Latest from HLS News Staff

Leading experts in social networking, intellectual property, open access, citizen media, and open software communities make up a new class of fellows at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. The 13 new fellows join the Center’s already dynamic community of scholars who are doing groundbreaking work in new media.

THESE ARE not the happiest of times in the US-China relationship. Stories of tainted foods and dangerous products have been news for weeks. Controversies continue over exchange rates, labor conditions, outsourcing, and intellectual property infringement. And long-standing issues regarding human rights, the environment, and foreign policy remain prominent.

The Supreme Court’s recent rulings overturning desegregation plans by school districts in Seattle and Louisville were the focus of a special panel discussion sponsored by Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice on September 6.

This week Harvard Law School welcomes 737 new students as degree candidates in the J.D., LL.M. and S.J.D. programs.

A new book by Professor Jack Goldsmith is receiving significant attention in both the mainstream media and in the political blogosphere -- and it has yet to hit bookshelves.

HLS Professor Gerald Neuman '80 has co-written an amicus brief in a case to be heard next term by the U.S. Supreme Court involving the rights of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Professor Noah Feldman writes: Another school year, another round of controversy about religion in public education. This fall, two new yet already divisive publicly financed schools are set to open: the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn and the Ben Gamla Charter School in Hollywood, Fla.

As college tuition rises, and with it the amount of debt students have after graduating from college, Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren and third-year student Ganesh Sitaraman are proposing a new program that would help students pay down their debt if they promise to give back to their country or community. They are calling their plan Service Pays.

The following op-ed, Catalysts for corporate responsibility in cyberspace, co- written by Harvard Law School Clinical Professor John Palfrey '01 and Visiting Professor Jonathan Zittrain '95 , was published in Cnet News on August 14, 2007.

UCLA School of Law Professor William Rubenstein '86 has accepted a tenured offer to join the Harvard Law School faculty. He is an expert in civil procedure whose scholarship focuses on class action law, and he is a celebrated teacher who has won several teaching awards.

Harvard Law School Professor and bankruptcy expert Elizabeth Warren testified before the House Committee on the Judiciary today about her research linking rising healthcare costs to increasing bankruptcy rates among the middle-class.

Harvard Law School Professor Allen Ferrell '95 testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment yesterday about regulating cross-border exchanges. Ferrell described the current state of international exchanges and discussed ways for the SEC to better regulate international trading.

Harvard Law School Professors J. Mark Ramseyer ’82 and Steven Shavell are launching what will be the nation’s first faculty-edited journal with a broad legal focus. Entitled the Journal of Legal Analysis, the first issue is slated to be published in fall 2008.

Harvard Law School Professor and constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe '66 testified before a packed Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing on June 26 about legislation proposed by Sen. Jay Rockefeller to regulate violent programming on television. Tribe warned against adopting the legislation in his testimony, saying it would violate free speech.

One year of planning came down to five hours of drama on June 23, 2007, when three Victorian-era buildings on the Harvard Law School campus were relocated 175 yards up Massachusetts Avenue to make way for the Northwest Corner development, a major new academic complex slated for completion in 2011. A section of an HLS dormitory at the destination on Mass. Ave. was demolished to make space for the houses. Traffic was diverted, and street signs, parking meters and traffic signals were removed. Pictured below: The heaviest of the three buildings, weighing more than 200 tons, was moved by 16 hydraulic dollies, at walking speed.

Professor Emeritus Robert E. Keeton S.J.D. '56, a leading scholar on insurance law, torts, and trial tactics who taught at Harvard Law School and served as a District Court judge, died July 2 at the age of 88.

The Supreme Court concluded its 2006-07 term on June 29 by issuing several controversial decisions on topics ranging from campaign finance to school desegregation. The first full term of the Roberts Court was characterized by 24 5-4 decisions, more than any other recent term. Harvard Law School’s cadre of leading constitutional scholars offered their take on this historic term.

The following op-ed, Brown's legacy lives, but barely, written by Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree '78 , was published in the Boston Globe on June 29, 2007.

Supreme Confusion Professor Charles Fried Professor Charles Fried
The New York Times, April 26 “[The Supreme Court’s decision in the partial-birth abortion case is] disturbing because…

How do we put a value on our (intellectual) capital gains? Or calculate the windfalls (to our minds) that have accrued from our original basis—in this case, from the date that William Andrews ’55 joined the Harvard Law School faculty in fiscal year 1961 and the moment, a few reporting periods later, when Bernard Wolfman arrived in 1976? We can’t—a perfect example of immeasurable, and invaluable, gains.

In “Blasphemy: How the Religious Right Is Hijacking Our Declaration of Independence” (John Wiley & Sons, 2007), Professor Alan M. Dershowitz contends that fundamentalist Christian political activists are misusing the declaration to Christianize America.