Faculty Spotlight: Professor William J. Aceves

You might not guess from an everyday interaction with CWSL’s Chief Justice Roger Traynor Professor of Law William J. Aceves—who carries himself with an easy and effervescent smile—that he is one of California Western’s fiercest advocates for civil and human rights. Yet in a law school career that spans 26 years, his commitment to social justice and the rule of law can be found throughout his teaching, scholarship, and service. His commitment to helping others is something that started early in his life. It began when he first experienced the consequences of being different.

“Difference was something I confronted throughout my life,” says Professor Aceves, who was born and raised in Los Angeles, the child of a Mexican American father and a Spanish immigrant mother, living in a predominantly white neighborhood. “English was my second language. And in my neighborhood, on the bus, and at school, I routinely saw inequality and discrimination. Early on, I began to appreciate the ways that class, economics, culture, and race generated both opportunities and obstacles in people’s lives.” These early experiences with the consequences of difference have informed Professor Aceves’s lifelong commitment to social justice and human rights. 

Professor Aceves’s early passion for this work led him first to the University of Southern California, where he received his JD and an MA in international relations, then to Harvard for an MA in government, and finally to UCLA for an LLM in international law. He arrived at CWSL in 1998. Since then, Professor Aceves has established himself as an authority in both the academic and the practical sides of the law.

“Like my colleagues, I am a lawyer first. It defines who I am as a professional,” says Professor Aceves, who is licensed to practice in California and is admitted in several federal circuits, including the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, Eleventh, D.C. Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court. As a lawyer, he has been involved in numerous cases. Some lawsuits involved human rights abuses committed by foreign governments against their own people. Other cases involved abuses committed by the U.S. government, from torture of detainees during the War on Terror to the mistreatment of asylum seekers. In addition to his work in the federal courts, he has also appeared as an advocate before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Migrants, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Professor Aceves complements this work with an extensive commitment to service. He has served on the national board of directors of several prominent organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International, during times of extraordinary national and international turmoil. He is now the Board Chair of the Center for Justice & Accountability, an organization committed to deterring severe human rights abuses around the world through innovative litigation, policy work, and transitional justice strategies. Each of these experiences informs Professor Aceves’s work as a teacher and scholar. It offers context and credibility in his ability to explain what the law is and how it operates.

As one of California Western’s longest-tenured professors, Professor Aceves has demonstrated incredible dedication to his students. As a teacher, he has consistently emphasized that “the law is not something abstract. “We can’t stand in front of the classroom and talk about general concepts without addressing the practical implications of the law.” Professor Aceves draws on his ample experience in litigation to help make the law tangible for his students. For many years, he has also served as one of the coaches for the Jessup International Law Moot Team. It shows. California Western teams have excelled in this appellate advocacy competition, which is the largest in the world with hundreds of law schools participating. Just this past year, a team of California Western students received multiple national and international awards at the competition. Graduates of the Jessup Team have used their experiences on the Jessup Team to excel as lawyers in writing and oral advocacy. 

From 2007 to 2014, Professor Aceves served as the Vice Dean of Academic Affairs at CWSL. “While challenging, the position gave me the unique opportunity to see the incredible work that my colleagues were doing. And the remarkable stories of our students who are pursuing their dream careers. These are things we don’t always see or hear as professors. But as an administrator, you have a front-row seat to all these journeys and all these stories. It was very rewarding.” 

Professor Aceves is also an accomplished scholar whose work is informed by the same passion that drives his advocacy and teaching. It is this quiet fire that has motivated nearly three decades of rigorous scholarship in prestigious legal journals. In recent years, he has focused on racial and gender inequality in the United States. He has explored the catastrophic consequences of the Supreme Court’s recent rulings on reproductive rights and has also engaged in difficult questions about race and racial identity. 

His scholarship is uniquely impactful. His article on the international law implications of Russia’s disinformation campaign during the 2016 presidential election has been downloaded over 32,000 times, and his essay on the racist origins of the U.S. Constitution has been accessed over 8,000 times. He has even presented with Professor Jamie Cooper at Comic-Con about the impact of comic arts on law and public policy.

In 2022, Professor Aceves published one of his most personal pieces, “The Watts Gang Treaty: Hidden History and the Power of Social Movements,” in which he studied how a group of gang leaders in South Los Angeles who recognized that a cycle of violence was destroying their community and took it upon themselves to create a peace treaty based on international law. They modeled their own treaty on one of the first Arab-Israeli armistice agreements, which, ironically, was drafted by Ralph Bunche, a U.N. diplomat who was raised in South Los Angeles. This project brought Professor Aceves back to his hometown and the conflicts he’d grown up witnessing, riding the bus to school near downtown Los Angeles and living there during the 1992 riots that were sparked by police brutality and racial inequality. He has seen firsthand how social and economic inequality breeds intercommunal violence. 

For this project, Professor Aceves interviewed several of the gang leaders responsible for drafting the Watts Treaty. “They were so proud of what they accomplished,” noted Professor Aceves, “and rightly so.” The Watts Treaty led to a significant reduction in conflict in Watts and in South Los Angeles. Professor Aceves was grateful to bring this story to light about the possibilities for peace by connecting the local to the international and back again.  This article was published in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and an excerpt appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

Looking forward, Professor Aceves doesn’t have any plans of slowing down. “I can't even imagine retirement, just because of how much I value serving as a teacher and legal advocate.” As conflict abounds domestically and internationally, Professor Aceves remains steadfast in his fierce dedication to the law. “It is an unfortunate thing to say that we live in interesting times. But we do. We are living in a unique historical moment,” says Professor Aceves. “Our responsibility as legal professionals is to guide this next generation of lawyers to confront whatever this history reveals. I am grateful for this opportunity.”