Martha Minow

An op-ed by Martha Minow and Michael McConnell. Lately, there has been a disturbing turn toward ill will and demonization when discussing tensions between religion and law in the United States. Many avidly watch who will “win” and who will “lose” in high-stakes conflicts over the place of religious views and practices in health care, marriage, commercial contracts, and public life. But the biggest losers are the entire nation if we descend into intolerance. We would abandon the remarkable American promise to welcome people of all religions and give up our model for the world on how to be both religiously vibrant and mutually respectful. Today’s struggles on behalf of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people mirror protracted struggles by Catholic, Mormon, Jewish, Muslim, and other religious groups to secure freedom and tolerance in schools, workplaces, and daily life, including marriage. All these issues are deeply felt, constitutive of identity, and difficult to change.

The popularity of an American legal education is dwindling in the face of disappointing job prospects for graduates. To rescue themselves from oblivion, some law schools are fashioning themselves after a more successful educational institution: business school. In April, New York Law school announced it would make room in its building for an offsite location for the University of Rochester's Simon Business School, making it easier for law students to take B-School classes. The same month, Harvard Business School announced it would offer incoming students an 11-week course in the fundamentals of business created by HBX, its online business training program. “Lawyers need to understand and use the tools and skills involved in growing and running a business,” said Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow in a statement on Harvard Business School’s website. “Law firms, businesses, and also public sector and nonprofit employers increasingly value these skills.”

Panelists raised concerns about the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. at Harvard Law School’s annual conference on law, religion, and health on Thursday...Law School Dean Martha L. Minow noted that the litigants in the case had given evidence that they would leave the U.S. if they lost...CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article miscontextualized a quote from Harvard Law School Dean Martha L. Minow. In fact, Minow noted that the litigants in the case had given evidence that they would leave the U.S. if they lost; she did not suggest that she could imagine herself leaving the country over her religious beliefs or that others should.

Panelists raised concerns about the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. at Harvard Law School’s annual conference on law, religion, and health on Thursday. ... Law School professor Charles Fried provided context for the issue Dionne raised, pointing to a different interpretation of the protection of religious freedom under the First Amendment, which he said was not always used to challenge laws. “It was assumed that the First Amendment had to do with beliefs and persecution of people for their beliefs,” Fried said. “[It] had nothing to do with granting exemption from what have come to be called laws of general applicability.” Law School Dean Martha L. Minow recognized the difficulty of this topic and empathized with the personal nature of religion in many people’s lives. In cases where individuals cannot find a way to reconcile this issue, Minow proposed an extreme solution. “There will be some issues where the values of this country will run in conflict with some people’s religious views, and if they can’t live with it they should leave,” she said. Minow herself could imagine choosing to leave the country over renouncing her religion, she said.

The Harvard Law School faculty has voted to increase the school's mandatory pro bono service requirement for students from 40 hours to 50 hours of service during the students' three years of law school.

Focusing on health and life sciences, cultural entrepreneurship, the food system, and innovation in sports, five student-led teams were named winners in the third annual Deans’ Challenges. Each of the four Deans’ Challenges awarded $55,000 to the winning teams and runners-up, for a total of $220,000...“I saw firsthand through our Food System Challenge this year how the challenge process ignites imagination, collaboration, and focused excellence, along with excitement and fun,” said Dean Martha Minow of Harvard Law School.

HBX Credential of Readiness (CORe)—the online business fundamentals program launched by Harvard Business School (HBS) last year to provide a strong foundation in the language and tools of business—will now be offered to entering students at Harvard Law School (HLS). Starting in June, CORe will be available on a first-come, first-served basis to applicants admitted to Harvard Law School’s Class of 2018 and to current students on a pilot basis. HLS will subsidize the $1,800 enrollment cost so that the program is available to its students for $250...“To assist clients or even to launch entrepreneurial ventures of their own, lawyers need to understand and use the tools and skills involved in growing and running a business,” said Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow. “We know from recent studies and surveys that law firms, businesses, and also public sector and non-profit employers increasingly value these skills. In the past several years we have added new curricular opportunities for students to develop business skills, and I am especially delighted that Harvard Business School’s innovative CORe program will now be available for Harvard Law School students.”

The relationship between Senator Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton, the Party’s most likely Presidential nominee, goes back to the second half of the Clinton Administration. Warren told me recently that the most dramatic policy fight of her life was one in which Bill and Hillary Clinton were intimately involved. She recalls it as the “ten-year war.” Between 1995 and 2005, Warren, a professor who had established herself as one of the country’s foremost experts on bankruptcy law, managed to turn an arcane issue of financial regulation into a major political issue...In 1987, Warren moved on to a job at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, teaching contract law and bankruptcy; in 1995, she went to Harvard. “She broke the news about what the actual practices and effects of the bankruptcy law were,” Martha Minow, the dean of Harvard Law School, told me. “That put her on the map and made a lot of people interested.”

HBX Credential of Readiness HLS-HBS_Shields(CORe)—the online business fundamentals program launched by Harvard Business School last year to provide a strong foundation in the language and tools of business—will now be offered to entering students at Harvard Law School.

An op-ed by Martha Minow and Sharon Browne. Although our economy is improving, the experiences of many truly poor people in this country remain very challenging. The legal rights of low-income Americans struggling with the many burdens of poverty must be protected, and that has been essential to the mission of the Legal Services Corporation since it was authorized in 1974 as one of the last acts of the Nixon Administration. Legal rights are not self-enforcing. The availability of legal advice and counsel can make all the difference to low-income Americans who are fighting to avert unlawful foreclosure, escape domestic violence, secure veterans’ benefits, or address many other legal challenges that go to the heart of their security and well-being.

Former Massachusetts Governor and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney spoke about the importance of experience in the private sector, the 2016 presidential campaign, and his time as a student at Harvard Law School during a public question and answer session at the Law School Friday. Law School Dean Martha L. Minow joined Romney on stage and questioned him on topics ranging from modern-day political polarization to finding a work-life balance. She later handed the microphone over to members of the crowd in a packed Milstein East Hall. Romney graduated from the Law School in 1975 and Harvard Business School in 1974.

Campaigning for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, Mitt Romney, J.D./M.B.A. ’75, decided he would spend one day every week doing someone else’s job. He cooked hot dogs at Fenway Park, worked at a day care center, took a turn on a paving crew. One day he hung off the back of a garbage truck making its rounds through the city of Boston. “It was really educational,” Romney said, recalling the experience for a Harvard Law School audience on Friday. “We’d pull up to a corner and there’d be people waiting to cross the street, and I’m not more than two feet from these people. And they don’t see you. You’re invisible. If you’re on a garbage truck, you’re an invisible person. “I thought, wow — we don’t see each other as we ought to in society.” The former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential nominee, visiting Harvard Law School (HLS) for a Q&A session hosted by Dean Martha Minow, encouraged a renewed civility in politics and society, emphasizing the difference one person can make through serving others.