Latest from Harvard Law News Staff

A common lament of law students is that casebooks are expensive and heavy. Others say they are static and slow to evolve. Professor Jonathan Zittrain ’95 has set out to address both complaints.

Part of the American Presidents Series, this volume, excerpted below, examines the life and political career of Andrew Johnson, possibly the nation’s worst president, according to Gordon-Reed.

Vermeule and Posner set out to explain why the traditional separations of power confining the executive have weakened over time—and why that’s not necessarily worrisome.

The United Nation’s Committee on the Rights of the Child is currently examining Panama’s record on children’s rights with the help of a report coauthored by Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic.

On June 28, HLS Dean Martha Minow presented the 2011 Dean’s Award for Excellence to seven individuals and one team of staff members at an awards ceremony in Ames Courtroom.

HLS Professor Noah Feldman’s “Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices” (Twelve, 2010) was selected as the best legal book of the year by Scribes, the American Society of Legal Writers, winning its 2011 Book Award.

Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith was a guest on National Public Radio’s On Point on June 28, discussing presidential war powers and Congressional authority in relation to the United States’ current military action in Libya.

“Libyan Legal Limbo,” an op-ed by Harvard Law Professor Adrian Vermeule ’93 and University of Chicago Law Professor Eric Posner ’91, appeared June 27 on Slate.com.

On May 20 through 21, the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School convened an international, multidisciplinary conference providing legal and ethical analysis of one of the broadest reaching developments in health care of the last 20 years: its globalization.

In his June 20 opinion piece in Project Syndicate, “How capitalist is America?,” Harvard Law School Professor Mark Roe '75 looks into the question of ‘how capitalist’ the United States is, and explores the idea of U.S. capitalism not only within a global context, but within a corporate one, as well. The article is the latest in a monthly series for the publication, titled The Rules of the Game.

On June 17, Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic submitted an amicus curiae brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in support of a petition for certiorari in a major corporate Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”) case, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co.

Abolitionist Wendell Phillips, who graduated from Harvard Law School in 1833, was a nationally know celebrity during his lifetime. On the bicentennial of his birth, a symposium held at HLS June 2-4, cosponsored by the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, focused on the life and legacy of the social reformer, and the questions they raise for those working for social justice today.

On June 9 and 10, Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society hosted “Hyper-Public: A Symposium on Designing Privacy and Public Space in the Connected World.” The event united computer scientists with ethnographers, architects, historians, artists, and legal scholars in discussions about the line between public and private spaces in the digital world.

The Reginald F. Lewis Foundation has made a gift of $1.5 million to Harvard Law School to continue the Reginald F. Lewis Fellowships, an 18-year-old program that has offered fellowships annually to law graduates who have demonstrated a strong interest in law scholarship and teaching.