Latest from HLS News Staff

Harvard Law School has announced a new fellowship program that will place recent graduates at the Natural Resources Defense Council for two years of training in nonprofit environmental law. The Beagle/Harvard Law School Fellowship program, which will begin this year, has been created through a donation from Beagle Foundation and its co-founder Joy Covey, a 1989 graduate of the law school.

On Thursday, November 6, the Harvard Law School Saturday School program will host a speech by attorney John Payton. Payton served as lead counsel in Gratz v. Bollinger, which challenged the University of Michigan undergraduate admission program and Grutter v. Bollinger, which challenged Michigan's law school admissions policies. Payton's remarks on the meaning and challenges of the Michigan decision will begin at 6 p.m. in Pound 107. The event will be webcast live for those unable to attend.

Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society has launched a study to explore options for the future of copyright in a digital environment. The Digital Media Project will examine how the shift to digital media (primarily music, movies and books) is affecting the legal and regulatory landscape. The project, which recently received a $600,000 three-year grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, is also being supported by Gartner|G2 and the Soros Foundation.

Four Harvard Law School Graduate Program affiliates from around the world have recently taken on new leadership positions in multilateral organizations, government and the judiciary.

This afternoon Harvard Law School and the Boston-based law firm Hale and Dorr will celebrate 10 years of partnership in the Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School, which is located in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. The event will include remarks by Elena Kagan, dean of Harvard Law School; John Hamilton Jr., chairman of Hale and Dorr; and Charles Ogletree, the law school’s vice dean for clinical programs.

On Thursday, October 23, Harvard Law School will host a panel discussion titled "The 10 Most Important Things We Can Do to Stop Sexual Violence." The event, which is being held in conjunction with National Domestic Violence Awareness month, is co-sponsored by Students Organized for the Prevention of Domestic Violence, the Harvard Women's Law Journal and the Women's Law Association. The discussion will begin at 6 p.m. in the Austin West classroom. It is free and open to the public.

At 7 p.m. on October 21, the HLS Jewish Law Students Association will host a lecture by Joshua M. Green, the author of "Justice at Dachau: The Trials of an American Prosecutor." The book explores the Dachau trials, which brought more than 2,000 guards and administrators of the Nazi concentration camps to justice. The events are told through the perspective of chief prosecutor William Denson, a 1937 graduate of Harvard Law School, who won 177 convictions--more than any other Nazi prosecutor.

A webcast of a panel discussion titled "Beyond Bush & Estrada? Ideological Judges & the Confirmation Process." Panelists include University of Chicago Professor Cass Sunstein and HLS Professors Charles Fried and Martha Minow. Dean Elena Kagan will moderate the discussion.

On Monday, October 20, Justice Richard Goldstone of the Constitutional Court of South Africa will speak on the role of international law in preventing deadly conflicts. The event, which is sponsored by the Harvard Law School Graduate Program, will begin at 4 p.m. in the Pound 100 classroom. It is free and open to the public.

Professor William Fisher III has been named the Hale and Dorr Professor of Intellectual Property Law, Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan announced. The Hale and Dorr chair was established in October 2002 in connection with a gift from the Boston-based law firm.

On Wednesday, October 8, Harvard Law School honored the life and career of Professor Emeritus Archibald Cox. In addition to a video presentation on Cox's experience as the first Watergate special prosecutor, the event featured remarks by Dean Elena Kagan and Professors Philip Heymann, Clark Byse, Carol Steiker and David Wilkins.

This week, on October 10 and 11, the Harvard Law School chapter of Lambda will host a conference on the United States' policy toward gays and lesbians in the military. Participants will consider the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas on military integration, the legality of the Solomon Amendment, and why military service is an important issue in the movement for gay and lesbian equality.

This afternoon, Harvard Law School honored the career of Professor Emeritus Archibald Cox. The ceremony included an unveiling of the law school's new portrait of Cox and speeches by Dean Elena Kagan and Professors Philip Heymann, Clark Byse, Carol Steiker and David Wilkins.

On Tuesday, October 7, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson will discuss the future of the Democratic Party and the Latino vote at the 2003 Wurf Memorial Lecture at Harvard Law School. The lecture will begin at 6 p.m. in the Ames Courtroom.

From October 3-5, leaders of the financial systems of the United States and Japan will gather in Gotemba, Japan to discuss issues affecting the global financial system. The occasion is the sixth annual Symposium on Building the Financial System of the 21st Century: An Agenda for Japan and the United States, sponsored by the Harvard Law School Program on International Financial Systems, in cooperation with The International House of Japan.

Will easy and inexpensive publishing technology change the face of politics, business, journalism, the law, medicine, engineering and education? Is a revolution underway, or are weblogs just the latest Internet craze? Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society will be hosting a conference this weekend that will explore these issues. Educators, journalists, scientists and representatives of political campaigns will be among the participants discussing how new publishing technologies are changing their industries.

Two Harvard Law School alumni, Carrie Leonetti and Sarah Walter, have been selected as the first recipients of the James Vorenberg Fellowships in Criminal Justice. Fellowships are awarded to HLS graduates participating in the Low Income Protection Plan, a loan repayment program pioneered at Harvard that assists graduates who work in public service.

On Wednesday, October 1, the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School will present Stuart Eizenstat with its annual Great Negotiator Award.

Why are there so few prenuptial agreements? A paper recently released by Heather Mahar, an Olin Fellow in Law and Economics at Harvard Law School, attempts to explain why only 5 percent of married couples have prenuptial agreements even though roughly 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. Mahar, a 2002 Harvard Law graduate, discusses her findings and her future research.