Latest from HLS News Staff

In a recent edition of The New Republic’s online review ‘The Book,’ Harvard Law School Professor Adrian Vermeule reviews David M. Dorsen’s “Henry Friendly, Greatest Judge of His Era” (Belknap Press 2012)—a “clarifying biography” in which the author thoroughly examines Friendly’s judgments, arguments, and extrajudicial writings “with an eye to pinning down Friendly’s legacy.”

"The Alternative to Shareholder Class Actions," an op-ed by Harvard Law School Professor Hal Scott and Leslie N. Silverman, appeared in the Apr. 1 edition of The Wall Street Journal.

Jonathan Zittrain, professor of law in the faculty of Law and the Kennedy School of Government and professor of computer science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, was featured as one of Harvard’s great teachers in a video series created to mark the 375th anniversary of the founding of Harvard College.

As part of the Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program (HNMCP), Krystyna Wamboldt ’12 and Rachel Krol ’12 traveled to Jerusalem in January with HLS Clinical Professor Robert Bordone ’97 to teach negotiation and mediation skills to a group of Israeli and Palestinian teenagers.

The Supreme Court opened its review of the national health-care overhaul on Mar. 26, the first of three days of oral arguments on the 2010 law. In light of the historic arguments, law schools professors at HLS and elsewhere in the Boston area have incorporated the debate into their classrooms, and, In the media, HLS Professors I. Glenn Cohen. Einer Elhauge, Noah Feldman, Charles Fried and Laurence Tribe weighed in on the case.

John Payton ’77, a leading civil rights lawyer who defended the University of Michigan's affirmative action policy before the Supreme Court and led the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, died March 22, 2012. He was 65.

Harvard Law School Professor Hal Scott’s Program on International Financial Systems (PIFS) hosted the 10th annual Symposium on Building the Financial System of the Twenty-first Century: An Agenda for Europe and the United States on March 22-24 at the Weill Center in Armonk, N.Y.  Co-hosted by the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), the event gathered 100 senior executives and government officials from the financial industry, policymaking arenas, law, and academia.

As part of the Defending Childhood Task Force, Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree participated in a hearing on March 21 at the University of Miami School of Law, addressing the problem of children’s exposure to community violence.

U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. selected this year’s speaker for Class Day ceremonies at Harvard Law School. Class Day will take place on Wednesday May 23, 2012.

Columbia University announced on Mar. 14 that a recent book by Tomiko Brown-Nagin will be awarded the 2012 Bancroft Prize. Her award-winning book “Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement” (Oxford University Press, 2011) offers a startling new perspective on the Civil Rights movement.

In a recent book review for The New Republic, Harvard Law School Professor Adrian Vermeule ’93 examines Richard A. Epstein’s “Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration, and the Rule of Law” (Harvard University Press, 2011).

A scholar of administrative law and constitutional law and theory, Professor Adrian Vermeule ’93 has written the new book “The System of the Constitution” (Oxford University Press), in which he explores how individuals and larger institutions together shape the constitutional order. Vermeule recently spoke about his book and an event in London that featured discussion of his ideas.

Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith appeared on the Mar. 12 edition of NPR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook alongside ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero. The two addressed the controversy over Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent remarks at Northwestern University Law School in which he defended the legality of the Obama administration’s use of targeted killings of Americans suspected of terrorism-related activity.

Director of the Project on Law and Mind Sciences at Harvard Law School (PLMS), Professor Jon Hanson has long combined social psychology, economics, history, and law in his scholarship. In a recent Q&A, he spoke about the new book, the connection between law and mind sciences, and his own work in a field that has grown rapidly over the past 20 years.

David J. Barron ’94, Harvard Law School’s Hon. S. William Green Professor of Public Law, has been appointed by Governor Deval Patrick ’82 to the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, the governor’s office announced Monday.

As youth increasingly turn to the Internet as a source of information, researchers, educators, parents, and policy-makers are faced with mounting challenges and opportunities. A new report from Harvard’s Youth and Media project at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society seeks to understand youths’ real experiences of online information quality.

At an event at Harvard Law School's Austin Hall on Feb. 27, Mary Nichols, head of California’s air pollution regulatory board, said that with climate change action stalled in Washington, D.C., the states are taking the lead in creating ways to reduce carbon emissions.

Harvard Law School Professor Matthew Stephenson ‘03 delivered the keynote speech at the 2nd annual Evidence-Based Anti-Corruption Policies Conference held on Jan. 11 and 12 in Bangkok, Thailand.  

In a Feb. 20 opinion piece for the online journal Project Syndicate, Harvard Law School Professor Mark Roe ’75 addresses European leaders’ support for imposing a “Tobin tax” on financial transactions.