Latest from HLS News Staff

This morning, Harvard Law Professors Charles Fried and Laurence Tribe appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of a panel of legal experts testifying on the nomination of Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court.

The following op-ed by Professor Philip Heymann, Bush must honor the rule of law, originally appeared in The Boston Globe on January 12, 2006: Based on his constitutional powers and the authorization for the use of military force granted by congressional resolution after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush has declared himself free to ignore any law that he thinks limits his ability to fight terrorism.

When Justices William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O’Connor left the bench last year, conservatives were in an anxious mood: though pleased at the prospect of shifting the Supreme Court to the right, they were worried by the record of past Republican appointments. The refrain in conservative commentary, repeated with special intensity during the Harriet Miers affair, was: Not another Souter. Not another Kennedy. Not another O’Connor.

Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s opponents have seized upon two memorandums he wrote when he was a junior lawyer in the office of the solicitor general: one on the Thornburgh case, which dealt with Roe v. Wade, and the other on Mitchell v. Forsyth, which addressed the attorney general's personal liability for wiretaps found to violate the Constitution.

Professor Charles Fried writes: I am convinced of the urgent necessity of such a surveillance program. I suppose but do not know -- the revelations have been understandably and deliberately vague -- that included in what is done is a constant computerized scan of all international electronic communications.

On February 1, Harvard Law School will host a broadcast of the popular CNBC investment program "Mad Money," which features well-known market analyst Jim Cramer, a 1984 Harvard Law graduate. The show will be taped in the Ames Courtroom in Austin Hall before a crowd of approximately 300 Harvard students. The event is the first in a series of "Mad Money" broadcasts on university campuses around the country.

When it comes to Supreme Court nominees, conservatives are in agreement: Situation matters. Pundits on the right shouted down Harriet E. Miers over concerns that her evangelical backbone would whither under Washington winds. Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. stepped into her spot seeming of far more stalwart vertebrae, but as his backers have stressed recently, he is a creature of situation as well.

David Westfall, who held the John L. Gray and Carl F. Schipper, Jr. professorships at Harvard Law School, died earlier today, surrounded by his family. He was 78.

On November 30, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José, Costa Rica, dismissed Brazil’s preliminary objections to a case involving the death of a man in custody of a Brazilian mental health institution. James Cavallaro, clinical director of the Human Rights Program at HLS, served as lead counsel to the victim's family, and a team of HLS students – Jonathan Kaufman, Fernando Delgado, Deborah Popowski, and Jane Hopwood assisted with the litigation in Costa Rica.

Harvard Law students won nine out of 27 Skadden fellowships for 2005. The Skadden program provides funding to graduating students and recent alumni to pursue public interest legal work. This year's achievement is the most in the history of the fellowship program awarded to students from a single school.

On December 6, an international panel of experts will gather to discuss the current state of corporate governance in the global marketplace. The discussion will focus on particular hypothetical situations related to recent problems involving investor trust and corporate scandals.

On Saturday, December 3, Harvard Law School will host a seminar to address international disability rights. As the United Nations proceeds with a three-year planning process to develop a new human rights treaty regarding the disabled, this seminar will offer a public forum for discussing the treaty and its implementation.

At a November ceremony in Philadelphia, the American Philosophical Society awarded Professor Frank Michelman its Henry M. Phillips Prize in Jurispudence. The prize has only been given 20 times in more than a century, and honors Michelman's significant contributions to the field of jurisprudence

The nation's oldest law school is expanding into cutting-edge legal territory with today's launch of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics. The new Harvard Law School program is the result of extensive academic planning and a $10 million gift from the Caroll and Milton Petrie Foundation and HLS graduate Joseph H. Flom.

While most undergraduates spend college learning from teachers, Martin Kurzweil '07 spent much of his time in college practicing how to be one. During his undergraduate years at Harvard, Kurzweil spent up to four days a week tutoring students at area middle schools.

Professor David Wilkins directs the Program on the Legal Profession and its affiliate, the Center on Lawyers and the Professional Services Industry, at HLS. Here he discusses recent trends and pressures in the profession with staff writer Mary Bridges.

On Thursday, November 17, two teams of HLS students presented oral arguments in the final round of the Ames Moot Court competition before three judges: Supreme Court Justice David Souter, Emilio Garza of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and Ilana Diamond Rovner of the Seventh Circuit. The case they argued, McNeil v. Lu, centered on the constitutionality of a curfew law for minors.

Professor Lucian Bebchuk, director of the HLS Program on Corporate Governance, recently delivered the John R. Raben Fellowship Lecture at Yale University. The lecture was based on a working paper titled "The Myth of the Shareholder Franchise," in which Bebchuk argues that shareholders rarely, if ever, successfully vote to replace the board of a public company.

Amar Mehta and Sabastian Niles, both third-year law students, won the American Bar Association Northeast Regional Negotiation Championship. Coached by Robert C. Bordone, the Thaddeus R. Beal Lecturer on Law at the Law School, Amar and Sabastian bested teams from 20 other law schools to win first place.