Latest from HLS News Staff

Nine years after Sept. 11 and 20 months into the Obama presidency, our nation is still flummoxed about what to do with captured terrorists, writes HLS Professor Jack Goldsmith in an op-ed in today's Washington Post. In his op-ed, "A way past the terrorist detention gridlock," Goldsmith says that while there is no "silver bullet" for this problem, there are several steps the administration could take toward resolution. 

Harvard Law School Professor Gerald Neuman ’80 has been elected to the Human Rights Committee, the premier treaty body in the UN human rights system. The committee monitors compliance by 166 states parties with their obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which is part of the “International Bill of Rights.”

Time Warner Cable recently announced that it has released five essays on the future of digital communications, policy and technical perspectives based on its Research Program on Digital Communications. One of the five was written by Harvard Law School Professor John Palfrey, who contributed an essay entitled "The Challenge of Developing Effective Public Policy on the Use of Social Media by Youth."

In his recent Wall Street Journal op-ed and subsequent appearance on the radio program 'The Takeaway,'  Harvard Law School Professor Noah Feldman discussed the Obama administration's pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq by Oct 2011. He argued that, if the nation is to flourish as an independent nation, the U.S. will be required to play a continuing role in maintaining security there for a long time to come.

This summer, HLS students traveled to distant locations – in Burma, Sierra Leone, Budapest, The Netherlands, Bolivia, South Africa, Ireland and Argentina – to do human rights advocacy work.

Five HLS students reflect on their summer legal work at home and abroad.

HLS Dean Martha Minow was interviewed on August 22 for the ‘Bibliophiles’ column in the Boston Globe. In the Q&A, Minow talks about her own summer reading list, book groups with the President, and the relevance of fiction and poetry in advancing our national dialogue on ethnic and religious conflict.

Of the 39 law school graduates who are serving as clerks to the U.S. Supreme Court justices and retired justices in the 2010-2011 term, 11 hail from Harvard Law School—the highest number from a single law school this year.

If it’s illegal to copy books and paintings, why should fashion designs be any different? That was the question posed by HLS Professor Jeannie Suk ‘02 and Columbia Law Professor C. Scott Hemphill in a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal

Harvard Law School Professor Robert Mnookin ’68 appeared on PBS NewsHour on August 25. He spoke with economics correspondent Paul Solman about the rewards and challenges of negotiation. Mnookin is the author of “Bargaining with the Devil: When to Negotiate, When to Fight,” which was published by Simon & Schuster in February.

Last year, as part of Harvard’s International Human Rights Clinic, Susannah Knox ’10 and Lauren Pappone ’11, traveled to British Columbia with Lecturer on Law and Clinical Instructor Bonnie Docherty '01 to investigate how mining affects the Takla Lake First Nation people.

Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren continues to gain support for serving as director of the newly created Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. In a letter to the Oval Office, HLS students from the classes of 2011 and 2012 are urging the president to nominate Warren for the top spot at the bureau.            

As a legal fellow funded by the HLS Office of Public Interest Advising and a Heyman Fellowship, Tom Ferriss '11 became an expert on the work of then Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan, flagging issues that might draw political attention during her Senate Confirmation hearings.

Harvard Law School professor Charles Fried appeared on the August 19, 2010 edition of the WBUR program “Radio Boston” with his son and co-author, Gregory Fried, to discuss their new book, “Because it is Wrong: Torture, Privacy, and Presidential Power in the age of Terror.”

Benjamin Kaplan, the Royall Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School and a former justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, died August 18, 2010.

Shifts in public opinion on gay marriage could influence Justice Kennedy and the fate of same-sex marriage in the Supreme Court, writes HLS Professor Michael Klarman in an op-ed in August 15, 2010 edition of The Los Angeles Times.

Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow wrote the post “Charter schools and integration” for the law blog 'Balkinization'.

Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig recently co-wrote an op-ed in the San Jose Mercury News on how new legislative templates by Google and Verizon threaten true net neutrality.

Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain recently appeared on NPR’s “All Things Considered” to discuss the website Wikileaks.org, and the Pentagon’s recent attempt to stop WikiLeaks from publishing classified documents, many pertaining to the war in Afghanistan.

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University will conduct an independent, exploratory study analyzing the communication and decision-making processes of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization responsible for managing the internet's domain name system.