Latest from Harvard Law News Staff

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?

In recent years, political discourse has often focused on the idea of family values. Another contentious political issue has been the inheritance tax. The two topics commingle in a recent paper by Anne Alstott, in which she considers whether the inheritance tax is compatible with family values.

When judges rule on cases involving issues such as contracts, property rights, antitrust or taxes, they are not just making legal decisions. They are making economic policy.

A Measure of History Professor Kenneth W. Mack ’91
The Boston Globe
March 25, 2010 “In recent weeks, the Obama administration … sought to mobilize…

The future of Harvard Law School is emerging on Massachusetts Avenue, like a present waiting to be opened. Slated to be completed in December 2011, the environmentally friendly, 250,000-square-foot complex—with an academic building that will support the innovations in teaching that have been introduced into the school’s curriculum, an expansive student center and a new centralized home for the school’s burgeoning clinical program—is already revealing its handsome facade now that much of the scaffolding has come down.

A white tern in the tropical Pacific, photographed by Theodore Cross ’50 for “Waterbirds” (W. W. Norton, 2009). Nature magazine called the book “extraordinary.” The…

Jack Cogan ’52 jokes that he resides “in the shadow of Harvard,” having moved back to the Square after living in Lexington for years. A graduate of Harvard College (’49) and Harvard Law School, he’s had a long engagement with the school and the university, serving on the Visiting Committee and supporting HLS—including most recently its international programs.