Latest from HLS News Staff

Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren was on hand in Washington, D.C. this week as U.S. senators introduced legislation to create a new government agency, the Financial Product Safety Commission, to help consumers obtain financial products and services without predatory or deceptive financial practices.

A recently renovated office suite at Harvard Law School has been awarded a platinum rating—the highest possible certification—under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system for commercial interiors.

Juliette Kayyem ’95 will be assistant secretary for intergovernmental programs in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Janet Napolitano announced today. In her new role, Kayyem will coordinate the department’s efforts with state, local, tribal, and territorial governments.

On March 6, HLS Professor John Palfrey ’01, vice dean, library and information resources at HLS, and Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at The Progress & Freedom Foundation and director of its Center for Digital Media Freedom, participated in an online debate on Ars Technica on the Communications Decency Act and whether ISPs and social networking sites should be more liable for the things their users post. The debate, The Future of online obscenity and social networks, is included below.

The Harvard Human Rights Journal brought leading scholars and practitioners to campus on February 20 for a symposium on the doctrine known as Responsibility to Protect (R2P).

In March 2009, HLS Dean Elena Kagan ’86 was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the 44th solicitor general of the United States. Kagan, the first woman to hold this position, joins a long line of solicitors general with ties to Harvard Law School.

Born Digital, a book by HLS Professor John Palfrey ’01 and Urs Gasser L.L.M. ’03, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, was named a Best Science and Technology Book of 2008 by the Library Journal, in March.

Two more HLS alumni have been named to high-level posts in the Obama Administration. Nancy-Ann DeParle ’83 has been appointed director of the White House Office for Health Reform, and Jeremy Bash ’98 will be CIA Director Leon Panetta’s chief of staff.

The following op-ed, “Keeping stimulus spending in check,” by HLS Professor Martha Minow appeared in the March 1, 2009, edition of The Boston Globe.

HLS Professor Hal S. Scott and Maxwell Jenkins ’11 co-wrote the following op-ed, “The US Treasury is a public, not a private, investor,” that appeared in the March 2, 2009, edition of the Financial Times.

Today, the U.S. government outsources a significant portion of its work—in such key areas as national security, military intelligence, environmental monitoring, prison management, and interrogation of terrorism suspects. It’s a reality that's here to stay, according to Professors Martha Minow and Jody Freeman LL.M. ’91 S.J.D. ’95, and it raises important questions about accountability, transparency and the rule of law.

Major David J. R. Frakt ’94, a U.S. Air Force JAG officer, discussed his ongoing representation of a detainee in the war on terror, in a February 23 panel discussion at HLS. The event was sponsored by the American Constitution Society, the National Security and Law Association and the Harvard Human Rights Journal. Copies of Frakt’s article, “Closing Argument at Guantánamo: The Torture of Mohammed Jawad,” which will soon appear in the Human Rights Journal, were distributed to the audience.

Harvard Law School has partnered with NYU School of Law and the Advantage Testing Foundation to launch the Training and Recruitment Initiative for Admission to Leading Law Schools (TRIALS), a five-week summer residential program aimed at helping underrepresented students of modest means get into the nation’s top law schools.

On Saturday, Feb. 21, the United States Postal Service released a new commemorative stamp in honor of lawyer and noted social justice reformer Charles Hamilton Houston ’22.

In commemoration of Black History Month, U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-Pa.) offered a tribute to William T. Coleman Jr. ’46, the former secretary of transportation and one of the lead strategists and co-authors of the legal brief for the appellants in Brown v. Board of Education, in the Senate on Monday, February 23.

William Stuntz, the Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, is an expert on criminal law and procedure and crime policy. He has co-written a casebook on criminal procedure and published numerous articles on all aspects of the criminal justice system, in law reviews, journals, and periodicals.

We live in strange times. The federal budget deficit is higher than at any time since World War II as a percentage of GDP, yet the president and Congress are not in budget-cutting mode. Sadly, in the face of record-breaking federal spending, one uncommonly good spending idea has gotten short shrift: Use federal budget dollars to pay for more cops on high-crime city streets

A gift of $6 million from John F. Cogan, Jr. ’52 will be used in support of Harvard Law School’s International Legal Studies (ILS) program, Dean Elena Kagan ’86 announced today.