A draft policy circulating inside the California Law Review at UC Berkeley would require editors to delete all law-review-related documents within two months after their membership ends, a measure some editors fear could wipe out records just as the journal faces questions about how it selects members. The review's leadership was expected to bring the retention policy to a vote, according to a source familiar with the plan.
As reported by Washington Free Beacon, the proposed policy would require deletion of all Write-On application materials after each year's selection process, along with materials tied to the election of the journal's holistic review committee. The same draft would bar retention of recordings from election forums and require that application materials and article drafts be password-protected in the meantime. Editors who reviewed the measure argued it would make it harder to sue or investigate the journal for race discrimination, in part by eliminating records of committee members' own pledges.
Editors Raise Alarms Over Evidence and Liability
One editor argued the policy could raise legal concerns tied to the destruction of evidence and warned it could expose students to criminal liability, per the Free Beacon's report. The editor reportedly wrote that the provisions could be construed as designed to avoid creating evidence in the first place and to bar editors from reporting what they'd seen. The same editor said voting yes on the resolution could be construed as participating in a criminal conspiracy to conceal and perpetuate civil rights violations.
One editor, who said they are an immigrant, told the outlet they worried the policy could attract negative attention from the government or the media. That editor also pointed to events at Harvard, saying the Justice Department issued a cease-and-desist letter to Harvard Law Review and that Harvard Law Review ordered a student to delete documents allegedly shared with the Free Beacon, after those documents triggered a federal discrimination probe — both developments the editor said unfolded last year. California Law Review did not respond to a request for comment, the outlet reported.
How the Journal Says It Picks Members
The California Law Review selects eight editors each year to serve on its holistic review committee, which grades applicants' personal statements, according to the Free Beacon. The journal's own public materials state that it runs Berkeley Law's annual Write-On competition to accept new members and that it considers only the primary edit, line edit and personal statement — explicitly stating on its Write-On page that it does not consider grades, resumes or past experience. The Free Beacon's reporting adds that the personal statement accounts for 30 percent of an applicant's score after a candidate clears an initial editing test, and that the statement is often described as the deciding factor in admissions.
Committee applicants described plans to weigh diverse life experience against technical editing abilities, to uplift Native voices, and to integrate anti-racist sentiment into the selection process, the outlet reported, citing committee members' own statements from August. Many editors reportedly said they planned to use the holistic review process to influence the journal's racial composition. Among the named former committee members, Clemencia Garcia-Kasimirowski wrote in 2024 that the process would make the journal more equitable and diverse; the Free Beacon also reported that Garcia-Kasimirowski derided seemingly objective standards such as standardized tests and claimed they were created by a eugenicist to subjugate minorities.
Scrutiny Already Hangs Over Berkeley Law
The California Law Review, founded in 1912 and based at the University of California, Berkeley, publishes six issues a year and describes itself as completely student-run, according to the law school's own description of the publication. The journal operates independently of the law school itself, but the broader institution is already under federal review: the Justice Department has accused UC Berkeley School of Law of deliberately discriminating against white and Asian students in its admissions process, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. Federal investigators alleged the law school used tactics including coursework difficulty, personal statements and recommendations to further its admissions diversity goals.
Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky has said the school complies with Proposition 209, federal statutes and the Constitution, and does not give race-based preferences, telling the Chronicle that “Berkeley Law does not do so.” UC Berkeley has denied violating admissions laws. The dispute over the law review's retention policy arrives as similar scrutiny has touched other elite journals: the Trump administration launched a probe of Duke Law Journal after a report that it awarded extra points to applicants who mentioned race and gender in their personal statements, and it opened multiple probes of Harvard Law Review over its holistic review committee's stated priority of including underrepresented groups, according to the same Free Beacon report. A Justice Department document separately found that Duke Law continued to intentionally discriminate against applicants based on race even after the Supreme Court's decision in Students for Fair Admissions, though that finding concerns the law school rather than its student-run journal.
What the Retention Fight Could Mean Legally
The editors' internal debate centers partly on California Penal Code section 135, which addresses the willful destruction, erasure or concealment of a record or other matter known to be sought as evidence in a legally authorized trial, inquiry or investigation, according to California's official legislative text. Whether the proposed policy would run afoul of that statute, or whether any records have actually been deleted under it, remains unresolved in the available reporting. For now, the vote on the retention policy — and the broader question of how California Law Review selects its members — leaves editors, and outside observers, watching to see what happens next.
