Latest from HLS News Staff

Read more about what compelled Jonathan Nomamiukor ’13 to take a break from law school, his work with Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic on the issue of fully autonomous weapons, and the mentorship he received from Clinical Instructor Bonnie Docherty.

“The Morphine Dream,” by Donald L. Brown ’89, with Gary S. Chafetz (Bettie Youngs Books). The title of this memoir is literal—and relates to Harvard Law School. While on morphine, recovering from an operation meant to restore his ability to walk after an accident, the author imagined he would graduate from the school. And walk across the country. His doctor thought he was delirious. After all, Brown had few prospects and only a ninth-grade education. But the dream did indeed come true; he tells the story of his long walk both literal and metaphorical.

Ernest Shackleton’s first journey to the Antarctic in the early 1900s ended in a very public failure. On his second journey, in a race to the South Pole, he turned back within 100 miles of his goal. In his third expedition, not only did he fail to traverse Antarctica, but his ship was destroyed by ice, stranding the crew on ice floes for more than a year. So why do law and business students and executives in legal and business organizations study Shackleton as an example of successful leadership?

Many Harvard Law School alumni have been extraordinarily successful, many have lived unusual lives, and not a few have done both—including Morgan Chu ’76, one of the most successful IP lawyers in the world, who, along with his wife, Helen, is endowing in perpetuity the dean’s chair at HLS. Dean Martha Minow will be honored as the inaugural Morgan and Helen Chu Dean’s Professor.

Alex Whiting, who currently serves as the prosecution coordinator in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, will rejoin the Harvard Law School faculty this July as a professor of practice. Whiting previously taught at HLS as an assistant clinical professor.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this week on several major cases including United States v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry in regard to same-sex marriage, Fisher v. University of Texas on Affirmative Action, and Shelby County v. Holder, which concerned the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A number of HLS faculty shared their opinions of the rulings on the radio, television, on the web and in print.

Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain '95 delivered the keynote speech at the recent Harvard IT Summit, devoting his lecture to the potential “end of .edu.” Zittrain is also a professor at Harvard Kennedy School, and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, as well as the co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

“The Looming Threat of Liability for Accountable Care Organizations and What to Do About It,” a new article by Harvard Law School Assistant Professor I. Glenn Cohen ’03 and Dr. H. Benjamin Harvey ’09, was published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Next week, the Supreme Court will hear a pair of cases involving same-sex marriage. Harvard Law School Professor Michael Klarman has written a legal history of gay marriage, “From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash and the Struggle for Same Sex Marriage.” In the March-April 2013 issue of Harvard Magazine, which appears below, Klarman published an article on “How Same-Sex Marriage Came to Be.” His scholarship was also profiled in the Fall 2012 issue of the Harvard Law Bulletin in an article titled “The Courts and Public Opinion.”

Sixteen public service visionaries and social entrepreneurs from Harvard Law School have been selected as the inaugural recipients of grants from the Public Service Venture Fund, a unique program which will award up to $1 million each year to help graduating Harvard Law students and recent graduates obtain their ideal jobs in public service—even if those jobs don’t yet exist. At the same time that it announced the recipients of the new Public Service Venture Fund, the Law School also announced the winners of three other fellowships for public service/public interest post-graduate work: the Skirnick Fellowships, the Kaufman fellowships, and the One Day's Work Fellowships.

When Harvard Law School graduate Cortlan Wickliff '13 donned his cap and gown, regalia his mother had to remind him to order, the Texas native was one of the youngest African-Americans ever to graduate from Harvard Law School.

Professor Benjamin I. Sachs is this year’s winner of the prestigious Albert M. Sacks-Paul A. Freund Award for Teaching Excellence, an honor bestowed each spring by the Harvard Law School graduating class. The award recognizes teaching ability, attentiveness to student concerns and general contributions to student life at the law school.

Isabel Lima, office manager at the HLS WilmerHale Legal Services Center in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, received the Suzanne L. Richardson Staff Appreciation Award during Class Day exercises on May 29. She was selected by the Class of 2013 for going above and beyond in assisting the many students who pass through the WilmerHale center, helping the organization to run effectively, as well as acting as a liaison to the many Spanish-speaking clients and neighbors in the community.

Harvard Law School graduation festivities began on Class Day, Wednesday, May 29, and continued through Commencement Day on Thursday, May 30.