Michael Jenkins
USC Gould School of Law

Michael Jenkins is a partner with the law firm of Best Best & Krieger, LLP and specializes in the practice of municipal law. He currently serves as city attorney for the cities of Goleta (since 2017), Hermosa Beach (since 1996), Rolling Hills (since 1982) and West Hollywood (since 1984) and as general counsel to the Los Angeles County West Vector Control District, the South Bay Cities Council of Governments, the Westside Cities Council of Governments and the Harbor Community Benefit Foundation.

He served as president of the City Attorneys Department of the League of California Cities (1993), co-authored the original version of the league’s Municipal Law Handbook and chaired the league’s Brown Act Committee from 1994 to 2016. He served as editor for Open & Public V, the league’s manual on the Brown Act. Jenkins also served as president of the City Attorneys Association of Los Angeles County and member of the Executive Committee of the Public Law Section of the State Bar, as well as editor of the section newsletter.

Jenkins has been practicing law for 41 years, most of that time in the area of municipal law. He was admitted to the State Bar in 1978 immediately following his graduation with honors from Duke University School of Law, where he served as executive editor of the Duke Law Journal. Jenkins graduated with highest honors from Haverford College.

In 2015, Jenkins was honored by the American Bar Association with the Jefferson Fordham Advocacy Award, which recognizes professional excellence in the practice of state and local government law.  

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance
September 25, 2023
Re: Jonathan Barnett

Jonathan Barnett wrote an op-ed piece, based on his forthcoming paper to be published in the University of Chicago Business Law Review, about antitrust regulations and the effects it has on merger review processes. "This inquiry raises serious concerns that legislators and regulators have embarked on a course of action that has an insufficient factual foundation in the digital markets on which competition policymakers have focused," Barnett wrote.

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Jonathan Barnett
August, 2023

"Killer Acquisitions Reexamined: Economic Hyperbole in the Age of Populist Antitrust," University of Chicago Business Law Review.

Robin Craig
August, 2023

Robin Craig's article, "The Regulatory Shifting Baseline Syndrome: Vaccines, Generational Amnesia, and the Shifting Perception of Risk in Public Law Regimes," 21 Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics 1-60 (July 2022), was featured in The Regulatory Review on August 31, 2023.

Edward McCaffery
August, 2023

"The Paradox of Taxing the Rich," Florida Tax Review (Forthcoming, Fall 2023).