Latest from HLS News Staff

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School has launched a new project, AudioBerkman, which will spotlight controversial issues related to the Internet, technology and the law. With one click, listeners can hear what industry experts and decision makers have to say about the subjects that are making news in cyberspace.

The Harvard Law School Immigration and Refugee Clinic at Greater Boston Legal Services is filing a friend of the court brief this week asking the U.S. attorney general and the Department of Homeland Security to treat women refugees seeking asylum protection fairly and consistently with its own rules and precedents. The clinic is submitting the brief in the case of Rodi Alvarado, a woman who is facing deportation back to Guatemala after suffering 10 years of human rights violations by her husband from which the Guatemalan government did not protect her. The brief, endorsed by more than 100 scholars, law professors and organizations, maintains that the violence and Guatemalan government’s failure to protect is grounded in Alvarado’s gender and her status as a married woman.

Third-year Harvard Law School student O. Grace Bankole has been selected as a 2004 Soros Justice Advocacy Fellow. The fellowship funds lawyers, advocates and organizers who initiate litigation, public education, grassroots organizing and advocacy projects that will have a measurable impact on a host of criminal justice issues. Bankole intends use the two-year fellowship to create a program, Families Empowering Families, that will provide intensive legal and advocacy training to friends and families of Louisiana’s incarcerated children.

Harvard Law Student Advocates for Human Rights, a student group that works closely with the law school’s Human Rights Program, has recently filed a friend of the court brief with the Indian National Human Rights Commission regarding the disappearance of thousands of Sikhs in Punjab by the Indian government in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The brief argues that international law requires the government to investigate thoroughly all allegations of disappearances and to accept and consider a wide variety of evidence in making its determinations.

Amanda Leiter has been named the first recipient of the Beagle/Harvard Law School fellowship. A 2000 graduate of HLS, Leiter will begin her fellowship at the conclusion of her current clerkship with U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.

Yesterday 54 members of the Harvard Law faculty filed a friend of the court brief in support of the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, the Society of American Law Teachers and other plaintiffs in their challenge to the Solomon Amendment as enforced by the Department of Defense. In 2002, the Department of Defense had threatened to withdraw federal funding from universities that did not provide access to law students by military recruiters.

Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe today submitted a friend of the court brief urging the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to reject calls for a civil union law. The brief argues that the court's language in its recent decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health was unambiguous in its conclusion that state law could no longer prohibit gay marriages. Additionally, the brief contends that an advisory opinion allowing that prohibition to remain in effect but allowing "civil unions" instead would harm the court's credibility and hurt its ability to preserve the rule of law. Ninety of the nation's most distinguished constitutional scholars and legal historians signed the brief.

Each year more than 80 Harvard Law students assist prisoners in parole and disciplinary hearings as participants in the school's Prison Legal Assistance Project. For the first- and second-year law students that participation was threatened by a proposed new rule that would have barred them from representing Massachusetts inmates in prison hearings. However, the new acting commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Correction has announced that the proposed rule has been rescinded.

HLS students and recent graduates have won an unprecedented eight Skadden Fellowships to pursue public interest work. The awards represent the most given to applicants from any single law school in the 15-year history of the Skadden Fellowship Foundation.

The hardest part of Stephan Sonnenberg's job last summer was telling his clients about the likelihood of a five-year wait for their day in court. Still, the Chechen refugees were excited as they sat with Sonnenberg '06 in Ingushetia, a neighboring republic to the war-ravaged Chechnya, as he collected testimony about their "disappeared" relatives for cases to go before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Six Harvard Law School professors have joined with nine of their colleagues at Harvard Business School to comment on proposed Securities and Exchange Commission rules regarding shareholder access to corporate proxy elections. The letter represents a continued collaboration between faculty at HLS and HBS. The recently formed study group on corporate governance has been meeting once a month for the past year to analyze current corporate governance issues.

Assistant Professor Samuel Bagenstos is writing the plaintiff’s brief for a case scheduled to be heard before the Supreme Court this term, in which the state of Tennessee is challenging the Americans with Disabilities Act’s requirement that people with disabilities have access to state facilities. Bagenstos, who has worked on two other ADA cases heard by the court, describes how he got involved, how the law is evolving and what’s at stake.

In the days following the landmark decision on gay marriage by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, members of the Harvard Law School faculty have provided their legal expertise and answered many complex questions on the ramifications of the ruling.

Beatriz Merino I.T.P./LL.M. ’77 joined the ranks of Harvard Law School trailblazers when she was appointed prime minister of Peru this summer, becoming the first woman to hold that position. A tax expert who headed the National Tax Administration, she first entered politics when she was elected to the Peruvian senate in 1990 after working for years in the private sector.

Tomorrow at 2:20 p.m. in Griswold 110, Ken Mehlman, campaign manager for Bush-Cheney 2004 and a Harvard Law graduate, will speak about next year's presidential race. The event has been organized by HLS Republicans and is closed to the press.

Harvard Law students will soon have the opportunity to study in two cities of Cambridge and earn two law degrees.In a new joint degree program with the University of Cambridge law faculty in Cambridge, England, up to six HLS students each year may spend their third year in England to pursue that school’s LL.M. degree. After earning an LL.M. at the end of the academic year, students would then be eligible to return to HLS for a single semester to compete their J.D. degree. The joint program will start during the 2004-2005 academic year.

This evening, November 14, the Harvard Law School Program on International Financial Systems will bring together policy makers and leaders of the financial sector in Europe and the United States to explore the nature and causes of what appears to be a widening gap in financial regulatory policy. This invitation-only symposium will be held at Citigroup’s Executive Planning Center in Armonk, NY, beginning with dinner on Friday night and ending with lunch on Sunday. It is the second annual Symposium on Building the Financial System of the 21st Century: An Agenda for Europe and the United States.

Beginning Friday, November 14, the Harvard Law School Democrats will be hosting a convention of Democratic law students, policy-makers and intellectuals. Up to 600 students from across the country are expected to attend the two-day event.

On Wednesday, November 12, Harvard Law School will host the 92nd Ames Finals Moot Court Competition. Oral arguments will take place in the Ames Courtroom in Austin Hall at 7:30 PM. Click here to watch a recorded webcast of the proceedings.