Latest from Harvard Law News Staff

Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree ’78 will be awarded the 2009 Spirit of Excellence Award from the American Bar Association Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession.

Poltico.com, a website with a devoted following of leading politicians and those who watch them, offers a revealing look at the role played by President-elect Obama's network of Harvard Law School friends during the campaign and now the transition.

On Nov. 20, Harvard Law School and Facing History and Ourselves co-sponsored a conference, “Hope, Critique & Possibility: Universal Rights in Societies of Difference,” to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The following article written by HLS Professor Noah Feldman, “Fighting the last war,” was published in the Nov. 30, 2008, edition of The New York Times Magazine. He is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

In the first post-foreclosure case to be tried in Boston in the current foreclosure crisis, two Harvard Law students landed a $54,000 verdict against the Bank of New York for cutting off the water and heat of a Dorchester man it was trying to force out of the home he rented, which had been foreclosed on after the owner failed to make mortgage payments.

Sheela Murthy LL.M. ’87 founded the Murthy Law Firm in Baltimore County, Md., in 1994. Her firm, of which she is managing partner and president, employs 14 lawyers who primarily practice U.S. immigration law.

The 2008 presidential race got off to an unusually early and competitive start. Few political observers are better equipped to analyze how this unusual campaign year will play out than two Harvard Law School alumni: David Gergen ’67 and Robert M. Shrum ’68.

This fall, the classrooms and lecture halls of Harvard Law School no longer reverberated with the voices of two of the institution’s best-known teachers—Professors Arthur R. Miller ’58 and Paul C. Weiler LL.M. ’65. Miller ended his 36-year HLS career last year, and Weiler retired after 26 years of teaching at the school.

Coming of Age with Clarence Assistant Professor Jeannie Suk ’02
The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 12 “If the metric we are using is the abuse…

A renowned expert on trusts and estates, Professor Robert Sitkoff joined the HLS faculty this fall from New York University School of Law. He says we are in the midst of a “quiet revolution in modern American trust law.” Here, he explains.

Four authors of articles in the November Supreme Court issue of the Harvard Law Review offered an in-depth look at the Court’s 2007-8 term in a panel discussion on November 18.

IS THERE a legal basis for the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan for genocide?

There has been much speculation about how the Obama administration will deal with what many view as the Bush administration's harsh, abusive and illegal interrogation program.

After an election that mobilized legions of diverse voters, what can be expected from the 44th president? Three weeks after the victory of Barack Obama ’91, panelists considered the question at an event moderated by Professor Charles Ogletree ’78, director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice.

HLS Professor Jack Goldsmith and University of Chicago Law Professor Eric Posner ‘91 wrote “Does Europe Believe in International Law?” an op-ed published in the Nov. 25, 2008, edition of The Wall Street Journal.

Amalia Amaya LL.M. ’00 S.J.D. ’07 has been awarded the European Award for the Best Doctoral Dissertation in Legal Theory. The award is given every three years by the European Academy of Legal Theory in Brussels.

Annette Gordon-Reed ’84 won this year’s National Book Award for nonfiction for “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family,” which examines three generations of a slave family owned by Thomas Jefferson.

On Friday November 14, Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren was appointed to a five-member congressional oversight panel that will monitor the Treasury’s economic rescue plan and report back to Congress. Warren was one of three experts nominated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to the bi-partisan panel.

Brazilian Supreme Federal Court President Gilmar Ferreira Mendes discussed the development of Brazilian constitutional law since 1988 on Monday, October 27 in Pound Hall.