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Daphna Renan

  • Daphna Renan

    Daphna Renan: Presidential Power, National Security

    January 29, 2019

    "I think criminal procedure is a very fundamental part of the constitutional law of democracy,” says Assistant Professor Daphna Renan, who writes about structural constitutional law, administrative law, and the Fourth Amendment. “When can the government use force against its own citizens? When can it search individuals, communities and communications? How do emergent technologies challenge existing legal frameworks? For anyone who cares about power and how law constrains and enables it, there are no more pressing questions than these.”

  • Trump’s threat to end FEMA aid to California: All heart and soul

    January 10, 2019

    The breakage of “norms” by President Trump has become a dominant theme of his critics. What a norm actually is when it comes to the presidency is now the subject of considerable academic research. But as the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said of pornography, we know it when we see it, and we saw it Wednesday. ... That norm, now broken, could be considered a subcategory of a presidential norm lay people might just call “thinking.” We know that when we see it, too. A more elevated version came from Daphna Renan, who in the Harvard Law Review identified the norm of the “deliberative presidency.” “The deliberative-presidency norm requires a considered, fact-informed judgment,” she wrote, a collective effort in which experts are consulted and meetings held before a president acts. In other words, a president is supposed to know what he’s talking about.

  • 25 Harvard Law Profs Sign NYT Op-Ed Demanding Senate Reject Kavanaugh

    October 4, 2018

    Roughly two dozen Harvard Law School professors have signed a New York Times editorial arguing that the United States Senate should not confirm Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Harvard affiliates — including former Law School Dean Martha L. Minow and Laurence Tribe — joined more than 1,000 law professors across the country in signing the editorial, published online Wednesday. The professors wrote that Kavanaugh displayed a lack of “impartiality and judicial temperament requisite to sit on the highest court of our land” in the heated testimony he gave during a nationally televised hearing held Sept. 27 in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee....As of late Wednesday, the letter had been signed by the following: Sabi Ardalan, Christopher T. Bavitz, Elizabeth Bartholet, Christine Desan, Susan H. Farbstein, Nancy Gertner, Robert Greenwald, Michael Gregory, Janet Halley, Jon Hanson, Adriaan Lanni, Bruce H. Mann, Frank Michelman, Martha Minow, Robert H. Mnookin, Intisar Rabb, Daphna Renan, David L. Shapiro, Joseph William Singer, Carol S. Steiker, Matthew C. Stephenson, Laurence Tribe, Lucie White, Alex Whiting, Jonathan Zittrain

  • HLS200 finale celebrates clinics

    HLS 200 finale celebrates clinics

    May 2, 2018

    On April 20, HLS in the Community wrapped up a year-long celebration of Harvard Law School's bicentennial by highlighting the contributions made by HLS clinics and students practice organizations (SPOs).

  • HLS in the Community

    Preview: “HLS in the Community” will celebrate clinics and bicentennial finale

    April 9, 2018

    On April 20, Harvard Law School will host the third and final major event in its year-long program celebrating 200 years of HLS. HLS in the Community will convene alumni, faculty, students, and staff to explore the extraordinary reach and impact of Harvard lawyers.

  • Andrew Crespo, Cass Sunstein, and Adrian Vermeule, Ralph S. Tyler, Jr. sitting at table with microphones

    Trump and the law

    November 28, 2016

    At a recent event, several HLS professors discussed the scope and limits of a president’s executive and judicial powers, the role the courts may play, and the ways in which Trump could reshape the authority and operation of an array of government agencies.

  • Aya Saed named a 2016 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow

    April 13, 2016

    Harvard Law student Aya Saed ’17 was among 30 recipients selected to receive the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, the premier graduate school fellowship for immigrants and children of immigrants.