Andrew Manuel Crespo

Despite the years that have since passed, many of Elizabeth Warren’s former students at Harvard Law School share the same distinct memory: it was their very first day at the prestigious institution, and for many, their very first class. ...Years later, when clips of Warren grilling corporate CEOs and cabinet officials from the US Senate went viral, her former students would fire off emails and texts to one another joking about what it was like to be at the receiving end. “We could all empathize with the witness in the hot seat,” said Andrew Crespo, a former student of Warren’s who is an associate professor at Harvard. ... Her research in bankruptcy law – and the impact on the average person’s medical bills, mortgage payments and other installments – led Warren to become a leading expert on the subject and rise in the academia world. “These are the issues she still cares about,” said Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School who helped recruit Warren to its faculty. “I think she is extraordinary for this reason, that she got into politics because she cared about some issues. ... “When we brought her to Harvard, no one had a clue that she thought of herself as Native American,” said Laurence Tribe, the school’s professor of constitutional law.“I think she’s had an unfair rap,” he added. “I don’t think it’s the case that she ever exploited her family’s background or ancestry in a way that some people seem to think she did.”

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor made an impassioned plea Tuesday afternoon for “serious thinking” among judges to find ways to come together more often, and to fight the effects of partisan polarization. “For decades, the court has always managed to maintain the public’s respect, in large part because the public has perceived it as less partisan than other institutions,” Sotomayor said in a conversation with Andrew Crespo, assistant professor of law at Harvard Law School (HLS) before a room filled with law students...For Marvellous Iheukwumere, J.D. ’21, the talk was inspiring. “It was very stimulating, as a woman of color, to hear Justice Sotomayor,” said Iheukwumere. “It motivates me to keep focusing on my goals in the legal field.”

...In the new book “Tough Cases,” 13 trial judges from criminal, civil, probate, and family courts wrote candid and poignant firsthand accounts of the trials they can’t forget, giving readers a rare glimpse into their chambers. The book was the subject of a lively discussion at a panel sponsored by the Harvard Law School Library...“I don’t think I had ever really heard judges speak or write publicly about their thought processes and their tough cases the way this book captures,” said Andrew Crespo ’05, J.D. ’08, an assistant professor of law at Harvard Law School (HLS) and one of the panelists...Charles Fried, the Beneficial Professor of Law, said trial judges bear a heavy burden, not only because their work is lonely but because they have to steer their way through all facets of the human condition...For retired judge and HLS lecturer Nancy Gertner, “Tough Cases” reveals the challenges judges face and the need for the public to learn about them.

An op-ed by Andrew Manuel Crespo. Two years ago, a federal court of appeals held that polygraph tests are “an important law enforcement tool” that can help investigators “test the credibility of witnesses” and “screen applicants” for “critical” government positions. The judge who wrote that opinion: Brett M. Kavanaugh. Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee asked Kavanaugh whether he would be willing to take a polygraph test regarding the multiple sexual assault allegations he faces as he seeks a seat on the Supreme Court. Considering such a request himself, Kavanaugh departed from his prior judicial opinion and told the Senate that polygraphs are “not reliable.” But still, when pressed by Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) about taking one, Kavanaugh ultimately said, “I’ll do whatever the committee wants.”

A few weeks after Hurricane Maria swept Puerto Rico last September, Harvard Law School (HLS) student Natalie Trigo Reyes ’19 visited the island where she grew up, and found an unrecognizable landscape...Trigo Reyes led a group of 29 HLS students who traveled to Puerto Rico over spring break to lend a hand to local residents who are still struggling to obtain disaster relief aid. Puerto Rico is a U.S. self-governing territory and its inhabitants are American citizens, although they can’t vote in presidential elections or elect representatives to Congress. The HLS trip was spearheaded by Andrew Crespo ’08, assistant professor of law, and coordinated by the Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs, led by Lee Mestre...Thinlay Chukkii, LL.M. ’18, was part of the humanitarian brigade. She and 10 classmates worked on several houses damaged by the hurricane...The experience left a mark on Chukki and reinforced her desire to pursue a career in public interest law. Something similar happened to Kevin Ratana Patumwat, J.D. ’19, who was sent to Ponce, Puerto Rico’s second-largest city, to help residents file FEMA appeals. Patumwat also said he was touched by people’s generosity and grace...“I remember the national reaction to Hurricane Katrina,” said Crespo. “The whole country wanted to help. It felt that part of being American was wanting to help our fellow Americans who were struggling. With Hurricane Maria, it felt different. It felt like a struggle to get the country to realize that there were 3 million Americans without electricity or drinking water.”

...From the more than 100 Boy Scouts from across the mainland US helping to rebuild a scout camp in Guajataka to 31 Harvard law students providing pro-bono legal aid and humanitarian work, spring break in Puerto Rico this year is a far cry from lazing on the beach. In “school, you tend to forget what real life is about,” says Kevin Ratana Patumwat [`19], a second-year Harvard Law student. He’s come to better understand the disaster, which, as of March 9, still had left nearly 150,000 homes in the dark...“In the legal profession, as in others, there’s an ethic we try to teach of service and the idea that with the privileges of education and opportunity come a responsibility of service to others,” says Andrew Crespo, an assistant professor at Harvard Law School who is Puerto Rican. He helped launch the Hurricane María Legal Assistance project last fall.

Last fall, Justice Elena Kagan touted the advantages of an experienced U.S. Supreme Court Bar—the “repeat players” who know what the court likes. Justice Sonia Sotomayor seems to think criminal defense lawyers still aren’t getting the message...Lamenting the lack of diversity on the high court itself, Sotomayor said in 2013 she was bothered by the fact judges rarely come to the bench from the defense bar or with civil rights experiences. “We’re missing a huge amount of diversity on the bench,” she said. A 2016 study by Harvard Law School’s Andrew Crespo analyzed what he called the high court’s institutional shift over the last four decades toward the prosecution. One part of that shift, Crespo found, was the “rise of a sharp advocacy gap between criminal defendants and the rest of the increasingly expert Supreme Court bar, including expert advocates for the prosecution.”

An op-ed by Andrew Crespo. Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for … ultimately the American people” to decide. Those were the words of Archibald Cox, the Watergate Special Prosecutor, on that fateful Saturday night in October 1973, just moments after he was fired by the president whom he was investigating. A question for the American people to decide. To their credit, the American people responded, with what Attorney General Elliot Richardson, himself also removed from office that night, would later call a “public uproar” of “overwhelming power.”

A year as a U.S. Supreme Court law clerk is a priceless ticket to the upper echelons of the legal profession. Former clerks have their pick of top-tier job offers and can command $350,000 hiring bonuses at law firms...But amid the luster of being a law clerk, there’s an uncomfortable reality: It is an elite club still dominated by white men...And yet, most justices appear to be taking a passive approach to diversity rather than actively seeking minority clerks or pushing their networks to identify more diverse candidates. “I’ve never had that precise conversation with any justice,” said Harvard Law School professor Richard Lazarus, a comment echoed by several other clerk-recommenders interviewed for this story...Another trend that helps explain the lack of diversity is what Harvard Law School professor Andrew Crespo called “ideological sorting” in the clerk hiring process. Crespo, who in 2007 was elected the first Latino editor of Harvard Law Review, clerked for Breyer and Kagan. “The more liberal justices tend to hire a greater number of liberal-leaning clerks than the conservative justices, and vice versa,” Crespo said. “If the small number of African-American and Latino applicants are also disproportionately liberal, then there may be fewer clerkship slots for which they are realistically competitive candidates.”

With his stellar credentials, Andrew Manuel Crespo, 34, could have had a gilded entree to the elite worlds of finance, academia or government. He graduated from Harvard College magna cum laude. At Harvard Law School, he was the first-ever Latino president of the Harvard Law Review and he clerked for two Supreme Court justices. But when it came time to get a job, Crespo became a public defender in Washington, D.C. His first client was eight years old. The way his young clients and their families trusted him, Crespo remembered, was something that he never took for granted. “I was working in juvenile criminal court, and my clients were 12, 13, 16 years old,” Crespo said. “There is something very powerful about meeting people for the first time when they are literally behind bars. You are introducing yourself when they are at one of the most broken, vulnerable moments in their lives.”

Joe Arpaio might have been able to stay out of prison after President Trump pardoned him last month, but that doesn’t mean the controversial former Arizona sheriff has free rein to harass his critics. Arpaio, who had been convicted of contempt for ignoring a federal judge’s order to stop targeting undocumented immigrants, is threatening action against a Harvard Law School professor in a clear effort to use legal threats to deter opponents. The professor, Andrew Manuel Crespo, wrote a column in this newspaper earlier this month calling for the appointment of a special prosecutor to challenge the pardon on constitutional grounds. In Crespo’s view, Trump’s pardon may have been unconstitutional because it interfered with the judiciary’s ability to protect constitutional rights.