Latest from Emily Newburger

Charles Hamilton Houston ’22 S.J.D. ’23, Raymond Pace Alexander ’23, Ben Davis ’29 and William Hastie ’30 S.J.D. ’33—all of these black civil rights attorneys graduated from Harvard Law School within a 10-year period.

It’s Tuesday afternoon in a Pound Hall classroom. The Socratic method is in use, and the class is engaged. But the professor is a Harvard Law student and he is teaching 13 teenagers—all involved in the juvenile justice system.

A few years ago, retired Judge Bentley Kassal ’40 began giving talks on his World War II experience: He was an air intelligence officer who participated in three invasions and was recognized by the U.S. Army with a Bronze Star for “meritorious service in direct support of combat operations.”

“Stubborn as a Mule,” is set at a small liberal arts college in Maine. The school’s president, a right-wing economist, tries to unseat a Republican Senate moderate (and HLS grad).

In 2007, when Erika Rickard was a 2L at Harvard Law, same-sex marriage had been legal in Massachusetts for more than three years. By that…

Hauwa Ibrahim first came to international attention in 2003 when she won an appeal for Amina Lawal, a Nigerian woman convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning under Sharia law. Ibrahim has now been involved with more than 150 such cases—using Sharia law to fight Sharia penalties.

James Cavallaro, clinical professor and executive director of the Human Rights Program, has litigated numerous cases before the Inter-American Court, Latin America’s human rights court.

Louisa May Alcott once described a philosopher as “a man up in a balloon” tethered to the earth by his family. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, “Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father” (Norton, 2007), John Matteson ’86 chronicles the tension and affection in that vertical relationship.

For the sake of the planet, a lawyer wins the right to sue on behalf of future generations

This January, when the trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor resumed in The Hague, much of the world was watching. So were 11 Harvard Law students—from about 20 feet away.

There are now 16 clinics at HLS, enabling students to do fieldwork at home and abroad. Here are stories from three of them, taking students inside inner cities and inner sanctums.

A quiz, courtesy of the Potter Stewart, of famous quotations.

The Kingdom of Bhutan is adopting its first constitution. Will it raise the GNH (gross national happiness)?

When threatened in court by the leader of a death squad known for killing its victims with chainsaws, Brazilian prosecutor Raquel Ferreira Dodge was undeterred.

Law, too, is going offshore. Two Harvard Law students are getting a firsthand look.

Annette Lu LL.M. ’78 was wary of Ma Ying-jeou S.J.D. ’81 when they were students at HLS. Today she is vice president of Taiwan, and he is a leader of the opposition. Their intertwined stories may foretell Taiwan’s future.

HLS students learn the lessons of Nuremberg in Cambridge, Arusha and The Hague.

When Navi Pillay LL.M. '82 S.J.D. '88 was growing up in South Africa, there was no international court in which apartheid could be prosecuted as a crime against humanity. Now there is--and she's on it.

When Professor Elizabeth Bartholet ’65 spoke at a conference on international adoption in Guatemala City early this year, she addressed a room full of activists, lawyers and politicians. But at the heart of her speech, and her pro bono advocacy, are children–living in institutions or foster care around the world.

After her people were slaughtered by neighbors, Geraldine Umugwaneza LL.M. '05 knows that forgiveness is elusive, but she is determined to help Rwanda move forward.