Andrew Manuel Crespo

Joe Biden’s Commission on the Supreme Court voted on the final version of its report last week. ... Almost no one thinks that the Constitution forbids adding justices, but the draft sounded notes of grave caution all the same. “The risks of court expansion are considerable,” it emphasized. One of the commissioners, the Harvard professor Andrew Crespo, worried that arguments in favor of expanding the Court had been “teed up to be knocked down.” In effect, he remarked, the report sent “a message that the underlying problem … is neither urgent nor serious, if it even exists.” Joined by another commissioner, the NAACP lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill, Crespo’s minor rebellion was the only part of the October meeting to draw serious coverage—forcing the commission back to the drawing board. This was not the first time the commission had accidentally generated the reform energy it was supposed to contain. Back in June, the group convened publicly to discuss for the first time the merits of various reform proposals. And although the interminable meeting seemed intended to sap the will of reform advocates, the testimony that received the most attention by far was that of the Harvard professor Nikolas Bowie, which went viral on Twitter and was given pride of place in both national reporting and op-eds calling for a more democratic law. Building on earlier calls to “disempower” the Supreme Court, Bowie’s testimony helped many progressives see that the threat posed by that institution goes beyond the reactionary attitudes of individual justices, and includes the undemocratic power the justices wield, regardless of ideological leaning.

A White House Commission studying changes to the U.S. Supreme Court voted unanimously to send its report to President Joe Biden after sidestepping the most controversial proposals to expand the court’s membership or limit the justices’ terms. Members, who voted 34-0 Tuesday, emphasized that their approval of the final report doesn’t signal support for all the proposals examined by the panel. ... Some may be disappointed that the report doesn’t make specific recommendations, said former U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner, who said she supports changes to the court. “But that was not our charge,” Gertner said. Instead, “the tasks set before us was to capture that deep, live, and consequential debate, fully and fairly, without short changing either side,” said Harvard Law School Professor Andrew Manuel Crespo. ... The commission concluded that the least controversial changes, like term limits, were the hardest to enact, said Harvard Law School Professor Larry Tribe. And the most controversial—expanding the number of justices—the easiest to do, he added.

As she assumes her new role as organizing fellow for Harvard Law School’s new Institute to End Mass Incarceration (IEMI), community organizer Brittany White finds herself thinking of Bianca.  ... The institute proposes a new role for lawyers in the push to “decarcerate” America. “Lawyers think that power comes from law and permits, that the way liberal lawyers can make a difference is by going in and bringing power to clients. That’s not the way we think about it,” says faculty director and Wasserstein public interest professor of law Andrew Manuel Crespo. “We take our inspiration and our cues from movement work,” such as the civil-rights movement or labor organizing, because such things “have had the biggest impact on changing deep structural injustices in America.” The Institute, Crespo says, proposes that “power comes from the ground up,” and lawyers, in particular public defenders, should use their legal expertise to “help communities activate their power.” They want to teach the next generation of lawyers to be active partners with community organizers like White in the fight to end mass incarceration.

Eighty-seven former federal prosecutors are pushing the Biden Justice Department to end a Trump-era “felon-in-possession” initiative that lets prosecutors shift gun cases out of D.C.’s Superior Court and into federal District Court, where sentences can be twice as long. In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Acting U.S. Attorney Channing D. Phillips, the lawyers wrote, “Excessive sentences exacerbate the underlying drivers of violence, producing shame, isolation, stunted economic opportunity, and exposure to further violence.” They added that the policy also increases racial inequity... “The civil rights groups are against it, the locally elected officials are against it, and scores of former federal prosecutors are against it,” wrote Harvard Law Professor Andrew Crespo, who is director of the Institute to End Mass Incarceration. “The Biden administration could easily and immediately end it. Instead, they came to court today to defend it.”

A Latina law school professor has been tasked with examining the future of one of the country's three branches of government. President Joe Biden has signed an executive order creating a presidential commission to study whether the Supreme Court should be overhauled, and he has named Yale Law School professor Cristina M. Rodríguez as its co-chair. Rodríguez and Bob Bauer, a professor at the New York University School of Law, will head the bipartisan commission to examine arguments both for and against a reform. ... The commission includes some of the nation’s best-known legal scholars and experts: Laurence H. Tribe of the Harvard Law School, Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, and Andrew Crespo, also of the Harvard Law School. Crespo, who is of Puerto Rican heritage, was the first Latino president of the Harvard Law Review.

A struggle is underway over how prosecutors charge gun crimes in Washington, D.C. The Justice Department says it needs flexibility to bring some cases in federal court, where penalties are higher. But civil rights groups say the policy discriminates against Black residents. NPR national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson reports. Featuring Harvard Law professor Andrew Crespo.

The new top federal prosecutor in Washington is standing by a Trump-era Justice Department policy of charging certain gun crimes in federal court instead of locally, continuing an initiative that draws stiffer prison sentences and has concerned some city leaders and criminal justice reform advocates...Harvard law professor Andrew Crespo, one of Reed’s lawyers, said it was disappointing that the new leadership of the U.S. attorney’s office was retaining an approach that has been “widely criticized by people who are fighting for racial justice and racial equity in the District and who care about D.C. rights.” “There’s a broad consensus that mass incarceration doesn’t work and doesn’t make us safer,” he said. “President Biden said that his first week in office and he is right. But this is straight out of the old mass incarceration playbook that President Biden was criticizing a few weeks ago.” The government’s assertion that it is now targeting only people deemed violent, Crespo said, is inconsistent with its decision to keep prosecuting his client in federal court.

On Monday, the House of Representatives’ Oversight and Reform Committee held a hearing on H.R. 51, a bill that would grant statehood to the District of Columbia...On Friday, however, Biden’s Department of Justice underscored D.C.’s lack of authority over criminal prosecutions, a direct consequence of its lack of state sovereignty. In a court filing, the DOJ confirmed that it would continue the Trump administration’s policy of charging certain firearm offenses in federal court instead of D.C. court—exposing defendants to far lengthier prison sentences...Civil rights advocates were heartened when Biden named Channing Phillips, a proponent of home rule, as acting U.S. attorney for D.C. Their hopes were dashed on Friday, when Phillips informed a federal judge that he would maintain the program. Phillips suggested that his office had solved the racism problem by applying the policy District-wide, but there is no doubt that it will still reflect the broader racial disparities that infect D.C. policing. After all, Black people make up around 47 percent of the District’s population and 97 percent of those charged with being a felon in possession. Andrew Crespo, a Harvard Law professor and head of the school’s Impact Defense Initiative, speculated on Monday that Phillips’ position might be “a mistake,” pointing out that several key Biden nominees to the DOJ still haven’t won Senate confirmation. Crespo highlighted Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke, two civil rights luminaries, are awaiting a vote; once they’re confirmed, they may reassess a broad range of criminal justice policies, including this one. A Justice Department fully staffed with Biden appointees may overrule Phillips and demand an end to this holdover policy from the Trump years.

Andrew Crespo, a Harvard Law School professor, discusses how Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death leaves the court's three remaining liberals looking for new alliances. Steve Sanders, a professor at Indiana University's Maurer School of Law, discusses how two conservative justices used the court's rejection of an appeal, to complain that the court's 2015 same-sex marriage ruling threatens religious liberty. June Grasso hosts.