Latest from HLS News Staff

At a recent lecture hosted by HLS Lambda and the Journal of Law & Technology, Harvard Law School’s Henry N. Ess Professor of Law John Palfrey discussed the latest legal and legislative attempts to address cyber-bullying—or, as Palfrey prefers to describe it, bullying in the digital era.

The following op-ed by HLS Professor Alan Dershowitz “Norway to Jews: You’re Not Welcome Here,” appeared in the March 29, 2011 edition of the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of numerous books, including “The Trials of Zion,” “The Case for Moral Clarity: Israel, Hamas and Gaza,” and “Finding, Framing, and Hanging Jefferson: A Lost Letter, a Remarkable Discovery, and Freedom of Speech in an Age of Terrorism.”

Harvard Law School Professor Noah Feldman explained aspects of Sharia and Islam Law on a television program -- "Unwelcome: The Muslims Next Door" -- for CNN's In America series.The segment, which examines a Tennessee city torn apart as residents fight to block the construction of a large Islamic center, is part of a broadcast that will air on Saturday, April 2 at 8:00 p.m.

In a New York Times op-ed about the challenge to Arizona’s public financing scheme currently pending in the Supreme Court, Harvard Law School Professor Charles Fried and co-author Cliff Sloan '84 write: “The [Arizona] law simply ensures that, when a candidate relying on private money speaks, the publicly financed candidate has the money to answer.” The op-ed—“Free Speech Worth Paying For”—appeared in the March 26, 2011 edition of The New York Times.

Following a vote of the Harvard Law School faculty, Gabriella Blum LL.M. '01 S.J.D. '03, a specialist in the laws of war and conflict resolution, has been promoted from assistant professor to professor of law—a tenured faculty position.

The New York Times published an editorial appreciation of the late William J. Stuntz of the Harvard Law School faculty, on March 23.

In a recent op-ed in Slate, Professor Jack Goldsmith makes the case for why President Obama's campaign of air and sea strikes against Libya is constitutional.  Goldsmith says that while he agrees with "many of the arguments from critics of the intervention that  President Obama acted imprudently in committing American forces to a conflict with an ill-defined national security justification,"  he does not believe that the military action is unconstitutional. Goldsmith's op-ed, "War Power," appeared in the March 21, 2011 edition of Slate. A former assistant attorney general in the Bush Administration, Goldsmith is the author of "The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgement Inside the Bush Administration" (New York : W.W. Norton & Company 2007).

Harvard Law School Professor Hal Scott’s Program on International Financial Systems is hosting the 9th annual “Symposium on Building the Financial System of the Twenty-first Century: An Agenda for Europe and the United States” this weekend in Hampshire, England.  Co-hosted by the Centre for European Policy Studies, the event will gather more than 100 senior executives and government officials from the financial industry, policymaking arenas, law, and academia.  

“In his State of the Union speech last month, President Obama got one of his biggest laughs when he said that there are twelve different agencies that deal with exports, and at least five that deal with housing policy. Then there is my favorite example: the interior department is in charge of salmon while they’re in fresh water, but the commerce department handles them in saltwater. ‘I hear it gets even more complicated,’ and here he smirked, ‘once they’re smoked.’ All I could think was, this guy is stealing my chair talk!” With these words, Archibald Cox Professor of Law Jody Freeman L.L.M. ’91 introduced her lecture “Coordinating Agencies in Shared Regulatory Space,” in which she spoke about the problem of wasteful duplication in government agencies.

Harvard Law School Professor Laurence H. Tribe ’66 will receive an honorary doctorate on March 29 from Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Penales (INACIPE), or National Institute of Criminal Science. He will be the first American to receive the annual “honoris causa” doctorate since its inception in 1998.

On March 14, the Library Journal announced 50 new inductees to their Movers & Shakers list, including John Palfrey ’01. Movers & Shakers is a distinguished annual award given to those who are shaping the future of libraries and communities across the United States.

Jacob E. Gersen, a leading expert in administrative law, legislation and constitutional theory, will join the Harvard Law School faculty as a tenured Professor of Law this summer. He is currently on the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School, where he teaches environmental law, administrative law, legislation, executive branch design and torts.

William Stuntz, a renowned scholar of criminal justice at Harvard Law School,  an evangelical Christian and a teacher much beloved by students and colleagues, died March 15 after a long battle with cancer.

In February, the American Law Institute conferred its new award, the Young Scholars Medal, on Oren Bar-Gill LL.M. ’01 S.J.D. ’05 and Jeanne C. Fromer ’02. The award was created to “call attention to academic work that is practical, focused on the real-world and can influence law for the better.”

Harvard Law Professor Yochai Benkler ’94 has released an article detailing U.S. government and news media censorship of WikiLeaks after the organization released the Afghan War Diary, the Iraq War Logs, and U.S. State department diplomatic cables in 2010. Among his key conclusions: The government overstated and overreacted to the WikiLeaks documents, and the mainstream news media followed suit by engaging in self-censorship. Benkler argues further that there is no sound Constitutional basis for a criminal prosecution of WikiLeaks or its leader, Julian Assange.

The Uniform Law Commission has formed a new drafting committee to prepare a Uniform Act on Powers of Appointment. Robert H. Sitkoff, the John L. Gray Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, has been named as a member of the drafting committee. An expert in trusts and estates, Sitkoff serves under gubernatorial appointment as a Uniform Law Commissioner from Massachusetts.

Professor John G. Palfrey ’01 was declared the winner of an interactive online debate on Internet democracy, hosted by The Economist from Feb. 23 to March 4.

The Harvard Law School Asian Pacific American Law Students Association hosted the 17th Annual National Asian Pacific American Conference on Law and Public Policy on February 25-26, 2011 with the assistance of the Harvard Kennedy School Asian American Policy Review.

Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain appeared on the Mar. 9 edition of American Public Media’s Marketplace Tech Report to discuss the Cybersecurity and Internet Freedom Act of 2011, introduced last year by Senators Joe Lieberman, Susan Collins, and Thomas Carper.