Charles Halpern

Charles Halpern is a pioneer in the public interest law movement, a successful public interest entrepreneur, an innovator in legal education, a long-time meditation practitioner and advocate, and author of Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom.

He is currently Director of the Berkeley Initiative for Mindfulness in Law, a new venture at Berkeley Law exploring the benefits of meditation to legal education and law practice.

Halpern earned his Bachelor of Arts in American history and literature from Harvard College in 1961 and his Law degree from Yale Law School in 1964.

After finishing law school he clerked for two years with Judge George T. Washington of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Halpern then accepted an associate position with the D.C. law firm Arnold and Porter, which he held for four years. It was during his time with Arnold and Porter that Halpern found his calling in the public interest law movement, initially in the area of mental health. He was lead counsel in the case Rouse v. Cameron,373 F.2d 451 (D.C. Cir. 1966), which challenged the adequacy of treatment being provided to an individual confined in a mental hospital. Halpern was later counsel in Wyatt v. Aderholt,503 F.2d 1305 (5th Cir. 1974), which affirmed a Constitutional right to treatment for individuals civilly committed to state mental facilities.

In 1969, Halpern left Arnold and Porter and co-founded the Center for Law and Social Policy in Washington D.C., the nation’s first public interest law firm. While with the Center he served as counsel on a number of important public interest cases including the seminal environmental cases concerning the construction of the Alaska Pipeline, see Wilderness Society v. Morton,479 F.2d 842 (D.C. Cir. 1973), and the banning of DDT, see Environmental Defense Fund, Inc. v. Ruckelshaus,439 F.2d 584 (D.C. Cir. 1971). His interest in mental health issues also ultimately led him to co-found the Mental Health Project, later renamed the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, in 1971. In 1975 Halpern founded the Council for Public Interest Law, later renamed the Alliance for Justice, and he subsequently served as a professor at Stanford Law School and Georgetown University Law Center and as a Senior Fellow at Yale Law School.

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