Latest from HLS News Staff

In the wake of September 11, there was a lively debate about the optimal mix of "hard" versus "soft" power--guns versus diplomacy, military force versus foreign aid. Thursday's foiled plot to blow up commercial jets shows that a similar divide informs the world of police work. Scotland Yard and the FBI sometimes stop terrorists by shooting them, just as the criminal justice system sometimes stops attempted murders by incarcerating the would-be killers.

The following op-ed by Professor Lucian Bebchuk, Investors must have power, not just figures on pay, was published in The Financial Times on July 28, 2006: The US Securities and Exchange Commission's vote this week to expand disclosure requirements for executive pay is a major step forward.

The mainstream U.S. media have covered this worldwide uprising; it is, after all, a glimpse into the sentiments of our enemy and its allies. And yet it has refused, with but a few exceptions, to show the cartoons that purportedly caused all the outrage.

As a former curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum stands trial in Italy for criminal conspiracy to receive stolen goods, curators all over America are nervously rethinking their antiquity collections.

David Shapiro represents the true Renaissance man of legal academia. He has been a scholar, reformer, advocate, public servant and teacher, and at every turn, he has been a leader and model of excellence. There is much in his brilliant career to celebrate.

Imagine for a moment a lawsuit involving, as so many of them do, a dispute over accounting practices. Now add some complex questions of federal jurisdiction and procedure. Then assume that the parties decide—wisely—to settle. As the saying goes, “Who you gonna call?”

The influence of a great teacher like Dave Herwitz brings him nearer to immortality than most of us get. In my own nearly 50 years of professional life, I have met numerous wonderful individuals and benefited from the wisdom and character of many.

The Bulletin asks Professor William P. Alford ’77 about the development of the legal system amidst the historic changes taking place in China.

After 20 years as Harvard Law School’s associate dean for development, Scott Nichols concluded his service on April 30 to become vice president for development and alumni relations at Boston University.

The following op-ed by Professor Alan Dershowitz, Arithmetic of Pain, was published in The Wall Street Journal on July 19, 2006: There is no democracy in the world that should tolerate missiles being fired at its cities without taking every reasonable step to stop the attacks. The big question raised by Israel's military actions in Lebanon is what is "reasonable."

The following op-ed, co-written by Professor Hal Scott, The End of American dominance in capital markets, was published in The Financial Times on July 19, 2006: Is a ticker-taped Trojan Horse soon to be planted on European shores, filled with an army of US regulators, Sarbanes-Oxley accountants and overzealous plaintiff lawyers?

Sabin Willett leads a double life as a lawyer. Most days, he works on bankruptcy litigation in the Boston office of Bingham McCutchen. He likes the work. Really, he says, sitting in a conference room with a sweeping view of Boston harbor.

HLS delegation barnstorms through Asia in mid-winter tour

When I first began to work with Frank Sander ’52 as a 3L at Harvard Law School in 1997, I realized that when it came to finding a mentor in alternative dispute resolution, I had struck gold.

The following op-ed by Professor Howell Jackson, Big Liability, was published in The New Republic Online. Jackson argues that the first test for Hank Paulson, the new Treasury secretary, will be a little-noticed government accounting dispute that could soon dwarf the Enron scandal.

The following op-ed by Professor David Kennedy, Recasting UN's Role, was published in The Boston Globe on July 8, 2006: Today's most significant global challenges, whether humanitarian or military, are being addressed by diverse ad hoc coalitions. This new multilateralism will require more from the United Nations, making the selection of the next secretary general more important than at any time in the organization's history.

The Delaware Chancery Court issued a decision in the litigation initiated by Professor Lucian Bebchuk against CA Inc. The decision forced CA to withdraw its plan to exclude Bebchuk's poison pill proposal from the corporate ballot and opens the door to shareholder voting on such proposals in other companies.