Latest from HLS News Staff

Harvard Law School has announced the establishment of The Oneida Indian Nation Professorship of Law. This chair--the first endowed chair in American Indian studies at Harvard University and the only professorship of its kind east of the Mississippi River--will allow Harvard Law School to continue its leadership role in the development of emerging legal fields.

Staggered boards, which a majority of public companies now have, hurt shareholders by enabling managers to fend off value-increasing offers from hostile bidders, according to new empirical research by three Harvard Law professors. Staggered boards hurt shareholders of hostile bid targets even when a majority of the board is made of independent directors, and they do not appear to benefit shareholders of targets that are acquired in a negotiated acquisition. The new study--conducted by Harvard Law School professors Lucian Bebchuk, John Coates, and Guhan Subramanian--will appear in an upcoming Stanford Law Review symposium focusing on the researchers' work.

A study by two Harvard Law School researchers provides evidence that the vigorous competition among states over corporate charters--the engine that many believe pushes toward rules that benefit shareholders--is largely a myth. This evidence leads the researchers to call for federal law to provide a federal incorporation option, as well as to enable shareholders to initiate and vote to approve corporate reincorporation to a different jurisdiction. The study, "Vigorous Race or Leisurely Walk: Reconsidering the Competition over Corporate Charters," by Professor Lucian Bebchuk and Olin Fellow Assaf Hamdani, will soon appear in the Yale Law Journal.

Harvard Law School is currently hosting an exhibit on the relationship between the African-American community and the Massachusetts courts from the colonial period to the present day. Long Road to Justice, assembled by the Justice George Lewis Ruffin Society, combines historical artifacts, court records, text and images to depict the compelling cases and courageous individuals who led the struggle to achieve racial justice in the Massachusetts courts.

A new study by Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society reveals the extensiveness of China's web filtering policies. Beginning in May 2002 and concluding in Nov. 2002, Berkman Center researchers attempted to access approximately 200,000 web sites through telephone dial-up links and proxy servers in China. The authors of the study tracked 19,032 web sites that were inaccesssible from China on multiple occasions while remaining available in the United States. These sites contained information about news, politics, health, commerce and entertainment.

On Wednesday, Nov. 20, the Program on Negotation at Harvard Law School will host a panel discussion on the role that negotiation might play in the current Iraqi situation. Panelists will include Harvard Law School Professors Roger Fisher and Robert Mnookin, and Harvard Business School Associate Professor Michael Watkins.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer will be among the three judges evaluating the student arguments in the finals of Harvard Law School's 91st annual Ames Moot Court Competition. The event will be held today, November 19, 2002, and will be webcast live from the Ames Courtroom at 7:30 p.m.

On Friday, Nov. 15, Harvard Law School will host a panel discussion on this summer's baseball negotiations. Speakers will include Rob Manfred, Major League Baseball's chief negotiator; Larry Lucchino, president and CEO of the Boston Red Sox; Mike Weiner, associate general counsel of the Major League Baseball Players Association; Peter Gammons, ESPN baseball analyst, and Professor Andrew Zimbalist of Smith College. The discussion will be moderated by Harvard Law Professor Paul Weiler.

On Monday, Nov. 11, the Harvard Law Review will hold its annual Supreme Court Forum, a discussion by prominent constitutional law scholars that coincides with the release of the Review's Supreme Court issue, published each November. This year's Forum will feature President Aharon Barak, the chief justice of the Israel Supreme Court, who will discuss his foreword to the November issue, entitled "A Judge on Judging: The Role of A Supreme Court in a Democracy."

Last week, the Harvard Law School International Tax Program hosted a three-day conference on tax treaties and the taxation of business profits. The program, attended by government officials as well as academics and private sector representatives from 18 nations, sought to identify problems with the current treatment of business profits under tax treaties and explore alternative solutions to these problems.

Harvard Law School Visiting Professor Robert Pozen, a former vice chairman of Fidelity Investments, says Social Security accounting makes "the Enron debacle look like a minor bookkeeping error." Writing in the November 2002 Harvard Business Review, Pozen goes on to say that if a U.S. company tried similar accounting for its pension liabilities, "surely someone would go to jail for securities or accounting fraud."

Harvard Law School Dean Robert Clark has announced the establishment of the Hale and Dorr Professorship of Intellectual Property Law. A reception in honor of this professorship will be held this afternoon at the Law School.

Three Harvard Law School professors were recently honored for exceptional work in their respective academic fields. Professor Elena Kagan was selected as the American Bar Association Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice's 2001 Scholarship Award winner, Professor Elizabeth Warren received the Commercial Law League of America's Lawrence King Excellence in Bankruptcy Award, and Professor Arthur von Mehren was presented with Canada Prize of the International Academy of Comparative Law.

On Monday, October 21, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer will speak on a number of issues that are central to the upcoming mid-term elections. Boxer is expected to address situation in Iraq, homeland security, the economy, the environment, and women's issues. The event, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 4:15 p.m. in the Ropes Gray Room in Pound Hall.

On Monday, October 7, the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School will tackle the future of ground zero. With countless visions for the space, the conference will examine how a consensus can be reached. A wide range of panelists will present some of the financial, legal, cultural, spiritual, and design constraints involved in redeveloping the site. The event will begin at 6:45 p.m. in the Arco Forum at the Kennedy School of Government.

Today the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School honored Lakhdar Brahimi with its annual Great Negotiator Award. Brahimi, the United Nations secretary general's special envoy to Afghanistan, has also headed special U.N. troubleshooting missions to hotspots such as Yemen, Liberia, Sudan, Nigeria, South Africa, the former Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), and Haiti.