Kenneth Mack

“The New Black: What Has Changed—and What Has Not—with Race in America,” edited by Professor Kenneth W. Mack ’91 and Guy-Uriel Charles (New Press). The volume presents essays that consider questions that look beyond the main focus of the civil rights era: to lessen inequality between black people and white people. The contributors, including HLS Professor Lani Guinier, write on topics ranging from group identity to anti-discrimination law to implicit racial biases, revealing often overlooked issues of race and justice in a supposed post-racial society.

On Oct. 23, Professor Kenneth Mack ‘91 delivered a lecture at the Supreme Court as part of the Supreme Court Historical Society’s 2013 Leon Silverman Lecture Series. This year’s theme was “Litigants in landmark Supreme Court cases of the 20th century.”

For a young law student arriving at Harvard Law School in the fall of 1988, Morton Horwitz [’67] seemed to encapsulate everything that I (no doubt, naively) expected to see in a Harvard professor. Among the students, he was widely known as “Mort the Tort,” for the passion that he brought to the class with which he was most widely identified.

This semester, Harvard Law School launched the Law and History program of study, which is headed by two faculty leaders: Professor Tomiko Brown-Nagin, who is also a Professor of History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Professor Kenneth Mack. In a Q&A, Brown-Nagin discusses the origins and goals of the new program of study as well as her own scholarship.

At stake in the next election is nothing less than a redefinition of America’s priorities, according to Harvard scholars taking part in a panel discussion at Harvard's Barker Center. The panel which explored law, history, and the 2012 election, included moderator Jill Lepore and panelists Alex Keyssar, Elizabeth Hinton, and HLS Professors Annette Gordon-Reed, Kenneth Mack, and Jed Shugerman

As two HLS graduates are vying to lead the United States, we asked six legal historians on the faculty to reflect on the connections between legal education and leadership.

For the first time in the history of U.S. presidential elections, both candidates of the major parties are graduates of Harvard Law School. Alumni remember the two presidential candidates as students.

In 1932, in a Philadelphia courtroom, a defense attorney representing a man accused of murder cross-examined a police officer. There was nothing unusual about this scene, except that the defense attorney, Raymond Pace Alexander ’23, was black, and the officer he was aggressively questioning was white. This scene is one of many dramatic moments in the new book by HLS Professor Kenneth Mack ’91, “Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer.”

"The Roots of Clarence Thomas' Black Burden," an op-ed by Harvard Law School Professor Kenneth Mack ’91, appeared in The Root on April 6. In it, Mack examines Thomas' role as an African American justice who, according to Mack, has "embraced the role of representative of his race"—50 years after William H. Hastie bore a similar "burden" as the first African American federal judge.

In his July 10 op-ed for George Mason University’s History News Network, Harvard Law School Professor Kenneth W. Mack ’91 assesses the presidency of Barack Obama ’91, comparing it to that of Abraham Lincoln in terms of each president’s respective policy decisions.

A Measure of History Professor Kenneth W. Mack ’91
The Boston Globe
March 25, 2010 “In recent weeks, the Obama administration … sought to mobilize supporters around…

Harvard Law School Professor Kenneth Mack ’91 received an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree from Harrisburg University of Science and Technology during a commencement ceremony on May 20 in Harrisburg, Pa. Mack also delivered the commencement address.

"Rethinking the Rand Paul controversy," an op-ed written by HLS Professor Kenneth Mack, appeared on the History News Network on May 31, 2010.

The symposium "The NAACP: Reflections on the First 100 Years," explored both the history of the NAACP, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2009, and its future. The Feb. 26 event was held at the library’s Thomas Jefferson Building in Washington, D.C.

Charles Hamilton Houston ’22 S.J.D. ’23, Raymond Pace Alexander ’23, Ben Davis ’29 and William Hastie ’30 S.J.D. ’33—all of these black civil rights attorneys graduated from Harvard Law School within a 10-year period.

Harvard Law School Professors Michael Klarman and Kenneth Mack ’91 both participated in the SCOTUS Blog’s commentary on Race and the Supreme Court. The Blog’s program is in celebration of Black History Month.

Some say the Clinton-Obama fight reflects a historical tension between blacks and women in the struggle for equality. A legal historian says the truth is not so simple—and far more interesting.

The Laws in Wartime Professor Jack Goldsmith
Slate Magazine, April 2 “We are surprisingly close to putting policy issues in the war on terrorism on a…

The following op-ed, Even at Harvard, Obama had a knack for bonding with diverse people, written by Harvard Law School Professor Kenneth Mack '91 , was published in the Harrisburg Patriot-News on February 17, 2008.

Glendon Wins Inaugural Bradley Prize
In October, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation awarded Professor Mary Ann Glendon the inaugural Bradley Prize. The $250,000 prize is…