Michael Banerjee is a 2016 Penn State graduate from the College of Liberal Arts and holds bachelor of arts degrees in criminology and African American studies. Since completing his undergraduate work, Michael has gone on to study law at Harvard and the University of California, Berkley. He also spent a year as a law clerk for Vermont Chief Justice Paul Reiber from 2022-23, and now works for the Supreme Court of Hawaii.
Michael is also a dedicated volunteer who often mentors students from underrepresented students at Berkeley, provided over a thousand hours of pro bono work through the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau and even served as a volunteer firefighter in his hometown of Plymouth Meeting, Pa.
Q: Since graduating from Penn State, you’ve gone on to study law at Harvard and at the University of California-Berkeley. How did the academics at Penn State and Schreyer Honors College help prepare you for where you wanted to go?
A: In my undergraduate criminology and African American studies courses, I read the U.S. Constitution and studied its history. When I graduated from Penn State, my familiarity with that document and many matters related to it made it feel quite natural to encounter those subjects in law school. After earning my J.D. from Harvard Law School, I enrolled at Berkeley Law School where I’m pursuing my Ph.D. in Jurisprudence and Social Policy (JSP) with a legal-history focus.
My interest in legal history was shaped by Professor Crystal Sanders’s excellent honors course on African American history, which I took during my first year at Penn State. Professor Sanders, who has since moved on to Emory College, impressed upon us just how much African American history had to do with law and vice versa. Her honors course set me on my current path. As luck would have it, Professor Dylan Penningroth, who is one of my doctoral advisors at Berkeley was also one of Professor Sanders’s doctoral advisors when she was a graduate student at Northwestern. Professor Sanders’s honors course set me on my current path.
Q: What was the title of your thesis and what was your main takeaway from that project?
A: My thesis was titled “Pennsylvania Drug Court Effectiveness: The Montgomery County Experience.” I studied specialized treatment courts for criminal defendants who use controlled substances in my home county, and I was most struck by the stories that participants were kind enough to share with me. They talked with me about how the program saved their lives through intensive supervision, frequent drug screenings and stringent work requirements. This surprised me because I thought participants would have experienced such a demanding program as a burden. Instead, some participants happily reported that the program was exactly what they needed.
Q: As an undergraduate, what were some of your interests outside of your course of study? And how did the Honors College community support your pursuit of those interests?
A: I was lucky enough to be a member of the Multicultural Undergraduate Law Association (MULA), which was an organization dedicated to helping members earn admission to and succeed in the law school of their choice. One of the programs that MULA instituted during my time as a member was a biannual law-school visit. When it came time to visit The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, the law school generously agreed to provide accommodations for members. However, we needed to find a way to get there. The late Professor Lovalerie King, with whom I had taken a fantastic honors course, entitled “The African American Woman,” immediately volunteered to help us charter a bus to Columbus, Ohio. Professor King was a superlative teacher and dedicated mentor, and I remain in debt for all her help. This is, of course, one of many examples of how the Schreyer community supported my extracurricular interests.
Q: In what ways did your time at Schreyer challenge you and what resources – either from inside the college or beyond – were most valuable in helping you overcome those challenges?
A: The thesis was a challenge, especially because, as I wrote it, I studied for the LSAT, worked part-time and took courses. That challenge prepared me well for both law and graduate school. For example, I took the GRE just a few days after litigating my first (and only) trial as a family lawyer while in law school. My honors advisor Professor Lecinda Yevhcak was at once immensely insightful and endlessly patient as we worked through problems of method, data-collection and the like. I would not have been able to complete the thesis without her steadfast guidance and encouragement.
