Latest from Harvard Law News Staff

President Barack Obama ’91 has appointed Rita Hauser ’58 and Roel Campos ’79 to serve on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB). As members of the PIAB, Hauser and Campos will provide the President with independent advice on the effectiveness of the U.S. intelligence community.

On December 24, President Barack Obama ’91 nominated Ronald Machen ’94 to serve as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, pending confirmation by the Senate. Currently a partner at Wilmer Hale in Washington, D.C., Machen devotes his practice to complex civil litigation, white-collar criminal defense, and internal corporate investigations.

On Wednesday, September 16, the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice hosted an event to recognize the extraordinary death penalty case of Troy Anthony Davis. Charles Ogletree '78, Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, moderated a panel which brought to together Davis' sister, Martina Correia, his amicus counsel Kathleen Behan, and Jason Ewart, an Arnold and Porter associate who represented Davis during his habeas corpus petition before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

On Friday, November 6, Harvard Law School hosted to a day-long conference entitled “Confronting Legal Injustice/Imagining Legal Justice” in Ames Courtroom. A plethora of speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds addressed shortcomings in the law concerning capital punishment. They also looked at the future of the death penalty.

A recent study by HLS Professor Carol Steiker ’86 and her brother, Professor Jordan Steiker of the University of Texas Law School, has led the American Law Institute (ALI) to vote to withdraw the capital punishment section of its Model Penal Code. The Model Penal Code provisions were cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 when it determined that the death penalty could be administered in a constitutional way. The Steikers’ study examined whether or not the death penalty was in fact being administered in compliance with the Constitution.

On Dec. 14, Harvard Law School Professor Adriaan Lanni gave the annual Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Lecture on Aristotle and the Moderns at Columbia University. The title of the talk was “Reconciliation after Mass Atrocity: Lessons from Ancient Athens.”

Finn M.W. Caspersen ’66: 1941-2009 Bruce Wasserstein ’70: 1947-2009 Two of Harvard Law School’s greatest alumni leaders died this fall, as the building that will stand as a tribute to their support was rising.

Luke Cole ’89, a leader in the environmental justice movement—which holds that many minority neighborhoods have become toxic dumping grounds—died June 6, 2009, in a traffic accident in Uganda at age 46.

Michael Weston ’97, special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan on Oct. 26, 2009, while working with the U.S. military to fight drug trafficking in the region.

America Is on Trial as Much as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Professor Alan Dershowitz
The Globe and Mail
Nov. 13, 2009 “The Obama administration has announced…

George H. Kidder ’50, a partner for more than 40 years with the Boston law firm Hemenway & Barnes and a civic-minded lawyer who contributed extensively to the Boston community, died Aug. 20 at the age of 84 at his home in Concord, Mass.

Singleton, who hails from North Carolina and now lives in Cincinnati, found himself an “East Coast liberal” professor engaging a crop of young conservative law students in criminal justice reform.

Last spring, David Hackett Souter ’66—the U.S. Supreme Court’s 105th justice—announced his retirement and stepped down at the end of the term. We asked four alumni who had firsthand experience with the justice for their reflections.

Five months into her new job, Dean Martha Minow shares some insights - and even a little advice.

“The Road to Abolition?: The Future of Capital Punishment in the United States” (New York University Press, 2009), edited by Professor Charles Ogletree Jr. ’78 and Austin Sarat, takes on an interdisciplinary exploration of the debate surrounding the death penalty at the turn of the 21st century.

In both the public and private sectors, Harvard Law students are facing a tougher job market than in recent memory.

In the wake of the current economic crisis and growing globalization, the job market for lawyers is tougher than at any time in recent history. We asked Professor David Wilkins ’80, head of HLS’s Program on the Legal Profession, how these factors will shape legal practice and education.

Since U.S. forces started taking alleged terrorists to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the task of crafting American detention policy has migrated decisively from the executive branch to federal judges. These judges, not experts in terrorism or national security and not politically accountable to the electorate, inherited this responsibility because of the Supreme Court's intervention in detention policy. Over time they maintained it because legislative and executive officials of both political parties refused to craft a comprehensive legislative approach to this novel set of problems that cries out for decisive lawmaking.