Latest from Harvard Law News Staff

The spread of false information and rumors poses growing risks to society and the economy...That was the message delivered by Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein in a major lecture—titled “He Said THAT?? She Did WHAT?? On False Rumors and Free Speech”—marking his appointment as the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at HLS.

Harvard Law School Professor Adrian Vermeule has published a new book entitled “Law and the Limits of Reason,” describing how limitations on human reasoning affect governing bodies.

Christopher Rogers ’09 has spent the better part of the past year in HLS’s International Human Rights Clinic working on issues related to cluster munitions, particularly surrounding the creation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

As part of her work on a Congressional panel overseeing the Treasury Department’s economic bailout plan, Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren is testifying before the House Financial Services Committee today. Staff members predict that Warren will testify after noon today.

Oliver Oldman ‘53, Learned Hand Professor of Law Emeritus, died on December 5, 2008, at the age of 88. Educated at Harvard College (S.B. 1942) and the Harvard Law School (LL.B. 1953), Oldman taught at the Law School from 1959 to 1993.

The following article by HLS Professor Jonathan Zittrain ’95, “The Internet is Closing,” was published in the Dec. 8, 2008, edition of Newsweek. The author of “The Future of the Internet—And How to Stop It” (Yale University Press, 2008), he is the founder and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at HLS.

The following op-ed co-written by HLS Visiting Professor Rachel Barkow’96 and Joshua Libling, “Sentencing laws needn’t drain us,” was published in the Dec. 6, 2008, edition of the Boston Herald.

The Economist magazine has included the books of two Harvard Law Professors on its list of 2008 “Books of the Year.”

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.