Latest from HLS News Staff

Harvard Law School Professor Michael Klarman gave a talk discussing “Racial Equality in American History” to mark his appointment as the Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law. The wide-ranging talk, given on April 12, touched upon civil rights history, legal history, and cultural history in order to uncover, as Klarman said, “the racial attitudes and practices in American history, and how and why they change over time.”

HLS Professor and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society Yochai Benkler recently appeared on NPR's On The Media to discuss the future of the production and exchange of information in our society. 

The article “Don’t accept injustice,” by Harvard Law School Professor Anne Alstott, appeared in the July/August 2010 edition of the Boston Review.

“Imagining a Liberal Court,” an article by HLS Professor Noah Feldman, appeared in the June 21, 2010, edition of the New York Times Magazine. A contributing writer to the New York Times, Feldman recently wrote a book entitled “Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of F.D.R.’s Great Supreme Court Justices,” which will be published in the fall.

A Boston University graduate student who is being  represented pro bono by Harvard Law School Professor Charles R. Nesson ’63 in a much-publicized copyright dispute will face a drastically reduced penalty for his illegal file-sharing activity, a federal judge has ruled.

President Barack Obama ’91 nominated Amy Berman Jackson ’79 to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Jackson was one of three nominations Obama announced on June 17, also including Judge James E. Boasberg and Justice Sue E. Myerscough.

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. Serving as the deputy to the chief of investigations, he will be responsible for managing and providing legal guidance and direction to all of the ICC’s investigations in this new post.

The day after Elaine Lin ’10 finishes taking the Bar Exam in California this summer, she’ll be on a plane to Belfast. Two days later, she’ll be working with dozens of young people who have lost loved ones to terrorism—from Israel, Palestine, Ireland, Spain, India, and the U.S.—in a camp where she will teach them skills for resolving conflict.

A recent study, “The Wages of Failure: Executive Compensation at Bear Stearns and Lehman 2000-2008,” by Professor Lucian A. Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84, Visiting Professor Alma Cohen and Lecturer on Law Holger Spamann S.J.D. ’09 refutes the widespread assumption that the wealth of the top executives at Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers was largely wiped out when their companies collapsed. According to the authors, many have used this account to dismiss the view that pay structures caused excessive risk-taking, but, they say, that standard narrative turns out to be incorrect.

Harvard University was recognized as one of the world’s top three open-access institutions of the year by BioMed Central, an international publisher of journals in science, technology, and medicine and a pioneer in open-access publishing. Harvard Law School was given special recognition for being one of four schools at Harvard to introduce its own open-access mandates.

In a debate broadcast from Washington, D.C., HLS Professor Jonathan Zittrain ’95 argued that the “Cyber War Threat” is a real and present danger. Zittrain was teamed with former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, against Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and Bruce Schneier, an internationally renowned security technologist.

Environmental law expert Richard Lazarus ’79 has been appointed the executive director of a new bipartisan commission created by President Barack Obama ’91 to examine the causes of the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Several HLS Professors testified on behalf of former Dean Elena Kagan ’86 on July 1 during confirmation hearings for her nomination to become an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

As Elena Kagan becomes the 112th Supreme Court justice, she adds to an impressive list of 22 justices who have one thing in common: Not only have they shaped the law in influential and historical ways — they all hail from Harvard.

In Ruthenberg v. Michigan, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis LL.B. 1877 first formulated the principles surrounding the exercise of free speech that would appear in his later opinion in Whitney v. California (1927). The Louis D. Brandeis Papers held by the Harvard Law School Library include seven folders of drafts written by Brandeis for Ruthenberg, which have now been digitized and are available on the law school website.

The Senate confirmed former Harvard Law School Dean and Solicitor General Elena Kagan ’86 to succeed Justice John Paul Stevens on the United States Supreme Court today by a vote of 63-37. Kagan becomes the 112th Justice and the first former Dean of the Law School to serve on the Court.

“The Triumphant Decline of the WASP” by HLS Professor Noah Feldman appeared in the June 28, 2010, edition of the New York Times. Feldman is the author of the forthcoming book “Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of F.D.R.’s Great Supreme Court Justices.”

"The Good Driller Award,” an op-ed by Professor Jody Freeman LL.M. ’91 S.J.D. ’95, appeared in the July 1, 2010 edition of the New York Times.

An online investigative journalist, working on a shoestring budget, is sued for libel. Where can he turn for legal help?