Latest from Harvard Law News Staff

Samuel Moyn '01, a leading historian and prize-winning author, will join the faculty of Harvard Law School starting July 1, 2014 as professor of law. Moyn currently serves as James Bryce Professor of European Legal History in the Columbia University history department.

Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Bartholet received an award from the National Human Rights Committee of Qatar, in Doha, on Jan. 8, 2014. The award was presented by Sultan Hassan al Jamali, assistant secretary general of the National Human Rights Committee of Qatar.

Thirty-three professors from Massachusetts law schools have signed on to an important legal opinion drafted by Harvard Law students in support of the Massachusetts Trust Act. The bill seeks to restore the immigrant community’s trust in local law enforcement by limiting the role of local police authorities in the deportation process.

34 Harvard Law School faculty members and 24 faculty from Boston College Law School have signed a letter urging the U.S. Congress to support the core principles in the pending legislation known as CHIFF (Children in Families First), S. 1530 and H.R. 3323.

The Harvard Law Review has elected Rachel Miller-Ziegler ’15 as its 128th president. Miller-Ziegler succeeds Gillian Grossman ’14. “The Law Review is going to…

Harvard Law School Visiting Professor Michael Stein '88, an internationally recognized expert on disability rights, received the inaugural Morton E. Ruderman Award in Inclusion from the Ruderman Family Foundation. The award recognizes an individual who has made an extraordinary contribution to the inclusion of people with disabilities in the Jewish world and the greater public.

Catharine A. MacKinnon, the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, received the 2014 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award from the AALS Section on Women in Legal Education.

A number of Harvard Law School faculty and alumni were included on Green Bag’s 2013 list of “Exemplary Legal Writing.” The list was compiled from nominees based on the votes of the journal’s Board of Advisers, which includes members of the state and federal judiciaries, private law firms, the news media and academia.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims has ruled that Lieutenant Colonel Wilson J. Ausmer, Jr., a highly decorated veteran, should be able to file an appeal of his disability claim even though he had missed the 120-day deadline to do so. The case was argued before the Court in October 2013 at Harvard Law School as part of the Veterans Clinic of the WilmerHale Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School.

Denis E. Kellman ’73, a former chair of the Black Entertainment and Sports Lawyers Association (BESLA) and a longtime adviser to music and audio companies, died at his home in Warwick, New York on January 15, 2014 at the age of 65.

Ari Peskoe, a former associate in the Energy Advisory Group of McDermott Will & Emery LLP, and a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Pennsylvania, has been named Energy Fellow in the Harvard Law School Environmental Policy Initiative.

Sumner M. Redstone, one of the nation’s pre-eminent media entrepreneurs and philanthropists, has announced a gift of $10 million to Harvard Law School to endow the Sumner M. Redstone Fellowships in Public Service. The gift from the Sumner M. Redstone Charitable Foundation -- the largest ever made to Harvard Law School in support of public service -- will provide funding for HLS students who wish to work in the public interest after graduation.

Some recent faculty and clinical highlights—from research on anti-corruption efforts to conferences on financial regulation.

“The New Black: What Has Changed—and What Has Not—with Race in America,” edited by Professor Kenneth W. Mack ’91 and Guy-Uriel Charles (New Press). The volume presents essays that consider questions that look beyond the main focus of the civil rights era: to lessen inequality between black people and white people. The contributors, including HLS Professor Lani Guinier, write on topics ranging from group identity to anti-discrimination law to implicit racial biases, revealing often overlooked issues of race and justice in a supposed post-racial society.

In November, Norman Dorsen ’53 delivered the Harvard Law School Association of New Jersey’s 57th Vanderbilt Lecture. The topic was “Seeking Civil Liberties,” and that’s something the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union has done throughout his career.

The HLS Library collection includes books and documents that highlight some of the historical rules and regulations surrounding everything comestible.