Latest from Harvard Law News Staff

Mihir A. Desai, who currently serves as the Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance, the Senior Associate Dean for Planning and University Affairs, and the Chair of Doctoral Programs at Harvard Business School, has accepted a joint appointment to the faculty of Harvard Law School as a tenured Professor of Law.

In April, Harvard Law School participated in festivities commemorating Earth Month at Harvard, an inaugural initiative featuring university-wide events and activities to celebrate and raise awareness about environmental issues.  

On an early morning in January, eight upper-year Harvard Law School students landed on the lone runway at the sleepy international airport in Lesotho where they were warmly welcomed by officials from the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation (“MCC”), an innovative U.S. government foreign assistance agency.

In light of the recent controversy over President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, Harvard Law School Professor Randall Kennedy espouses his views on the subject in the May 12 edition of The New Republic online.

This year, the Harvard Mediation Program (HMP) (a Student Practice Organization) celebrates its 30th anniversary of training students and community volunteers to mediate disputes in small claims court and other settings.

In 2006, a series of coordinated uprisings in 74 detention centers and attacks on police stations and public buildings left 43 state officials and hundreds of civilians dead and brought São Paulo—South America’s largest city and financial capital—to a standstill. Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic and the leading Brazilian human rights group Justiça Global have now released a comprehensive study of the attacks.

In an op-ed published in The Huffington Post on May 5, Harvard Law School professor Alan M. Dershowitz assessed the decision made by the Obama administration not to release photographs of Osama bin Laden’s dead body for public scrutiny. 

In the Washington Post ‘Opinions’ section on May 5, Harvard Law School Professor Charles Fried and his son, Suffolk University Philosophy Department Chair Gregory Fried, discussed the killing of Osama bin Laden. The authors argued that torture apologists are undermining what the pair call a “great victory” for the U.S. by calling into question the circumstances under which bin Laden was felled during the firefight in his compound in Pakistan—a “risible” notion, by the authors’ standards.

Harvard Law School Professor Yochai Benkler ‘94 has received a Ford Foundation Visionaries Award, it was announced April 29. The award was created in recognition of the 75th Anniversary of the Ford Foundation to celebrate social innovators from a variety of fields.

The winners of Harvard Law School’s 58th annual Williston Competition, Harvard’s annual contract negotiation and drafting competition for first-year law students, were announced on April 18. 

HLS Lecturer on Law Juan Zarate ’97 was interviewed in the Washington Post today on national security threats after Osama bin Laden's death. From 2005 to 2009, Zarate served as the deputy assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism and was responsible for developing and implementing the U.S. Government’s counterterrorism strategy and policies related to transnational security threats.

It is imperative that governments uphold their obligation to ban cluster munitions absolutely, which is laid out in a treaty that more than 100 countries have joined, said a panel of disarmament experts in an HLS talk last week. Sponsored by the Harvard Law School Forum and the Harvard Human Rights Program, the panel described how the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) was formed, and the challenges its advocates are facing despite its progress thus far.

In an opinion piece published in The New Republic on April 28, Harvard Law School Professor Randall Kennedy takes the stance that Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’56-’58 and Stephen Breyer ’64 should retire soon, suggesting that a calculated and timely exit would ensure the Democratic selection of justices who share their judicial philosophies.

"Washington walks Ugandan tightrope," an op-ed co-authored by Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree and University of Richmond School of Law Professor Jonathan Stubbs LL.M. ’79, was featured in the Opinion section of the April 27 edition of Politico.

Lobsang Sangay LL.M. '96 S.J.D. '04, the first Tibetan to attend Harvard Law School, has been certified as the new Kalon Tripa—a position often referred to as "prime minister" of a "Tibetan government-in-exile" headed by the Dalai Lama—following elections in March.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has proposed changes to its rules governing markups, commissions and fees, partly in response to a study by Harvard Law School Professor Allen Ferrell. The study, published April 7, is titled “The Law and Finance of Broker-Dealer Mark-Ups.”

Lunch with the NHL commissioner and general counsel. Dining in the U.N. delegates’ dining room. An Apple TV.  New Bergdorf socks. These were just a few of the items auctioned during “Step Right Up! Bids Under the Big Top,” the 18th annual Public Interest Auction on April 7.

Holger Spamann L.L.M. ’01 S.J.D. ’09, an expert in corporate governance and finance, will join the Harvard Law School faculty in July as an Assistant Professor of Law.