Latest from HLS News Staff

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.

Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig recently spoke on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” about a new ruling that allows Apple iPhone users to “hack” into their phones so they can choose a different carrier. Lessig, the director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard, also discussed recent changes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Harvard Law School Professor Randall Kennedy recently appeared on Public Radio International’s show “The Takeaway” to discuss the 14th amendment in light of the current immigration debate.

Groundbreaking legislation originally drafted by students from the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau (HLAB) to protect tenants from losing their homes after foreclosure was signed into law on August 7 by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick ’82, former president of HLAB.

Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow’s op-ed, entitled “Also confirmed: Marshall’s legacy,” appeared in the August 8, 2010, edition of The Boston Globe. According to Minow, the appointment of Elena Kagan’86 to the Supreme Court serves as a reminder of Marshall’s enduring legacy and most significant contribution to American law: his successful argument of Brown v. Board of Education.

Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith recently published an op-ed in the Washington Post on the effects the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) could have on the Senate’s role in foreign policy.

President Barack Obama '91 hosted a White House reception in honor of Elena Kagan '86, who was confirmed to be the next Justice on the United States Supreme Court on August 5, 2010. The Senate confirmed the former Harvard Law School Dean and Solicitor General by a vote of 63-37. With her confirmation, Kagan becomes the 20th Harvard Law School alumnus to serve on the Court. 

Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain recently appeared on NPR’s “On The Media” to discuss the recent decision by the Librarian of Congress that “jailbreaking” a smart phone is not in violation the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which was enacted in 1998 to prevent the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material via new media.

Harvard Law School Lecturer on Law Bonnie Docherty '01 recently wrote a post for Reuters' "The Great Debate UK" blog, as the first international cluster bomb treaty entered into force. Docherty is also a clinical instructor in the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School and a senior researcher in the Arms Division at Human Rights Watch.

Lucian Bebchuk, Harvard Law School Professor of Law, Economics, and Finance, and Director of the Corporate Governance Program at Harvard Law School, wrote the op-ed "How to pay a banker," which appeared in the July 27 edition of Project Syndicate. It is part of his "Rules of the game" series written for the website.

In the Aug. 2 issue of New Republic online, HLS Professor Adrian Vermeule ’93 reviews two new books: “Keeping Faith with the Constitution” by Goodwin Liu, Pamela S. Karlan, and Christopher H. Schroeder and “The Living Constitution” by David Strauss. Vermeule’s latest book is Law and the Limits of Reason (Oxford University Press 2009).

In a Boston Globe op-ed, “Obama should give Warren a recess appointment,” HLS Professor Charles Fried supports an interim appointment for Elizabeth Warren to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Warren is the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law and chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel on the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Fried served as solicitor general in the second Reagan administration and as a justice on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. His op-ed appeared in the July 29, 2010, edition of the Boston Globe.

One hundred sixty-two former students of Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to the White House on July 28, urging President Barack Obama ’91 to appoint her as director of the newly created Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.

Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow’s new book, “In Brown’s Wake,” which examines the legacies of Brown v. the Board of Education, was released last week by Oxford University Press. In an interview on ScotusBlog, Minow discusses the book and the reverberations of Brown in American schools.

HLS Professor Charles J. Ogletree Jr. co-wrote an op-ed, “After Shirley Sherrod, we all need to slow down and listen,” with Johanna Wald, that appeared in the July 25, 2010, edition of the Washington Post. Ogletree is the executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice and the author most recently of "The Presumptions of Guilt: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Race, Class, and Crime in America." Johanna Wald is director of strategic planning at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice.

Alex Whiting, an assistant clinical professor of law at Harvard Law School, will join the International Criminal Court (ICC) as the investigation coordinator this December. On Monday, July 26, he spoke with WBUR radio about his new post.

HLS Professor Carol Steiker wrote an op-ed in The National Law Journal on former HLS Dean Elena Kagan and the legacy of Supreme Court Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall. Steiker, the Howard and Kathy Aibel Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, served as a co-clerk with Kagan for Justice Marshall during the 1987-1988 term of the Supreme Court. Her op-ed, "Kagan and the legacy of Marshall," appeared in the July 26, 2010, edition of the Journal.

The following column by David Pogue, “Q & A: Rumors, Cyberbullying, and Anonymity,” appeared in the New York Times on July 22, 2010 and featured a q & a with Harvard Law School Professor John Palfrey.

Today’s edition of USA Today includes an op-ed by HLS Professor David B. Wilkins '80, “USDA official victim of ‘high-tech lynching,’” on the firing of U.S. Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod. Wilkins is the Lester Kissel Professor of Law at Harvard and the director of the Program on the Legal Profession.

Susan Carney ’77 has been nominated by President Barack Obama ’91 to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.