair of the Appellate Courts Committee of the Bar Association of San Francisco; as Treasurer of the Labor and Employment Law Section of the State Bar of California; as a member of the Board of Directors of the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee; as a member of the Board of Directors of the Legal Aid Society of San Francisco; as Vice President and a member of the Board of Directors of the ACLU of Northern California; and as a member of the California Commission on the Future of the Legal Profession and the State Bar.

In the Fall of 1994, Judge Berzon was practitioner in residence at Cornell Law School, where she taught Supreme Court litigation; in the Fall of 1998, she was a practitioner in residence at Indiana University Law School; in the Fall of 2003, she was the Alvin B. and Janice Rubin Lecturer at the Paul F. Herbert Law Center of Louisiana State University. She has taught at Berkeley Law and currently teaches Current Constitutional Cases as an adjunct professor at UC Hastings Law School. Judge Berzon received the Faye Stender Award from the California Women Lawyers’ Association for her contribution to establishing the legal rights of women; the American Jewish Committee’s Learned Hand Award; the American Bar Association’s Margaret Brent Award; and the Berkeley Law Jensen Award for Public Service for 2022. Judge Berzon gave the Madison Lecture at New York University Law School in 2008, and the David Feller lecture at Berkeley Law in 2023. She has written many law review articles and book chapters.

Judge Berzon was confirmed as a judge of the Ninth Circuit on March 9, 2000. She is currently a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a member of the American Law Institute, and has been a member of the Board of Advisors to the Center on Law and Information Policy.

Catherine Fisk | Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley

Catherine Fish is the Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong Distinguished Professor of Law the University of California, Berkeley. She has written books and articles on both new and historic aspects of labor law and worker organizing. Her forthcoming books are No Neutrals: Lawyers for the Twentieth Century Labor Movement, which examines the careers of lawyers who represented radical labor unions, and Speech@Work, which examines the rights of both government and private sector employees and employers to speak at or about work.

Don Marcus | President Emeritus Masters, Mates & Pilots, AFL-CIO

Captain Don Marcus is a professional mariner who was elected President of the International Organizing Masters, Mates & Pilots, AFL-CIO (MM&P) from 2013 through 2024. During his seagoing career, he sailed in all Licensed Deck Officer capacities, from Third Mate to Master, aboard U.S.-flag ships engaged in international trade. He was commissioned in the U.S. Naval Reserve, receiving his Honorable Discharge in 1986. His last shipboard assignment was as Master of MV Sea-Land Pacer.

Don is a staunch advocate for the American Merchant Marine and America’s working families. He has been a union member throughout his working life, having joined the Masters, Mates & Pilots upon graduating from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point, NY, in 1979.

Prior to his tree terms as President of MM&P, Don served as the union’s Secretary-Treasurer and as Vice President-Pacific Ports, based in Seattle.

In June 2013, Don was elected President of the Maritime Labor Alliance, a six-union partnership which included MM&P, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), the Inlandboatmen’s Union of the Pacific (IBU), the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association (MEBA) and the American Radio Association (ARA). The Maritime Labor Alliance was wound up in 2024.

Don is a graduate of the UC Law San Francisco (1990). Originally from San Francisco, he resides in Baltimore, Maryland.

Reuel Schiller | Professor of Law, University of California College of Law, San Francisco

Reuel Schiller is the Honorable Roger J. Trainer Chair and Professor of Law at the University of California College of Law, San Francisco. His teaching and scholarship focus on American legal history, administrative law, and labor and employment law. He has written extensively about the legal history of the American administrative state, and the historical development of labor law and employment discrimination law. He is the author of Forging Rivals: Race, Class, Law, and the Collapse of Postwar Liberalism, a prize-winning book about the relationship between labor unions and civil rights organizations in the Bay Area in the years following the Second World War. Schiller has received the American Bar Association, Administrative Law Section’s scholarship award and the Rutter Award for Teaching Excellence. In addition to his teaching and scholarship, Professor Schiller is a co-editor of Cambridge University Press’s Studies in Legal History book series.