Martha Minow

An op-ed by Martha Minow and Aris Hadjipanteli ’23:Democrats and Republicans agree on almost nothing, not even what to call the incident a year ago at the Capitol. Was it an insurrection or a protest? But they do agree that the technology business is failing both its users and to the media industry from which it pulls so much of its content without paying for it. It’s time for Congress to turn this rare consensus into action by passing the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) to tackle some of the consequences of tech’s monopoly power. As of 2018, Google and Facebook together had nearly four times as much revenue as the entirety of the U.S. news media (TV, print, and digital). They have only grown tremendously since then. When Google users read a news story, 65 percent do not click through to the news publishers’ websites. Google thus disconnects news content from its sources and leaves the journalists without compensation.

Growing up in Providence, Rhode Island, Ahmed Sesay never had a class in civics. When he graduated from high school in 2019, he had to teach himself how to vote and pay his taxes. Now 20 years old, Mr. Sesay is part of a lawsuit being decided by a Boston-based court of appeals this month that argues that students have a constitutional right to an adequate civics education. ... “The insurrection was part of a larger pattern of people showing a lack of understanding of how our system works,” says Martha Minow, a legal scholar at Harvard Law School who filed an amicus brief in the case. She pointed to surveys showing that close to half of Americans can’t name the three branches of government and nearly a third could imagine supporting a military coup.

An op-ed by Martha Minow: While no task is more important to a society than educating each next generation, this task is central for a democracy. Self-government needs people equipped to govern — equipped with knowledge, motivation, and ability to pursue their own interests while also recognizing and caring about the rights and needs of others. The Supreme Court of the United States recognized this in the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. There, the highest court not only ended government-ordered racial segregation in schools but also enshrined education as the most important function of local and state governments and as “a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.” For too many students, that promise has not been realized and the federal courts have avoided recognition of a national, enforceable education right. That could change. Currently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit is A.C. v. McKee, a case brought by 14 Rhode Island students who seek to affirm the right to an education that includes at minimum introduction of knowledge, skills, experiences, and democratic values necessary for them to effectively exercise their constitutional rights to vote, to exercise free speech, to serve as jurors, and to participate in their democratic government.

The challenge in providing government assistance to ease the local news crisis is to find ways of helping those who really need it while keeping the bad actors out. Which is why Martha Minow said this week that she’s “hopeful” but “fearful” about a federal bill that would create tax credits to subsidize subscribers, advertisers and news organizations. “What I’m troubled about is: What’s local news, who defines it and how do we prevent the manipulation of this by multinational corporations?” she said. “That’s a problem, and I don’t know anyone who’s come up with an answer for that.”

This month saw the publication of the inaugural issue of The American Journal of Law and Equality, a project developed by three Harvard Law School professors in collaboration with MIT Press. The first issue features a variety of views from legal, academic and philosophical scholars, including its three editors and founders: 300th Anniversary University Professor Martha Minow; Michael R. Klein Professor of Law Randall L. Kennedy; and Robert Walmsley University Professor Cass R. Sunstein ‘78.

Martha Minow, the 300th Anniversary University Professor and former Dean of Students at Harvard Law School, has taught at the law school since 1981. Before teaching at Harvard, Minow clerked for Judge David Bazelon of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. She is an expert in human rights law and minority advocacy and has written numerous books and scholarly articles. Minow has also served on the Independent International Commission Kosovo, has received nine honorary degrees from schools around the world, and was appointed to the Legal Services Corporation by President Barack Obama in 2009. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan, her master’s degree in education from Harvard, and her law degree from Yale Law School. This interview was conducted in March 2021. It has been edited for length and clarity.