Latest from Colleen Walsh/Harvard Staff Writer

A legal historian who has focused on the history of U.S. slavery puts the push to remove Confederate statues in context.

“Just Mercy,” the film based on the memoir by Bryan Stevenson ’85, ends with a sobering statistic: For every nine people executed in the U.S., one on death row is exonerated. As Professor Carol Steiker noted in a discussion following a screening of the film, that makes the U.S. No. 1 in a problematic category.

The Harvard Gazette recently spoke with John Palfrey '01, former professor and vice dean for Library and Information Resources at HLS, and former executive director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society about how his Harvard time prepared him for his new role to lead one of the country’s largest philanthropic organizations.

According to Harvard Law School lecturer Jonathan Lovvorn, saving the planet and its inhabitants from climate catastrophe begins with the world’s most vulnerable population: animals.

Blessing Jee knew when she arrived at Harvard College that she would take time off from her studies, but she didn’t expect was that it would make her “fall back in love with Harvard”—and set her, newly energized, on her future path: pursuing public interest law Harvard Law School.

A group of current and retired NFL players shared personal reasons for their activism and outreach in a conversation Friday at Harvard Law School, part of “Changing the Conversation to Change Criminal Justice,” a symposium sponsored by the School’s Bernard Koteen Office of Public Interest Advising, the Fair Punishment Project, and the Players Coalition.

The #MeToo movement’s roots and its present and future impact were the focus of a discussion with Harvard scholars on Feb. 26 at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, featuring HLS Prof. Jeannie Suk Gersen, Harvard Profs. Jill Lepore and Evelynn Hammonds, and Ann Marie Lipinski, curator of Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, as moderator.

Annette Gordon-Reed’s path to Harvard, where she is the Law School’s Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History and a professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, is every bit as interesting as her pioneering scholarship.

This fall, Harvard Law School lecturer Nancy Gertner, Harvard sociologist Bruce Western and Vincent Schiraldi, senior research fellow and director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, are teaching a new Harvard course that will help students become part of the effort to reform the nation’s criminal justice system.

Harvard Law School Professor I. Glenn Cohen, faculty director of the School's Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics spoke with the Harvard Gazette about Monday's ruling by the Supreme Court that overturned a Texas law requiring that abortion clinics maintain hospital-like standards at their facilities as well as admitting privileges at local hospitals.

When a severe speech impediment left him struggling to be understood, food became a way for Tommy Tobin '16 to connect with others. In high school he volunteered at a food bank and with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and watched his actions speak volumes. "Speaking through service became a theme for me.”

Fifth in a Harvard Gazette series on what Harvard scholars are doing to identify and understand inequality, in seeking solutions to one of America’s most vexing problems.

Larry Schwartztol, executive director of Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Program of Study, Research and Advocacy, recently spoke with the Harvard Gazette about the HLS program, his role in it, and a conference sponsored by the new initiative on how the media helps shape the criminal justice narrative.

In a visit to Harvard Law School, retired four-star general and former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell shared lessons from his service as a close adviser to three presidents, tips on negotiating with difficult foreign leaders, and his thoughts on strengthening support for families and children in the United States.

Many scholars argue that the Magna Carta’s importance through the centuries has been greatly exaggerated. Yet for others, its status as a symbol of freedom and a check on absolute power is undeniable. Elizabeth Papp Kamali ’07, sees merit in both arguments.

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg received the Radcliffe Medal on Friday, May 29. Since the 1970s, Ginsburg has constantly sought to break down traditional male/female stereotypes “that held women back from doing what their talents would allow them to do.”

Credit: Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer “There is a little bit of a reason to worry. We could see a resurgence of disease in part because…

In advance of his visit to campus this week, the Harvad Gazette spoke with Lawrence Levy '83 about his transition from the corporate world (as CFO of Pixar Animation) to the nonprofit one, co-founding the Juniper Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to bringing meditation to contemporary life.

HLS Professor Carol Steiker is using her year as the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study’s Rita E. Hauser Fellow to work with her brother and frequent collaborator, Jordan M. Steiker, on a book about the past half-century’s experiment with the constitutional regulation of capital punishment in America. She recently spoke with the Harvard Gazette about the history and future of the death penalty in the United States.

At a December 2 event sponsored by Harvard Law School's Brazilian Studies Association and its Committee on Sports and Entertainment Law, experts convened at to discuss digital media's place in the future of the global sports business model.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger visited the Harvard Law School campus last week to share some of the lessons learned as adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

In videoconference, U.S. contractor who leaked surveillance data defends actions Credit: Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer The new documentary “Citizenfour” centers on a series of candid…

In an entertaining talk in HLS’s Wasserstein Hall with Dean Martha Minow on Wednesday, Associate Justice Elena Kagan '86 displayed her trademark wit and wisdom, honed during her years as a Harvard Law School student, professor, and dean, her work with the Clinton administration, and her stint as solicitor general.

Harvard Law School Professor Mihir Desai recently spoke with the Harvard Gazette about the factors driving the practice of tax inversion, a maneuver by which U.S.-based corporations with significant international holdings shift their headquarters overseas in an attempt to lower their tax bills.

Law School graduate Elliot Schwab multitasks, from music to real estate to Talmudic studies

The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down aggregate campaign contribution limits, in a ruling that frees individuals to donate to as many candidates as they wish. Harvard Law School’s Noah Feldman, Bemis Professor of International Law, spoke with the Harvard Gazette about the ruling, and what it means for elections and for the future of campaign-finance reform.

On March 25, Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, came to Harvard Law School to discuss his experience as Edward Snowden's legal advisor at an event sponsored by the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, Harvard National Security Law Association, Harvard Law School National Security Journal, Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left, the HLS American Constitution Society and the HLS American Civil Liberties Union.

Two leading Russian human rights attorneys visited Harvard Law School on Tuesday to discuss the country’s legal system and offer long-term hope that steps can be taken toward democratic reforms.

Lily Cole’s brainchild, the altruistic website and app Impossible.com, is based on an almost impossibly simple premise: the conviction that people can and should help each other, for free.

Some of the faces are well known, others are familiar to only a few, but all of the pictures in the display inside Harvard Law School’s Wasserstein Hall are of women lawyers, policymakers, and others from around the globe who have made a difference and inspired others to do the same.

Last year, Harvard President Drew Faust asked Harvard Law School Professor David Barron ’94 to lead a 14-member task force that would make forward-looking recommendations regarding Harvard’s policies on electronic communications. Barron, who was acting assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice from 2009 to 2010, discussed the task force’s recently-released report and proposed policy with the Harvard Gazette.

For the past several years, Harvard Law School students have spent their break time between semesters in Washington, D.C., parsing reams of heady data and crafting nuanced legal arguments to cases headed for the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Tuesday, Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein, a member of a five-person advisory panel created by President Obama to make a sweeping review of U.S. surveillance activities, discussed the group’s efforts and the 46 recommendations it released last month, including major reforms to the way the intelligence community does business.

A lifeline to the poor: For a century, Harvard Law students have toiled to ensure legal rights for all Inside an unassuming yellow house on…

The average week for a typical law school student involves poring over a list of daunting cases and deconstructing complicated arguments. But on Oct. 30, the work of three Harvard Law School students included something else: an appearance in federal court. The students, who are part of the School’s Veterans Legal Clinic, stood before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims last Wednesday to argue for the rights of their client, a decorated U.S. Army veteran.

Lillian Langford’s life could have turned out much differently. Instead of graduating now with two Harvard degrees, she could have been on a remote island in the South Pacific, or on a stage playing the harp with a classical orchestra. But a series of inspiring mentors, starting with her parents, helped guide her to her life’s passion: fighting injustice.

It’s a common refrain that immigrants taking the U.S. citizenship test know more about the workings of the federal government than the average holder of a U.S. birth certificate. A group of experts dedicated to grappling with the themes outlined in the Constitution gathered Monday at Harvard Law School (HLS) to explore that disturbing trend and the importance of civics.

On March 26, representatives of a number of human rights organizations gathered at Harvard Law School to reflect on the lasting impact of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and to discuss their efforts to hold the U.S. government accountable for problems there during the occupation and ongoing to this day.

Lawrence Lessig, director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, remembered the late Internet luminary and social activist Aaron Swartz during remarks that were part moving eulogy and part urgent call to curb “extremism in prosecuting computer laws.” Lessig addressed a capacity crowd in Austin Hall on Feb. 19 at Harvard Law School in a lecture titled “Aaron’s Laws: Law and Justice in a Digital Age.” The talk marked Lessig’s appointment as Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at the School.

Legal scholar and tireless defender of equal rights Ruth Bader Ginsburg reflected on her career during a discussion with Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow on Monday Feb. 4 before a packed room in Wasserstein Hall.

Many readers and viewers wonder if John Osborn Jr. had someone special in mind when he created the imperious professor in his 1971 hit novel “The Paper Chase,” based on his Harvard Law School years. With a careful reply, the author told HLS Dean Martha Minow and a crowd gathered at Austin Hall Thursday for a discussion about his book that the character was actually a composite of several people. But, he added, “It wasn’t like it was hard to find role models.”

Last fall the Harvard Law School opened its newest building, 250,000 square feet aimed at bringing faculty and students closer. Its design, developed in close collaboration with HLS community residents and neighbors and realized by the architectural firm Robert A.M. Stern Architects, grew out of a strategic plan crafted in 2000, with the primary goal of improving the overall student experience.

This year, Harvard’s time-honored tradition of Class Day included an interesting twist: For the first time in years, two speakers—actor, writer, and comedian Andy Samberg, and U.S. Rep. Barney Frank ’61, J.D. ’77—took turns at the outdoor dais to offer the seniors parting words of wit and wisdom.

Harvard Law School’s (HLS) alumni reunion this past weekend reconnected friends from near and far in the School’s newest addition, the 250,000-square-foot Wasserstein Hall, Caspersen Student Center, Clinical Wing Building on the campus’ northwest corner.

Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III was at Harvard on March 29 to receive the Great Negotiator Award, the annual honor created by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School to recognize individuals whose “lifetime achievements in the field of negotiation and dispute resolution have had a significant and lasting impact.”

If the countless headlines in recent years are an indication, we live in an age dominated by a corporate playbook that considers success at the expense of others a standard part of doing business. But increasingly, observers fear that same philosophy is too often becoming the norm in other professions. Journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin explored the trend’s impact on the legal profession in his recent New York Times column “Conflicted, and Often Getting a Pass,” said Harvard’s Professor Howard Gardner during a Mar. 21 discussion at Harvard Law School.

Pop sensation Lady Gaga launched her anti-bullying, youth-empowering Born This Way Foundation (BTWF) at Sanders Theatre on Wednesday during an Askwith Forum sponsored by the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). The foundation was established in partnership with HGSE, Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the California Endowment. Special guests included Oprah Winfrey, author and speaker Deepak Chopra, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen G. Sebelius, and Harvard Law School professor Charles J. Ogletree.