Martha Minow

How can you defend a foreigner who came to the United States with the likely intent of causing harm to Americans? For attorney James B. Donovan, a 1940 graduate of Harvard Law School, the real question at the height of the Cold War was: How can you not?...In 1962, with the backing of President John F. Kennedy ’40, Donovan traveled to East Berlin to negotiate a swap: Abel for American spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers, imprisoned in the USSR. At Harvard Law School in the late 1930s, Donovan lived in Walter Hastings Hall, served as chair of the Law School yearbook, and studied under later Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. As an alumnus, he donated his legal fee from the Abel case to Harvard and two other universities. On Wednesday, the Law School’s Program on Negotiation will present a screening of Steven Spielberg’s “Bridge of Spies,” a film about the Abel-Powers negotiations in which Tom Hanks plays Donovan. Afterward, Dean Martha Minow will discuss the film with Professor Michael Wheeler of the Business School; Donovan’s granddaughter Beth Amorosi, president of AMO Communications LLC; and Donovan’s grandson John Amorosi, partner in the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell.

...[Merrick] Garland, now chief judge of the federal appeals court in Washington and President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, has deftly navigated the capital’s high-powered legal circles for decades...Today, he has a talent for letting others talk about themselves. Whether in a meeting or at a party, he leans slightly toward whoever is speaking, head nodding. “He’s absorbing what he hears and integrating it,” said Martha Minow, the dean at Harvard Law School.

An op-ed by Martha Minow and Deanell Tacha. Sometimes you don’t value what you have until you experience its absence close up. We each are deans of law schools; we each have seen, close up, nations without courts independent of political or partisan control. Plagued by conflict and distrust, countries without operating independent judiciaries struggle to earn local and international confidence. In the United States, we see how a fair, impartial, unbiased, and nonpolitical judiciary is central to American justice, permitting economic exchange and peaceful solutions to disagreements. This treasure depends upon the aspiration to maintain a government of laws, not men, focused on each case decided in light of the factual record and not political winds or personal preferences. And this treasure is in jeopardy at the highest level if the Senate refuses even to consider the president’s nominee to be the next associate justice of the Supreme Court.

Perhaps no one in the Boston area was watching as President Obama announced his Supreme Court nominee with more anticipation than the people at Harvard Law School...Martha Minow, dean of Harvard Law School, remembers him in his days in private practice in Washington and says Garland has served as her informal advisor. Minow joined WBUR’s All Things Considered to discuss the nomination.

President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, is expected to meet with several U.S. senators on Capitol Hill Thursday, where Republicans have promised to block any confirmation hearing. Garland, who is currently chief justice of the Circuit Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, has maintained a strong bond with Harvard — where he attended both undergrad and law school. If confirmed, Merrick Garland would be the 20th Harvard Law School graduate on the nation’s highest court. That number is twice as many as Yale, which has had 10 graduates on the court. Professor Richard Lazarus was in his office at Harvard Law School watching on his computer as the president of the United States nominated his friend, Garland, for a seat on the Supreme Court...“He was also a leader when he was here as a student,” said Lazarus...Martha Minow, dean of Harvard Law, said Garland “makes even hard conversations better.” “He is someone who cuts to the heart of the matter, but listens very hard to all points of view,” she continued. “And in addition, he has a great sense of humor.”

The Harvard Corporation on Monday approved a recommendation to retire the Harvard Law School shield, which came under fire amid student protests last fall because of its ties to the family of Isaac Royall Jr., a Massachusetts slaveholder who helped to establish the School through a bequest from his estate. In a letter to Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow, President Drew Faust and Corporation senior fellow William F. Lee said the School “should feel free to discontinue use of the shield.” With that response, the Harvard Corporation affirmed the recommendation of a committee appointed by Minow that the controversial shield be replaced. “If the Law School is to have an official symbol, it must closely represent the values of the Law School, which the current shield does not,” the committee wrote earlier this month. In an email to the HLS community Monday afternoon, Minow thanked the president and the Corporation, as well as the members of the committee whose recommendation the Corporation approved. She acknowledged that retiring the shield “will take some time, but the work has begun.”

For 80 years, Harvard Law School has been represented by a shield that features Harvard’s motto, Veritas (“truth”) and three sheaves of wheat. But it turns out that the traditional-looking logo isn’t so innocent: Its design was based on the coat of arms of a slaveholder known for treating his slaves with brutal cruelty. Now, reports Arun Rath for NPR, the Dean of Harvard Law School, Martha Minow, has endorsed changing the school's official shield—but questions about slavery’s legacy on campus remain. ... They seem to have prevailed: On March 4, Dean Martha Minow announced that she would endorse the recommendation from a committee of Harvard Law School faculty, students, alumni and staff assembled in November to revise the school’s shield. “Its association with slavery does not represent the values and aspirations of Harvard Law School...it has become a source of division rather than commonality in our community.”

The sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia on February 13, 2016 inflicted a great loss upon the Supreme Court of the United States, the federal judiciary, and on the American legal profession. ... Historians likely will conclude that Scalia’s appointment to the Supreme Court was not just President Reagan’s best judicial appointment, but one of the best judicial appointments of the twentieth century. As Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow stated upon his death: “Justice Scalia will be remembered as one of the most influential jurists in American history – he changed how the Court approaches statutory interpretation, and in countless areas introduced new ways of thinking about the Constitution and the role of the Court. … He was also one of the most effective writers in the history of the Court, and he had an exceptional gift for the memorable phrase.  He had a terrific sense of humor, which was accompanied by great personal warmth.”

A committee of Harvard Law School faculty, students, alumni, and staff established in November by Dean Martha Minow has recommended to the Harvard Corporation that the HLS shield — which is modeled on the family crest of an 18th century slaveholder — no longer be the official symbol of Harvard Law School.

The annual Gittler Prize, which honors contributions to racial, ethnic or religious relations, was awarded to Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow at Brandeis Thursday. “It’s…

“Nino was memorably smart, gregarious, funny, playful — a good pal — as well as plainly serious about his studies,” recalled Frank Michelman, the Robert Walmsley University Professor emeritus at Harvard, whose friendship with Scalia began in 1957 when they entered HLS together. The two shared an office while working on the Law Review. “We talked about everything that came along, and I had no inkling then of differences between us over matters legal or political that developed or became apparent later.

Harvard Law School affiliates remembered alumnus and Supreme Court Justice Antonin G. Scalia, who died Saturday at age 79, for his vibrant, fiery personality and his substantial contributions to United States law. “Justice Scalia will be remembered as one of the most influential jurists in American history,” Law School Dean Martha L. Minow wrote in a statement. ...  Law School professor Alan M. Dershowitz, who knew Scalia personally, often found himself squaring off against the justice. Dershowitz said. “I disagree with almost all of his opinions, but I found him to be a formidable intellectual adversary.”....Law professor Charles Fried, who has written extensively on Scalia’s judicial stances, wrote in an email, “I knew him in so many ways over so many years. I am very sad about this great man's death.”...Law professor Richard Lazarus penned an op-ed in the Harvard Law Record extolling Scalia’s contributions to the art of oral argument. In a Bloomberg View piece, columnist and Law professor Noah R. Feldman wrote, “Antonin Scalia will go down as one of the greatest justices in U.S. Supreme Court history -- and one of the worst.” Law Professor Laurence H. Tribe commented in Politico Magazine, “To say that Scalia will be missed is an understatement.”

Antonin Scalia once vowed to Alan Dershowitz that he would someday convince the Harvard scholar that the Supreme Court’s decision to effectively award the presidency to George W. Bush was correct. ... Law School Dean Martha Minow also described Scalia as “one of the most influential jurists in American history.” “He changed how the court approaches statutory interpretation and in countless areas introduced new ways of thinking about the Constitution and the role of the court that will remain important for years to come,” Minow said in a statement.