Latest from HLS News Staff

As a spate of head injuries in football made national headlines in October, students in a Sports Law class at Harvard Law School got a firsthand account of the dangers—and consequences—of head trauma in the NFL.

Tyler Giannini has been appointed as a clinical professor of law at Harvard Law School. He was formerly a lecturer on law at HLS.

Robert H. Sitkoff, the John L. Gray Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, was elected an Academic Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, a national professional organization of approximately 2,600 lawyers who specialize in trusts and estates.

Jeannie Suk ’02 has gained tenure as a professor of law at Harvard. The faculty voted to grant tenure on Oct. 14 and Harvard University approved it immediately thereafter.

In 2009, the nation was captivated by the now-infamous Cambridge arrest of Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates. Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree, who served as Gates’ attorney in the immediate aftermath of the arrest, wrote his latest book, “The Presumption of Guilt: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Race, Class and Crime in America” in response to the event. In addition to several appearances on national media outlets, Ogletree recently hosted a panel discussion at HLS featuring Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum and member of the Cambridge Review Committee that was established to review the incident.

Harvard Law School professor Adrian Vermeule ‘93, who is an expert on Constitutional Law, recently reviewed two books — one new and one "neglected classic" — which deal with the subject. The first, "Superstatutes," was featured in The New Republic; the other ("The small-c constitution circa 1925") was a contribution to the new Classics section of the online journal Jotwell.

Professor John C. Coates published “Corporate Governance and Corporate Political Activity: What Effect Will Citizens United Have on Shareholder Wealth?” in September, as part of the HLS Working Paper series.  

Twenty senior federal officials – both Republicans and Democrats – met in Washington in July to hone their negotiation and consensus building skills with members of the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program (HNMCP) at Harvard Law School.

In an HLS panel discussion titled “Life of the Law, Life of the Mind,” Dean Martha Minow and Professors of Law Jeannie Suk and Noah Feldman stressed the importance of recognizing and embracing the differences between legal training and academic experience.

The White House released a statement from the President on Thursday, October 21 on the life of Paul Miller '86, who advised Presidents Obama and Clinton on disability and equal opportunity matters. Miller, a lawyer who was born with achondroplasia "dwarfism" and became a leader in the disability rights movement, died Tuesday at his home on Mercer Island, Wash. He was 49.

Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith wrote an op-ed for the Oct. 21, 2010 edition of the Washington Post titled “Our nation’s secrets, stuck in a broken system.” The piece addresses Bob Woodward’s book, “Obama Wars,” in which ostensibly classified information – presumably obtained from senior White House officials – is disclosed regardless of the “grave damage” that could result from its release.  

Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic submitted an amicus curiae brief to the Second Circuit in support of a petition for rehearing en banc in a major corporate Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”) case, Kiobel, et al. v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., et al.

The efforts of students in the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau and the WilmerHale Legal Services Center to keep Boston residents in their homes after foreclosure were featured in a major story last night on the PBS NewsHour.

Reverend Professor Ian Ker of Oxford University gave a lecture on John Henry Newman’s “The Idea of a University” at Harvard Law School in September, arguing that careful attention is needed to understand Newman’s perspective on the goals of a university in light of modern day assumptions about education.

Louis Henkin ’40, who pioneered the field of human rights law and was a prolific scholar and teacher in the fields of constitutional and international law, died Oct. 14, 2010. He was 92.

Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, directed by Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig, has received a gift of $12.3 million from Lily Safra, given in memory of her late husband, Edmond J. Safra, a prominent philanthropist who was the founder of the Republic National Bank of New York.

On October 15 and 16, 2010, the Harvard Law School Program on the Legal Profession hosted FutureEd 2: Making Lawyers for the 21st Century. Legal scholars, practitioners and regulators from around the world gathered in Cambridge to discuss the evolution and future of legal education, and to present proposals for change.

The continuing debate over Brown v. Board of Education's effects was forcefully illustrated on Tuesday, Sept. 28, by a panel discussion of Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow’s new book, “In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of America’s Educational Landmark,” the first in a series of events on faculty-authored books sponsored by the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice and HLS.

Harvard University announced today (Oct. 19) that Mark Johnson, the Director of Major Capital Projects and Physical Planning at Harvard Law School, has been named vice president for capital planning and project management.

In an Oct. 8 op-ed in the New York Times, Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith argues that the trial of suspected terrorists – whether in criminal, civilian, or military court – is the “wrong approach.” 

On Oct. 12, Judge Virginia A. Phillips of Federal District Court for the Central District of California issued an injunction barring enforcement of don’t ask, don’t tell, the law that prohibits openly gay men and women from serving in the military.