Latest from HLS News Staff

This year, Summer Public Interest Funding enabled HLS students to explore public service in 27 states and 35 countries around the world. More than $1.8 million Summer Public Interest Funding was awarded to 373 students this summer. Here’s a look at what four students did with their summer funding.

Rutherford B. Hayes, Harvard Law School class of 1845, was the first and only other HLS alum to be elected president of the United States.

During its 40th anniversary celebration, the Council on Legal Education Opportunity (CLEO) recognized Professor Emeritus Frank E.A. Sander ’52, and Harvard Law School as a whole, for historic efforts to increase the numbers of minority students in law schools.

To mark the 60th anniversary of the ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Facing History and Ourselves and Harvard Law School convened some of the world’s leading human rights scholars, practitioners, and educators for an international conference entitled, “Universal Rights in Societies of Difference."

Delivering the Francis Biddle Memorial Lecture at HLS on November 12, Yale Law School Professor Ian Ayres applied his unique brand of number crunching to evaluate statistical models that have been employed to measure police racial bias in decisions to stop vehicles and pedestrians.

Former U.S. Rep. Louis Stokes, who represented Ohio’s 21st district in Congress from 1969 to 1999, spoke at HLS on November 12, at the invitation of Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Institute for Race and Justice.

Andrew Klaber JD/MBA ’10 has been selected as one of 160 emerging leaders from 30 countries in the Asia-Pacific region for the Asia Society’s Third Annual Asia 21 Young Leaders Summit.

Several members of the Harvard Law School faculty knew both Barack and Michelle Obama during their time as students, and have stayed in touch with them over the years. Here, some of them react to the election.

Two days after winning the election, the Obama team has quickly set to work putting together a transition team which will coordinate the move to the White House in January. Yesterday, Obama appointed three of his HLS classmates and one former HLS professor and alumnus to top transition team posts.

On an election day that saw record voter turnout numbers in states across the country, Harvard Law School graduates awaited their electoral fates. Aside from Barack Obama’s ’91 historic victory in the Presidential election, six HLS alumni are currently headed to the Senate and 12 to the House, with a few elections still too close to call.

The following op-ed, “Morning-after pride,” was written by Professor Laurence Tribe '66. It appeared in the November 5, 2008, edition of Forbes Magazine.

Barack Obama ’91 has won the general election for the presidency of the United States. Michelle Obama ’88 will become the first HLS alumna to serve as First Lady.

Michael B. Chertoff ’78, who will be stepping down as secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security next January when a new Presidential administration takes office, took time following a panel presentation in October to answer questions about his experiences on the job and his plans for the future.

Finn M.W. Caspersen ’66 and Peter Krause ’74 were honored for their service to Harvard Law School at this year’s annual fall reunions, which took place on October 24-26 at HLS.

Celebrated filmmaker Ken Burns was joined by writer and collaborator Geoffrey C. Ward, cultural critic Stanley Crouch and Harvard Kennedy School professor Edward Schumacher-Matos in a panel discussion on the role of race in Burns’ documentaries.

In a two-day conference sponsored by Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice—titled “Charting New Pathways to Participation and Membership”—attendees from the worlds of law, labor, government, academia talked about the obstacles to justice faced by many groups and how those impediments might be overcome.

With the possible departures of as many as three members of the U.S. Supreme Court’s “liberal bloc” over the next four years, appointments to the nation’s top court by the next president could have a profound impact on the Court’s makeup for decades.

Former CEO-turned-felon David Logan took his first step down the slippery slope of white collar crime as a city administrator in a small town in Minnesota, when he accepted a truck as a gift from two men who had a city contract.

Is the war on terror succeeding? That was the question for an all-star panel of experts at Harvard Law School on Oct. 24. (View webcast)

On October 23, 2008 HLS hosted a panel discussion titled Corporate Leadership in a Time of Turmoil. Moderated by Professor Bob Clark '72, the discussion featured panelists Domenico De Sole LL.M. '72, chairman of the Tom Ford fashion label and former chairman and CEO of the Gucci Group; Frank Dengeard LL.M. '85, former chairman and CEO of Thomson SA; and Bruce Wasserstein JD/MBA '71, chief executive of Lazard LLC.

Harvard Law School’s “Setting the Standard” campaign has raised $476,475,707, making it the most successful fund-raising drive in the history of legal education.