How we treat citizens who make mistakes (even serious mistakes), pay their debt to society, and deserve a second chance reflects who we are as a people and reveals a lot about our character and commitment to our founding principles. And how we police our communities and the kinds of problems we ask our criminal justice system to solve can have a profound impact on the extent of trust in law enforcement and significant implications for public safety.

This article presents a critical reflection on the disconnect between conventional legal training and the skills needed by lawyers to support low-income communities of color, among others, in addressing US systems of oppression. It is intended to assist aspiring “movement lawyers” in developing their capacity to align their strategic and tactical decision-making with the power dynamics faced by the communities they serve.

After working directly with President Barack Obama as staff secretary, Raj De (HLS '99) served three years as general counsel to the National Security Agency, where he helped steer the agency through perhaps its biggest crisis—the leak of countless classified documents by former contractor Edward Snowden.

John Carlin, the assistant U.S. attorney general for national security, will leave the Department of Justice on Oct. 15

A classroom in Hauser Hall was filled to capacity Monday afternoon as Tom Hardin, a white collar felon and subsequent FBI informant, recounted his experiences with insider trading and federal investigations to about 100 Harvard Law Students.

An HLS study found death penalty cases in Harris County were affected by racial bias, overly aggressive prosecutions and inadequate representation for poor defendants. Three death-row inmates in Harris County have been exonerated.

It’s too soon, in cultural terms, for the court to rule definitively on the subtle issue of transgender rights, which poses powerful equality claims against society’s deeply ingrained male-female gender binaries.

Lee DiFilippo earned hefty paychecks for 13 years as a corporate attorney, but it wasn’t enough. Following her passion and joining a growing movement across the country, DiFilippo now runs a nonprofit law firm in Austin—DiFilippo Holistic Law Center—to serve people who make too much money to qualify for legal aid, but too little to afford a traditional lawyer.

Pedro Spivakovsky-Gonzalez finds his passion and fulfillment working at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, one of the School’s clinical programs and the oldest student-run organization in the United States.

Three nations, all from Africa, have announced that they will no longer work with the International Criminal Court, intensifying a longstanding debate over whether it is biased against the continent.

Learn ways to identify a school that prepares law students for international legal careers, whether their dream job is to be a human rights lawyer that pursues justice for victims of war crimes, or an in-house attorney at a multinational firm.

Representatives from NASA, Space Systems Loral, and SpaceX discussed the future of laws governing outer space during a panel at Harvard Law School.

As public support for the death penalty continues to decline, the signs of capital punishment’s impending demise are all around.

The Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights recently selected 13 students to participate in the inaugural Human Rights Studies Working Group, which will expose students to resources at Harvard and beyond that focus on human rights work.

Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Ralph Gants says the courts are taking steps to study and address Massachusetts' high racial disparity in incarceration rates.

The sister-and-brother team of Carol S. Steiker ’82, J.D. ’86, RI ’11, and Jordan M. Steiker, J.D. ’88 work to change how America thinks about capital punishment.

Mary T.W. Robinson, former president of Ireland and current United Nations Special Envoy on El Niño and Climate, spoke about the need for international policies promoting sustainability at a discussion at Harvard Law School on Thursday evening.

Florida's Supreme Court rules in favor of severe restrictions to the use of the death penalty in Florida, a state which ranks fourth in the country in total number of executions in the last 40 years.

Jake Howard did not follow what most would call a conventional path to the law. In many ways, that’s exactly what has made his story such an interesting one.

After trading his slacks and tie for boots and a uniform, Nathan Williams ’18, a cadet once more, gained a different kind of education.