Martha Minow

Holger Spamann L.L.M. ’01 S.J.D. ’09, an expert in corporate governance and finance, will join the Harvard Law School faculty in July as an Assistant Professor of Law.

Richard J. Lazarus ’79, one of the nation’s foremost experts on environmental law and also a leading practitioner in the U.S. Supreme Court, will join the Harvard Law School faculty this summer as a tenured Professor of Law.

Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow, who serves on the board of directors for the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), was selected as co-chair of an LSC task force to develop additional resources to help low-income Americans facing serious civil legal problems.

In a relaxed and often-humorous conversation before a packed room of more than 750 of their fellow Harvard Law School alumni, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justices Anthony M. Kennedy ’61 and Elena Kagan ’86 on Saturday shared personal stories and offered a rare glimpse into the Court’s very private world, in a special reunion event moderated by HLS Dean Martha Minow.

In an Apr. 4 op-ed published in The Boston Globe’s Opinion Blog “The Angle,” Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow and co-author John Broderick (dean and president of the University of New Hampshire School of Law) address impending Congressional budget cuts that would force programs that provide pro bono legal aid to close their doors.

Following a vote of the Harvard Law School faculty, Gabriella Blum LL.M. '01 S.J.D. '03, a specialist in the laws of war and conflict resolution, has been promoted from assistant professor to professor of law—a tenured faculty position.

Jacob E. Gersen, a leading expert in administrative law, legislation and constitutional theory, will join the Harvard Law School faculty as a tenured Professor of Law this summer. He is currently on the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School, where he teaches environmental law, administrative law, legislation, executive branch design and torts.

Giving the biennial Vaughan Lecture at Harvard Law School, former federal appeals court judge Michael McConnell contemplated the question "What would Hamilton do?"

Harvard Law School Dean and Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law Martha L. Minow delivered the annual Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Distinguished Lecture on Women and the Law, sponsored by the New York City Bar Association, on February 7. The title of the talk was “Gender and the Law Stories: Learning from Longstanding Debates.”

During a Feb. 4 workshop called “Strategic Decision-Making in International Affairs,” sponsored by the Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs at the Center for Government and International Studies, the deans of Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School laid out some of the challenges facing the University in this era of increasing globalization. They were joined by Jorge Dominguez, the vice provost for international affairs, who offered the University’s viewpoint, David Hunter, dean for academic affairs at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Beth Simmons, director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

Harvard Law School has announced the appointments of U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner and Stephen Shay, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Tax Affairs in the U.S. Department of the Treasury, as Professors of Practice.

Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow was named in the Green Bag’s “Exemplary Legal Writing 2010” list for her book “In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of America's Educational Landmark” (Oxford University Press 2010). The Green Bag is a quarterly journal devoted to readable, concise and entertaining legal scholarship. Along with Minow, a number of HLS alums were also recognized for their legal writing.

Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow said she set out to write a book that acknowledged the limitations but celebrated the achievements of the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The result was “In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of America’s Educational Landmark," which was the cornerstone of a two-panel discussion at Harvard on Dec. 4.

In a November lecture marking his appointment as the Henry N. Ess III Professor at Harvard Law School, Professor John G. Palfrey ’01 called for a new legal information system "grounded in a set of open data."

On Dec. 3, an all-day conference marking the 40th anniversary of the Environmental Protection Agency's creation was held at Harvard Law School. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was the keynote speaker; also among the speakers and panelists was former Vice President Al Gore, who addressed the luncheon. The event was sponsored by the Law School, the Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard School of Public Health, and the Harvard University Center for the Environment.

Harvard Law School Professor David Wilkins ‘80 delivered a lecture, “Making Global Lawyers: Legal Education, Legal Paradox, and the Paradox of Professional Distinctiveness” on Oct. 19th to mark his appointment as the Lester Kissel Professor of Law.

As part of the Views from Washington series, Julius Genachowski,’91, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, came to Harvard Law School in November for a conversation with students and with Dean Martha Minow.

Beginning in 2013, Harvard Law School’s new Public Service Venture Fund will provide $1 million per year in grants to support new and recent graduates who will be working for public service employers, and also to support those who want to start their own organizations. With this commitment, the School is enhancing its focus on entrepreneurship in general and social entrepreneurship specifically—to encourage current students to pursue their own ideas and to prepare students who might want to apply for support from the fund and other sources of assistance for public service enterprises.

Carl M. Loeb University Professor Laurence H. Tribe, currently serving as the first Senior Counselor for Access to Justice in the Justice Department, will return to the Harvard Law School faculty in January and resume teaching in the 2011-12 academic year.