Bonnie Cherry is a PhD Candidate in Jurisprudence and Social Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. Her work explores the martial origins of the administrative state, and how the management of Indian affairs shaped civilian administrative policies and enforcement mechanisms from the earliest days of the nation. Her dissertation explores how extraordinary security measures taken against Native peoples and their lands inspired administrative law and organizational practices, which in turn informed broader security policies. Specifically, her work explores how the administration of Indian affairs shaped laws pertaining to the internment of Japanese-Americans, executive war powers and the AUMF, and the War on Terror.
Bonnie is a Mike Synar Research Fellow at the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, a John L. Simpson Research Fellow in International and Area Studies, and a Berkeley Empirical Legal Scholars fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at Berkeley Law.