Hello and welcome to my website.

I’m the Dean’s Executive Professor of Law at Santa Clara Law School.  Before that I was a long term visiting professor at Stanford Law School. and a Professor of Law Emeritus at UCLA Law School.  I teach administrative law, contract law, income tax, and a seminar in law and popular culture.   I taught for over forty years at UCLA and am in my second year at Santa Clara.    At UCLA, I received the University’s Distinguished Teaching Award and the Rutter Award for Law School Teaching.

My wife Merrie Asimow and I live in Cupertino, California.   Merrie is a fine arts photographer specializing in pictures of horses.   Check out her website at asimowphotography.com

My research interests center on two different fields–administrative law and law and popular culture.  In the administrative law area, I am particularly interested in California administrative law and comparative administrative law.   I’m currently a consultant for the Administrative Conference of the United States, working on prosecutorial discretion in federal administrative law. Along with three collaborators, I wrote the three-volume California Practice Guide: Administrative Law, published by the Rutter Group, which is updated annually and available online through Westlaw.  Together with Ron Levin, I wrote State and Federal Administrative Law, a law-school teaching book that is currently in its fifth edition.  I’ve written a number of articles about comparative administrative law, including “Five Models of Administrative Adjudication” in the American Journal of Comparative Law.

In the area of law and popular culture, I am a co-author with Paul Bergman of Real to Reel: Truth and Trickery in Courtroom Movies,” published by Vandeplas and available on Amazon.com.  This is a video guide to courtroom movies. 

I am also co-author with Jessica Silbey of Law and Popular Culture: A Course Book which is a teaching book for both graduate and undergraduate courses that address the interface between law and popular culture. These two books are described in greater detail in the “law and popular culture” of this website.

When I’m not teaching or writing books and articles, I’m probably playing the piano, to which I’ve become hopelessly addicted.  But I also might be playing golf or tennis or riding my bike around the beautiful San Francisco Bay peninsula or walking my lovable dog Shira.  And, of course, I love watching old and new movies and TV shows about lawyers.  Merrie and I have six children and stepchildren and twelve grandchildren, so keeping up with all of them is almost a full-time job.

I welcome emails (my address is asimow@law.ucla.edu) or phone calls (650-575-4858)