Jeannie Suk Gersen

At first glance, the navy spiral-bound tome known as the Bluebook seems rather unremarkable. But beyond its covers, the book details thousands of obscure and specific legal citation rules that require more than a thousand hours to compile. The massive, 582-page legal citation manual inspires both devotion and dread in its users—law students, scholars, and lawyers—who require its guidance for their professional work....Harvard Law Professor Jeannie C. Suk said the Harvard Law Review would not have grounds to claim copyright infringement unless BabyBlue copies specific examples used in the Bluebook. “It seems to me that trying to use copyright to protect the system of citation rules themselves is not promising, particularly given the already widespread adoption of those rules in the legal profession and by courts,” Suk wrote in an email.

In the latest development of a heated publicity battle, filmmakers of a popular documentary that criticizes Harvard Law School’s handling of a sexual assault case penned an op-ed for the Huffington Post sharply rebuking Law professors who have challenged the film...Law professors who have publicly challenged the film similarly took issue with the premise and title of the filmmakers’ op-ed. Janet E. Halley, one of the 19 professors who criticized the documentary in November, denied that she and the other professors were retaliating against or targeting Willingham and said the professors’ statements were critical of the film itself, not any individual student. “The reason I participated in the Law professors’ press release is not that a student came forward and complained about sexual assault, nor that she complained in the criminal process,” Halley said. “It is that ‘The Hunting Ground’ has profoundly misled the public about the ensuing processes which came out decisively against those claims.” Jeannie C. Suk, another professor who signed the public release, said her criticism of the film stemmed from concerns about fair sexual assault grievance processes, not retaliating against individual complainants. “There is this idea that we have to stand by and support or be silent about a film that does a very poor job of moving forward fair and effective policy or else be considered deniers of the problem,” Suk said. “That’s just a proposition that I don’t accept.”

...The Stanford study is just one example of the many factors that make it difficult to quantify the scope of the sexual violence problem on college campuses. While awareness of the issue rose to the forefront in 2015, the hard work of assessing the true scale of the problem has posed challenges for those looking to prescribe a cure. ...“I don’t see any evidence that campuses are doing a good job or will do a good job at handling these cases,” Jeannie Suk, a professor of criminal law at Harvard University, says. “If you treat sexual crimes differently than other serious crimes, it sends a message that these crimes are not as important. Just as we would for any other serious felony, we should involve the police.” While Suk does not support eliminating universities’ power to investigate and punish sex crimes, she believes campus adjudication systems are significantly less effective than the criminal justice system.

As the law professor prepared for her class on sexual assault, she opened her emails to find a strange request: could she give assurances that the content of the class would not be included in the end-of-year exam, her students asked? They were concerned there might be victims of sexual assault among their classmates, they said. Anyone in that position could be traumatised at being confronted with such material in the exam hall. Across the United States, lecturers have received similar messages from students demanding that modules of academic study – ranging from legal topics to well-known works of literature – be scrubbed from exams, and sometimes from the syllabus altogether. Jeannie Suk, a professor at Harvard Law School, which numbers President Barack Obama among its many notable alumni, cited an example where a student had asked a colleague “not to use the word 'violate’ – as in 'does this conduct violate the law’ – because the term might trigger distress”.

...Colleges and universities across the country are required by federal law to investigate and adjudicate whenever a student makes allegations of sexual misconduct. The procedures vary widely. Most schools hold disciplinary hearings, often made up of teachers and students, some with little training, acting as prosecutor, judge and jury..."The schools, upon receipt of the Dear Colleague letter and looking at its requirements, weren't completely sure of exactly how to comply, and so in many cases they did more than they necessarily needed to do," says Jeannie Suk, a Harvard Law professor and outspoken critic of the campus tribunals. "They kind of in a sense over-complied. Now, they bent over backwards, and then that's when they put in place -- kind of in a hurry -- these procedures that now don't respect fair process."

Amid a growing controversy involving questions of accuracy and fairness, the makers of The Hunting Ground, a documentary indictment of campus sexual assaults, are defending the film, which is set to air on CNN on Nov. 22...On Nov. 19, law professors at Harvard, where another of the film’s documented incidents took place, attacked the filmmakers’ accuracy in a widely publicized joint letter that focused on the victim’s inebriation and the absence of violence in the assault. The professors wrote in a letter that was posted on The Harvard Law Record website that the film gave the impression that the accused student "like others accused in the stories featured in the film, is guilty of sexual assault by force and the use of drugs on his alleged victims, and that he, like the others accused, is a repeat sexual predator.” The professors, including prominent faculty members Jeannie C. Suk, Laurence Tribe and Randall Kennedy, noted that there have been "extensive investigations and proceedings" examining the case against the student -- at Harvard Law School, in a criminal case before the grand jury, and in criminal trial before a jury.

An op-ed by Jeannie Suk. I often informally ask my students, at Harvard Law School, what their most important ideals are and how they hope to fulfill them in their lives and careers. In the past several years, I’ve been touched to hear a significant plurality of students name a priority that I didn’t hear much when I began teaching, nearly a decade ago: their close relationships with their parents... Particularly in the way things have unfolded at Yale, students’ social-justice activism has been expressed, in part, as the need for care from authority figures. When they experience the hurt that motivates them to political action, they’re deeply disappointed with parental surrogates for not responding adequately or quickly enough to support and nurture them.

The veracity of one of this year’s most talked about documentaries, “The Hunting Ground,” has been attacked by 19 Harvard Law School professors, who say the film’s portrayal of rape on college campus is distorted, specifically when it comes to their school’s handling of one particular case...“The documentary has created an important conversation about campus sexual assault,” said Diane L. Rosenfeld, a Harvard law lecturer who also appears in the film and did not sign the letter. “We need to be rolling up our sleeves and really figuring out what kind of preventative education programs to develop which create a culture of sexual respect.” But in their letter, the law professors, who include Laurence H. Tribe, Randall L. Kennedy and Jeannie C. Suk, said the film “provides a seriously false picture both of the general sexual assault phenomenon at universities and of our student,” specifically a male Harvard law student whose case is included in “The Hunting Ground.”...“This is a young human being whose life has been mauled by this process for years, and now he has to walk around campus with people saying, ‘Oh, you’re a repeat sexual offender,’ and he’s not,” said Janet Halley, one of the letter’s authors. “It’s not a documentary. It’s propaganda."

Nineteen Harvard Law professors have written a letter condemning "The Hunting Ground," a film purporting to be a documentary about campus sexual assault. The film has been getting some Oscar buzz, and CNN is preparing to air the program next week. In a press package for the film, CNN singled out a story in the film about a sexual assault accusation at Harvard. The press packet named the accused student, even though he was not identified in the film. The 19 professors want to be sure viewers are aware that the film is highly misleading...The 19 professors include feminist icon Nancy Gertner; outspoken critics of campus rape hysteria Elizabeth Bartholet, Janet Halley and Jeannie Suk; as well as President Obama's former mentor Charles Ogletree.

An op-ed by Jeannie Suk. An eighteen-year-old male student’s sexual encounter with a fifteen-year-old female student at St. Paul’s School has led to his being sentenced to one year in jail, followed by five years of probation, and registered for life as a sex offender. Both feel their lives are destroyed. Our fascination with the secret sex rites of the New Hampshire prep school put Owen Labrie’s bespectacled face in all the papers. But the deeper pity and fear the case inspired revolved around a basic question we increasingly project onto the bodies of our young: What makes sex rape?...We are in the midst of a significant cultural shift, in which we are redescribing sex that we vehemently dislike as rape, and sexual attitudes that we strongly disapprove of as examples of rape culture.

In response to students’ calls for more coursework on the topic of rape law, next semester Yale Law School will introduce a new seminar dedicated exclusively to the study of gender-based violence. Jeannie Suk, a Harvard law professor who teaches criminal law and procedure, said she has seen an increase in interest in rape law coursework in the last few years, adding that she is not aware of any criminal law professor at Harvard who does not include rape law in his or her course. Students seem very interested in learning the criminal laws governing rape, and particularly how they differ from the policies about campus sexual misconduct to which they are consistently exposed, Suk said.

Students accused of violating Harvard’s sexual harassment policy may turn to attorneys as their personal advisers, and if they successfully appeal investigators’ decision in their case, a body of faculty and senior administrators will rehear it, according to a new document clarifying Harvard’s handling of complaints. On Monday, following heavy scrutiny, administrators with Harvard’s central Title IX office released a 10-page Frequently Asked Questions document offering more details about the University’s policy and procedures governing its response to sexual assault on campus...According to Jeannie C. Suk, a Law School professor and vocal critic of Harvard’s central Title IX framework, representatives from Harvard’s Office of the General Counsel in fall 2014 had indicated plans to release an FAQ document about the policies. Officials also consulted Law faculty members when crafting them, according to Karvonides. The guidance document released Monday seems responsive to many of Suk and her colleagues’ criticisms. “These FAQs show that the University can listen to reason on this sensitive and controversial topic,” said Janet E. Halley, a Law School professor who has led an effort at Harvard and across the country challenging what she argues is the federal government’s overzealous approach to Title IX compliance...“I think they have actually addressed the worst problems on the substantive policy side,” said Elizabeth Bartholet, one of 28 Law School faculty members who signed a letter slamming the policy last year in The Boston Globe. In particular, Bartholet praised the document’s clarification of the difference between “incapacitation” and “intoxication,” as well as its affirmation of protections for academic freedom.

Can colleges provide due process for defendants accused of rape, and adequate justice for the victims? Or do these cases belong in the criminal courts? An Intelligence Squared debate featuring law professors from Harvard, Yale, CUNY and NYU. Motion: Courts, not campuses, should decide sexual assault cases. FOR: Jed Rubenfeld of Yale and Jeannie Suk of Harvard. AGAINST: Michelle Anderson of CUNY and Stephen Schulholfer of NYU.

Harvard Law School professor Jeannie C. Suk argued at a forum in New York this week that the criminal court system, not campus resources, should investigate and adjudicate cases of alleged sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape. At the forum—hosted by Intelligence Squared Debates and titled “Courts, Not Campuses, Should Decide Sexual Assault Cases”—Suk and Yale Law School professor Jeb Rubenfeld argued in favor of the motion..."What campuses are doing under pressure from the Department of Education is hurting the cause of gender equality,” Suk argued during an opening statement. “Campus tribunals use procedures that lack basic fairness and often reach inaccurate outcomes.”

This is a strange moment for sex in America. We’ve detached it from pregnancy, matrimony and, in some circles, romance. At least, we no longer assume that intercourse signals the start of a relationship. But the more casual sex becomes, the more we demand that our institutions and government police the line between what’s consensual and what isn’t. And we wonder how to define rape. Is it a violent assault or a violation of personal autonomy? Is a person guilty of sexual misconduct if he fails to get a clear “yes” through every step of seduction and consummation?...“If there’s no social consensus about what the lines are,” says Nancy Gertner, a senior lecturer at Harvard Law School and a retired judge, then affirmative consent “has no business being in the criminal law.”...“It’s an unworkable standard,” says the Harvard law professor Jeannie C. Suk. “It’s only workable if we assume it’s not going to be enforced, by and large.”

Laws regarding rape should be taught in criminal law classes at Harvard Law School despite its potential to trigger psychological trauma, two Law professors argued at a discussion on the topic Wednesday afternoon. Law professor Jeannie C. Suk, who has taught criminal law and procedure at the Law School, and Andrew M. Crespo ’05, who served as Harvard Law Review’s first Latino president and will teach criminal law for the first time next fall, both stressed the pedagogical value of including rape law in a curriculum. Suk spoke out on the issue when she penned a New Yorker article called “The Trouble with Teaching Rape Law" in December.

On the other side of the country, Harvard law professor Jeannie Suk has taken to the New Yorker to express concern over her perception that students are increasingly likely to object when classroom discussion turns to rape. "Individual students often ask teachers not to include the law of rape on exams for fear that the material would cause them to perform less well," she writes. "One teacher I know was recently asked by a student not to use the word 'violate' in class—as in 'Does this conduct violate the law?'—because the word was triggering."

An op-ed by Jeannie Suk. Imagine a medical student who is training to be a surgeon but who fears that he’ll become distressed if he sees or handles blood. What should his instructors do? Criminal-law teachers face a similar question with law students who are afraid to study rape law...But my experience at Harvard over the past couple of years tells me that the environment for teaching rape law and other subjects involving gender and violence is changing. Students seem more anxious about classroom discussion, and about approaching the law of sexual violence in particular, than they have ever been in my eight years as a law professor.