Latest from HLS News Staff

HLS Professor Jon Hanson and Adam Benforado ’05 wrote the following op-ed “Right or left, judges are activists” that appeared in the May 20 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Benforado is an assistant professor of law at Drexel University's Earle Mack School of Law and Hanson is director of The Project of Law and Mind Sciences at Harvard Law School.

Todd Lantz ’09 received the 2009 Law Student Ethics Award from the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Northeast Chapter in April.

In his op-ed “The Cheney Fallacy,” HLS Professor Jack Goldsmith discusses why he believes Barack Obama is waging a more effective war on terror than George W. Bush. The op-ed was published in the May 18, 2009, issue of The New Republic. Goldsmith, a member of the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law, was an assistant attorney general in the Bush administration and is the author of “The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration.”

The winners of Harvard Law School’s 56th annual Williston Contracts Competition were announced on April 28. The competition, sponsored by the Board of Student Advisers and organized and run by Harvard Negotiators, offers first-year students the opportunity to practice negotiation and contract drafting.

Michael E. Leiter ’00 is currently serving as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He was confirmed by the Senate in June 2008, after serving as acting director in the Bush administration since 2007. In January, President Obama ’91 announced that Leiter would remain in his post as part of the new administration’s intelligence team.

On April 24, Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Bernard Wolfman, a leading tax law expert, spoke on “Ethical Problems in Tax Practice” at the Sixth Annual Institute on Tax Aspects of Mergers and Acquisitions. The event, held at the offices of the New York City Bar, was presented by the New York City Bar in conjunction with the Center for the Study of Mergers and Acquisitions of Pennsylvania State University’s Dickinson School of Law.

Six Harvard Law School alumni were recognized by “The American Lawyer” as among the top 25 “Dealmakers of the Year” for 2008.  Honorees included three members of the HLS class of 1978, as well as three other alums.

On May 1, the White House appointed Brookings Institution economist Jason Bordoff ’04 as associate director for climate change at the Council on Environmental Quality. 

In a Wall Street Journal article titled “Has the Supreme Court Already Had a Hispanic Justice?,” HLS Professor Andy Kaufman ’54, author of “Cardozo,” a biography of Supreme Court Justice Cardozo, shared his research concerning Justice Cardozo’s ethnic heritage with WSJ Reporter Ashby Jones.

HLS Assistant Professor of Law Jeannie Suk ’02 co-wrote an op-ed “The Squint Test: How to Protect fashion designers like Jason Wu from Forever 21 knockoffs” with C. Scott Hemphill, an associate professor of law at Columbia. Their article appeared May 13 in Slate Magazine and on ABC News. Suk and Hemphill are coauthors of the article “The Law, Culture, and Economics of Fashion” which appeared in the Stanford Law Review, vol. 61, issue 5, March 2009.

The following op-ed written by Professor Mark Roe ’75, “Stress testing the government’s Chyrsler plan,” appeared in the May 13, 2009, edition of Forbes.

In May, President Barack Obama ’91 nominated Wilma A. Lewis ’81 to be assistant secretary for Land and Mineral Management at the Department of the Interior.

Robert Bordone ’97, formerly the Thaddeus R. Beal Assistant Clinical Professor of Law, has been named a full clinical professor of law. An expert in negotiation and dispute resolution, Bordone is the founding director of the Harvard Law School Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program.

The U.S. Senate hearing on the nomination of Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein to be administrator, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget, was held on Tuesday, May 12.

Thirteen students from Harvard Law School recently won honors at the 2009 Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot Competitions in Vienna and Hong Kong.

In a May 10 New York Times editorial “Celebrity Adoptions and the Real World,” HLS Professor Elizabeth Bartholet ’65, the faculty director of the Child Advocacy Program at Harvard Law School, was one of six contributors who shared their opinions on international adoption and what the standard should be for allowing international adoptions.

The bailout of financial institutions that was enacted by Congress in the Fall of 2008 didn't actually reach its intended recipients—the banks that control consumer lending—said Professor John C. Coates in a lecture at Harvard Law School in April.

Juan M. Garcia ’92 was nominated on April 29, 2009 to be the assistant secretary of the Navy for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, in the Department of Defense. He is currently an attorney with Hartline, Dacus, Barger, Dreyer & Kern in Corpus Christi, Texas.

On April 24, HLS hosted a panel discussion titled “The International Face of Harvard Law School.” The panel, moderated by Professor William Alford ’77, included John F. Cogan, Jr. ’52 and four current HLS students who described their experiences in the international law program at HLS.

On April 22, Lindsay C. Harrison ’03, an associate in the Washington office of Jenner & Block, won her first case in the Supreme Court—and the first case she’d ever argued. For immigrants appealing deportation orders, it may also be a day to celebrate.

The following op-ed, “The PPIP: Keep banks out,” written by Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84, appeared in the May 5, 2009, edition of the Financial Times.