Martha Minow

Professor Emeritus Charles M. Haar ‘48, a pioneer in land-use law whose scholarship focused on laws and institutions of city planning, urban development and environmental issues, died on January 10, 2012. He was 91.

This spring, artists transformed the walls outside Milstein East in the Wasserstein Hall, Caspersen Student Center, Clinical Wing Building into a gallery of quotations about law and justice. The quotations span the period between 600 BCE and the present day.

As an HLS student in the early 1980s, James O’Neal dreamed of combining his passions for law and education to help at-risk kids in New York City. But times were grim for lawyers interested in public interest work. The Legal Services Corporation, the primary provider of legal aid to low-income people in the United States, was in dire straits after losing much of its federal funding, and there were few other opportunities—and little support—for public service jobs. For O’Neal and others like him, the prospects were dim.

On April 25th, Harvard Law School celebrated Justice John Paul Stevens’ 35 years of service on the Supreme Court with an event honoring his work and his contributions to the fields of environmental, energy, and natural resources law.

Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow has been elected to serve on the MacArthur Foundation Board of Directors. Minow, an expert on human rights and advocacy for disadvantaged populations, will join in September.

The American Law Institute has elected Robert H. Sitkoff, John L. Gray Professor of Law, to join its Council. The Council serves as the governing body of the ALI, the leading independent organization in the U.S. producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and otherwise improve the law.

In May, Harvard Law School Professor Mary Ann Glendon, who served as the former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, was appointed to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent, bipartisan federal body that is principally responsible for reviewing the facts and circumstances of violations of religious freedom internationally and making policy recommendations to the president, secretary of state, and Congress.

During Commencement on May 24, Dean Martha Minow congratulated the Harvard Law School Class of 2012 on all that they accomplished while at HLS. Minow urged graduates in their future careers not only to take problems apart and work to persuade others, but also to celebrate and extend their role as designers.

Last fall the Harvard Law School opened its newest building, 250,000 square feet aimed at bringing faculty and students closer. Its design, developed in close collaboration with HLS community residents and neighbors and realized by the architectural firm Robert A.M. Stern Architects, grew out of a strategic plan crafted in 2000, with the primary goal of improving the overall student experience.

Harvard Law School graduation festivities began on Class Day, Wednesday, May 23, and continued through Commencement Day on Thursday, May 24.

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University has selected Harvard Law School Assistant Professor I. Glenn Cohen '03 to be a Radcliffe Institute fellow for the 2012–2013 academic year. Cohen is among the 51 women and men who will pursue independent projects in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences within the rich, multidisciplinary community.

Harvard Law School’s (HLS) alumni reunion this past weekend reconnected friends from near and far in the School’s newest addition, the 250,000-square-foot Wasserstein Hall, Caspersen Student Center, Clinical Wing Building on the campus’ northwest corner.

A decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on whether Congress has the power to mandate individuals to have private insurance coverage isn’t expected until the end of June. But Georgetown University Law Center professor and libertarian legal theorist Randy Barnett ’77 is already claiming victory of sorts for his argument that the mandate is unconstitutional.

Harvard Law Professors David Wilkins ‘80 and Adrian Vermeule ’93 have been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Wilkins, the Lester Kissel Professor of Law, is director of the Program on the Legal Profession and vice dean for Global Initiatives on the Legal Profession. Vermeule is a leading scholar of administrative law and constitutional law and theory.

Susan Farbstein, a leading practitioner in the field of human rights, has been appointed assistant clinical professor of law and co-director of the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School.

Jonathan Zittrain, professor of law in the faculty of Law and the Kennedy School of Government and professor of computer science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, was featured as one of Harvard’s great teachers in a video series created to mark the 375th anniversary of the founding of Harvard College.

The presidency is more powerful, larger, and has more tools at its disposal than ever before, said Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith. But, he quickly added, that’s only half the story. The other half of the story—the forces that constrain presidential power—was the main topic during a March19 panel discussion of his new book “Power and Constraint: The Accountability Presidency after 9/11,” hosted by the Harvard Book Store at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square.

When the second wave of feminism swept the country in the early 1970s, a woman had never served on the United States Supreme Court. There had never been a woman Secretary of State. If there were any women attorneys general, CEOs, or law school deans, they were rarer than water vapor on the moon. Today, there’s nothing to hold women back. Right? Not so fast. That’s the message delivered by keynote speaker Nancy Gertner to the 300-plus attendees of the National Association of Women Judges’ (NAWJ) conference held at Harvard Law School in mid-March.