The 12th Annual Dale Minami Public Interest Fellowship Dinner was held on January 25 at Harborview Restaurant in San Francisco. Bryan Springmeyer and Vina Ha founded the fellowship in 2007 to support outstanding Berkeley Law graduates who commit to serving the public interest.

This year’s fellowship dinner theme was “Asian Americans in the Era of Resistance” and featured Daniel Sakaguchi as the fellowship’s Berkeley Law Alumni Honoree and the selection of Christina Yang as the 2019 Dale Minami Public Interest Fellow.

In remarks at the event, firm partner Don Tamaki said: “The parallels between the Korematsu case and the travel ban are very disturbing. … Both involved the government invoking national security in order to shield its decisions from judicial scrutiny. Both involved high officials targeting a minority with racist … sentiment, and both involved hidden government reports that the government refused to disclose for which it claimed was the basis of this sweeping deprivation of civil liberties. And lastly, both ended in the courts standing down, not asking any questions, abdicating its role to be a check and balance on the unbridled exercise of executive power.”

Minami Tamaki LLP was proud to be a sponsor of this event.

Photo via Lisa P. Mak.