Center for Public Interest Law
Created in 1980, the Center for Public Interest Law (CPIL) is an academic center of research, teaching, and advocacy in public interest and administrative law. CPIL focuses its efforts on the study of an extremely powerful-yet often overlooked-level of government: state regulatory agencies. These agencies and their federal counterparts regulate all aspects of business (including banking, corporations, insurance, and real estate), professions (including attorneys, physicians, accountants, engineers, and architects), trades (including contractors, barbers, and cosmetologists), and the environment (air and water quality, pesticide use, forestry, coastal resources, and waste management). An understanding of these agencies-how they work, the procedures they follow, their authority and jurisdiction, and the limitations on their powers-is an indispensable weapon in the arsenal of most attorneys, especially public interest attorneys.
CPIL offers two courses to USD law students:
Public Interest Law and Practice
 Public Interest Law and Practice is a four- or five-unit yearlong course in which students study the substantive laws governing the functioning and decisionmaking of state administrative agencies. These laws include the "sunshine statutes" which require most agency decisionmaking to take place in public and guarantee public access to most agency records (the open meetings acts and the California Public Records Act) and the state Administrative Procedure Act, which governs the process agencies must follow to adopt regulations or take disciplinary action against the license of a licensee. Students also study important limitations on the power of agencies (including constitutional and antitrust limitations), and the functioning of the state legislature, which may enact, repeal, or amend the enabling acts of most agencies. As part of their coursework, students are assigned to monitor two California agencies; they travel all over the state to attend agency meetings, monitor and analyze their activities, interview agency officials and licensees, and track rulemaking, legislation, and litigation affecting their agencies. Twice during the year, students submit written reports on the activities of their assigned agencies. These reports are edited by CPIL professional staff and published, with attribution to the student author, in the Center's California Regulatory Law Reporter, the only legal journal of its kind in the nation; the Reporter is reprinted in full on Westlaw.
Students wishing to take Public Interest Law and Practice should preregister for the course - but do not assign it a priority number . Public Interest Law and Practice is subject to a special application procedure; please attend our orientation session on April 12 or visit CPIL's offices (rear door of the LRC) for further information.
Public Interest Law Clinic
Students who enjoy Public Interest Law and Practice frequently go on to take Public Interest Law Clinic, in which they may design their own writing or advocacy project related to regulatory or public interest law. In the past, these projects have included written critiques of agencies or agency programs; petitioning an agency to adopt regulations; drafting model legislation; participating in litigation to enforce the state's "sunshine statutes"; or submitting amicus curiae briefs on public interest issues pending appeal. Student critiques of publishable quality may satisfy USD's written work requirement.
Students interested in Public Interest Law Clinic must secure a permission slip prior to preregistration from Professor Julie D'Angelo Fellmeth at CPIL's offices.
Please visit our website at www. cpil.org for more information about CPIL.
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