Don L. Doernberg

Emeritus Professor Don L. Doernberg joined the Haub Law faculty in 1979. From 1984 to 1986, he was a visiting professor at University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, and Santa Clara University School of Law. Professor Doernberg then returned to Haub Law and taught through the spring 2016 semester, serving as James D. Hopkins Chair in Law during the 2001–2003 academic years. He took emeritus status on August 2, 2016. He now occasionally teaches Civil Procedure, Criminal Procedure, and Federal Courts as a “sometimes visiting” professor at University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law.

While at Haub Law, Professor Doernberg taught Civil Procedure, Conflict of Laws, Constitutional Law, Criminal Procedure: Investigation, Federal Courts and Torts. Carolina Academic Press published his book Sovereign Immunity or the Rule of Law: The New Federalism's Choice in March, 2005. The sixth edition of his casebook Federal Courts--A Contemporary Approach was published in 2021 as part of West's Interactive Casebook Series and a seventh edition is on the way (with Professor McConville). More recently, he wrote the fifth edition of West's Federal Courts Nutshell (2021) and the sixth edition of West's Federal Courts Black Letter Outline (2021) (with Professor Freer) and A Short and Happy Guide to Conquering the MBE (2021) (with Cynthia A. Pope). He has also written Identity Crisis: Federal Courts in a Psychological Wilderness, published in 2001, and is co-editor of Civil Procedure Anthology (1998).

Professor Doernberg has written extensively concerning the subject matter jurisdiction of the federal courts, the law of standing, the propriety of the federal courts creating common law, and the historical and philosophical illegitimacy of the doctrines of sovereign immunity and official immunity in the United States. He has chaired the Association of American Law Schools' Section on Federal Courts and continues to serve as Secretary of the Section. He is a member of the American Law Institute. Before entering law teaching, Professor Doernberg taught seriously disturbed children for a year after law school and practiced law for nine years, first in private practice and then as Staff Attorney and Director of Special Litigation for the Criminal Defense Division of The Legal Aid Society in New York City. He now serves as a member of the Nevada County (California) Civil Grand Jury.

• BA, Yale University
• JD, Columbia University School of Law

• Gerard Goettel Prize for Faculty Scholarship, for Sovereign Immunity or the Rule of Law: The New Federalism’s Choice (Carolina Academic Press 2005), 2004–2005
• The Barbara Salken Outstanding Professor of the Year Award, 2010.

• “Can You Hear Me Now?”: Expectations of Privacy, False Friends, and the Perils of Speaking Under the Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence, 39 Indiana L. Rev. 253 (2006)
• The Unseen Track of Erie Railroad: Why History and Jurisprudence Suggest a More Straightforward Form of Erie Analysis, 109 W. Va. L. Rev. 611 (2007)
• Sovereignty in the Age of Twitter, 55 Vill. L. Rev. 833 (2010) (paper from participation in the Norman J. Sachoy Symposium in September 2009 at Villanova Law School)
• “The Tempest”: Shady Grove Orthopedic Associates, P.L. v. Allstate Insurance Co.: The Rules Enabling Act Decision that Added to the Confusion—But Should Not Have, 44 Akron L. Rev. 1147 (2011)
• Taking Supremacy Seriously: The Contrariety of Official Immunities, 80 Fordham L. Rev. 443 (2011)
• Horton the Elephant Interprets the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure: How the Federal Courts Sometimes Do and Always Should Understand Them, 42 Hofstra L. Rev. 799 (2014).
• Resoling International Shoe, 2 Texas A&M L. Rev. 247 (2014)
• The Supreme Court’s Cloaking Device: “[C]ongressional Judgment About the Sound Division of Labor Between State and Federal Courts,” 50 U. Pac. L. Rev. 539 (2019)
• Recessional: The Ineradicable Legacy of the Warren Court, 51 U. Pac. L. Rev. 701 (2020)
• Betraying the Constitution, 74 Baylor L. Rev. 323 (2022)
• The Trojan Horse: How the Declaratory Judgment Act Created a Cause of Action and Expanded Federal Jurisdiction While the Supreme Court Wasn’t Looking, 36 U.C.L.A. L. Rev. 529 (1989) (with Michael B. Mushlin)