Charles Ogletree

Five weeks after a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed African-American teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo., ripples from the shooting and the ensuing days of angry public protests continue to radiate nationally. While the nightly standoffs and news coverage have ended, a panel convened by Charles J. Ogletree Jr., the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (HLS) and director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice, reflected on what Brown’s death, and the crisis that followed it, means for broad policy issues, including racial discrimination, political disenfranchisement, policing, and the criminal justice system. The panel met Wednesday night at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS).

In the wake of the conflict in Ferguson, Mo. this summer, police departments need to work even harder to build trust with their local communities, panelists at a John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum event said Wednesday. The event, entitled “Reflections on Ferguson,” was moderated by Law School professor Charles J. Ogletree and featured panelists who included a former police chief, a current mayor, a reverend, and a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist.

The parents and relatives of Michael Brown laid him to rest Monday as the country looked on, and calls for change continue. Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree and Slate’s Jamelle Bouie join to discuss.

Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree is calling for the arrest of the police officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, on Aug. 9. Appearing Sunday on Meet the Press, Ferguson commented after host Andrea Mitchell noted that police still have not released details of the shooting, including whether Brown was shot at close range and where he was shot…NBC News has this transcript. Ogletree agreed that information is critical. “And I think the first thing that needs to happen,” Ogletree continued, “we need to arrest Officer Wilson. He shot and killed a man, shot him multiple times. And he's walking free. No one knows anything about him, no one knows why he did it. We need to have that done, number one.” Second, he said, was the need for increased dialogue.

An unarmed black teenager shot dead on a Missouri street. A distraught community protests the killing at the hands of a white police officer. Violent clashes follow between protesters and police, who use tear gas, rubber bullets, and wooden pellets…“It’s an outrageous shooting,” said Charles Ogletree Jr., a Harvard Law School professor. “People have just had enough and are not yet over what happened with Trayvon Martin,” an unarmed black youth killed two years ago by a Florida crime watch volunteer. Ogletree, who is black, called for continued rallies but without the violence of Wednesday night, when protesters hurled Molotov cocktails at heavily armed police in Ferguson, Mo. “There needs to be a lot of noise — nonviolent but forceful — to make it known that we can’t afford to lose another black child,” Ogletree said.

“I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about breaking a glass ceiling,” says Michele Roberts, the new executive director of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA). She went ahead and shattered one anyway…“As a trial lawyer, you have to clarify minds, and change minds,” says Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree, who recruited Roberts to the public defender’s office. “She does the homework, and understands the arguments that need to be made. There won’t be a time when someone across the bargaining table doesn’t say, ‘Wow, I learned something.’”

An op-ed by Charles Ogletree. I have wondered countless times over the past 30 years whether I would live to see the end of the death penalty in the United States. I now know that day will come, and I believe that the current Supreme Court will be its architect.

Celebrated Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree convened a distinguished panel of speakers to mark the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.

Why the hell is Eric Holder still around? That’s a question many of Barack Obama’s political advisers have asked at various points throughout Holder’s tumultuous five years at the helm of the Justice Department...“He’s a race man,” says Charles Ogletree, a longtime friend of Holder’s who taught and mentored Obama and his wife, Michelle, as Harvard Law School students in the 1980s. “He’s gone farther and deeper into some issues of race than the White House would like, but I know he has the president’s well-wishes. It’s clear [Obama and Holder] believe in the same things.”

A group of leading American constitutional and criminal law scholars and practitioners wrote to US President Obama to urge that he commute American-Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard’s sentence to time served. The letter, dated June 20, was signed by seven professors from Harvard Law School, Obama’s alma mater: Alan M. Dershowitz, Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., Philip B. Heymann, Mary Ann Glendon, Gabriella Blum, Frank I. Michelman and Irwin Cotler (a Canadian law professor emeritus, former justice minister and attorney general of Canada, and a sometimes visiting professor at Harvard).

Obtaining a “free” voter identification card can typically cost an individual between $75 and $175. When legal fees are factored in, the cost can increase…

Just ahead of Anthony Brown [`92] in Rockville’s Memorial Day parade, his opponents in the Maryland gubernatorial primary strutted their stuff…Now, as he completes his apprenticeship under Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), Brown is far ahead in the polls, fully expecting to win the June 24 Democratic primary and the November general election. He would be Maryland’s first black governor and the first lieutenant governor to ascend to the top spot…“Anthony was always somebody who knew where he was going,” says Charles Ogletree, a Harvard law professor who knew Brown and predicts he will be the nation’s second black president. “His approach was always, ‘I’m going to be competitive wherever I can.’ ”

The cameras came on, and America stopped to watch. O.J. Simpson was in the back of a white Ford Bronco, former college and National Football League teammate Al Cowlings behind the wheel, and police cars were trailing slowly behind. Around 95 million viewers tuned in, reality playing out on jostling helicopter cameras, on handmade signs draped onto overpasses of Los Angeles freeways, Friday night programming interrupted on televisions across America. “White, black, immigrants who were from different races, women and men, rich and poor — and everyone was glued to the television,” said Charles Ogletree, a professor at Harvard Law School who directs the school’s Institute for Race and Justice.

A recent Sunday morning found Roxbury’s Marcella Park nearly empty save for Robert Lewis Jr., bat in hand, leading a handful of his young ballplayers in a light workout. “Head down! Keep your feet sturdy!” barked Lewis as he tossed pitches to Hugo Mateo, 17, a Madison Park High School junior from Everett who’s hoping to play for Lewis’s elite 17-and-under travel team this summer…“What you saw when you looked around that room — law enforcement officials and clergy, educators and athletes, black people and white — reflects the essence of what [Lewis] is doing,” Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree said later. “Now he’s using baseball, of all things, to open up opportunities for young men.”By locating his new program in the heart of Roxbury, Ogletree added, “He’s not only talking the talk, he’s walking the walk.”

Commencement speaker Charles Ogletree of Harvard Law School evoked the 1954 fight for the right to a public education led by Thurgood Marshall, grandson of a slave and later a Supreme Count Justice.

Claflin University awarded degrees to the largest class in the institution's history during its Commencement Convocation on Saturday...The ceremony's guest speaker was Dr. Charles Ogletree, from Harvard Law School, who urged graduates to remember those who came before them and helped lay the foundation of the road they have traveled.

In a week of many developments in the world of law, Harvard Law School faculty were online, in print, and on-the-air offering analyses and opinions.