Latest from HLS News Staff

In a November lecture marking his appointment as the Henry N. Ess III Professor at Harvard Law School, Professor John G. Palfrey ’01 called for a new legal information system "grounded in a set of open data."

Harvard Law School became the first-ever repeat-winner of the National Puerto Rico Trial Advocacy Competition. Returning as defending champions, the Harvard Law School Trial Team advanced to the semi-finals with the highest score and remained undefeated throughout the competition, edging out Georgetown Law in the final round to win first place.

On Nov. 18, as part of the 2010 National Lawyers Convention in Washington, D.C., HLS Professor Chares Fried participated in a debate on the constitutionality of the federal health care legislation—the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—signed into law by President Barack Obama ’91 last March.

On Dec. 3, an all-day conference marking the 40th anniversary of the Environmental Protection Agency's creation was held at Harvard Law School. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was the keynote speaker; also among the speakers and panelists was former Vice President Al Gore, who addressed the luncheon. The event was sponsored by the Law School, the Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard School of Public Health, and the Harvard University Center for the Environment.

Harvard Law School Professor David Wilkins ‘80 delivered a lecture, “Making Global Lawyers: Legal Education, Legal Paradox, and the Paradox of Professional Distinctiveness” on Oct. 19th to mark his appointment as the Lester Kissel Professor of Law.

Sixteen teams from nine different law schools from throughout the Northeast took part in the ABA Regional Negotiation Competition held at Harvard Law School and organized by Harvard Negotiators on November 13–14, 2010. Approximately 35 judges, all practicing lawyers in the Boston area, evaluated the teams and chose the winners.

Top practitioners, heads of state, academics, and theoreticians in international development came together with more than 200 students and community members for “Rebuilding After the Storm: The Role of Law in Development Post Natural Disasters,” the HLS Law & International Development Society’s inaugural symposium, held on Nov. 19, 2010.

On Nov. 19, Harvard Law School  Professor Duncan Kennedy and Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University professor and special adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General, discussed a new collection edited by HLS Professor Lucie White ’81 and Jeremy Perelman, S.J.D. ’11, before a large audience at HLS. That collection—“Stones of Hope: How African Activists Reclaim Human Rights to Challenge Global Poverty”—combines case studies from activists with theoretical essays on development to “tackle problems of disenfranchisement and poverty in the world,” said HLS Professor William Alford ’77, vice dean for the Graduate Program and International Legal Studies, who introduced the discussion of the book.

Hal S. Scott, the Nomura Professor and director of the Program on International Financial Systems at Harvard Law School and director of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, co-authored two letters to the Financial Stability Oversight Council on two provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act.

In an op-ed for Project Syndicate, "Pricing Corporate Governance," Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk discusses how markets price the corporate-governance provisions of companies. He also details his findings from a recent study "Learning and the Disappearing Association between Governance and Returns"  with HLS Visiting Professor of Law Alma Cohen and HLS Lecturer in Law and Economics Charles C.Y. Wang. Bebchuk is director of the Corporate Governance Program at Harvard Law School. He is co-author, with Holger Spamann, of "Regulating Bankers’ Pay."

In an op-ed in the New York Times, HLS Professor Noah Feldman discusses the challenges and opportunities President Barack Obama faces, after the midterm elections, to have an impact internationally.  He writes: "To achieve more tangible foreign-policy results will require focusing on a familiar, thorny problem: the Middle East, where the Obama administration has already begun to engage." Feldman's op-ed, "Midterm Maneuvers," appeared in the Nov. 21, 2010 edition of the New York Times Magazine.

In his essays, Samuel Moyn considers topics such as human rights and the Holocaust, international courts, and liberal internationalism. Skeptical of humanitarian justifications for intervention, he writes,“[H]uman rights history should turn away from ransacking the past as if it provided good support for the astonishingly specific international movement of the last few decades.”

Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith co-wrote an op-ed with Benjamin Wittes for the Nov. 19, 2010 edition of The Washington Post titled “Ghailani verdict makes stronger case for military detentions.” The piece addresses debate over the Obama administration’s policy to try former Guantanamo detainees in civilian court.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. ’79 presided over the final round of Harvard Law School’s 2010 Ames Moot Court Competition on Nov. 16 in Ames Courtroom. He was joined by Judge Julia Smith Gibbons of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, and Judge Diana Murphy of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit.

Carl M. Loeb University Professor Laurence H. Tribe, currently serving as the first Senior Counselor for Access to Justice in the Justice Department, will return to the Harvard Law School faculty in January and resume teaching in the 2011-12 academic year.

This recent op-ed by HLS Professor Noah Feldman, "Supreme Court Sibling Rivalry: Will Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan elbow each other to greatness?” appeared in the November 8 edition of Slate Magazine.

Glenn Cohen, Assistant Professor of Law and co-director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, addressed health care professionals as a guest speaker at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s 66th annual meeting, as part of the Ken Ryan Ethics Symposium - Cross-Border Care, on Oct. 25 in Denver, Colo.

In an op-ed for the UK publication the Daily Mail, Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig takes a look at the recently-released film “The Social Network” – which he calls an “intelligent, beautiful and compelling film” – and weighs it against the real story of founder Mark Zuckerberg’s popular Internet platform.