Martha Minow

When can the law be used as a tool for reconciliation and repair instead of punishment? That’s the central question of Harvard Law Professor Martha Minow’s “When Should Law Forgive?” which explores how entities and communities in the United States and abroad utilize truth commissions, reparations, and debt forgiveness—alternatives that fall under the mantle of what’s known as restorative justice—to address wrongs and create a better future. The idea of forgiveness and reconciliation as an alternative to vengeance is hardly new, but the recent focus on racial injustice and the school-to-prison pipeline is breathing new life into the restorative justice movement. We recently caught up with Minow to find out more about restorative justice and the inroads it is making...You have been writing about law and forgiveness for more than a decade. How did you get interested in the topic? "I started from a different direction. I wrote a book published in 1998 on legal responses to mass atrocities and called it, 'Between Vengeance and Forgiveness,' because I came to see prosecutions, truth commissions and reparations as efforts to use law and other social instruments to help society steer a path between vengeance—which seemed to me terrible—and forgiveness—which seems to me beyond the capacity of most human beings, including me. As I worked on that, there were many interesting reactions. I kept hearing over and over again, 'We need a truth and reconciliation commission in our school or community.' That really led me to think more about it. And I had many people say, 'Why can’t law itself forgive?' It was the result of being in conversations with a lot of people."

The late innings of Donald Trump’s four-year campaign in the White House come to look stranger than the big-league baseball season—both of which are in the deep shadow of the pandemic (13 St. Louis Cardinals tested positive this week). It’s the president who has to answer for a thousand COVID deaths a week in midsummer U.S.; China has next to none. Another president might wilt at the breaking of his boom economy, or the prosecution coming from Manhattan on charges of bank and tax fraud in the Trump organization. But this man surges, Trump-style: he’s all for U.S. military shock troops to quell local protests that he’s provoked; he tweets his preference that the election ninety days away be cancelled. What we know about our presidential race 90 days from the finish, perhaps all anyone knows, is that a wounded Donald Trump will not go quietly, if he goes at all, if he does not invoke emergency powers to cancel the election. The thought this hour was—and still is—to draw out the astute Russian-and-American diagnostician Masha Gessen, a resistance figure in two countries and author of a new book titled Surviving Autocracy. But then the plot thickened, particularly around the mayhem in Oregon after federal shock-troops had landed, over the objections of state governor, city mayor, and a militant wall of moms. A grave but lonely warning turned up in a New York Times guest-opinion piece. It was written by the sometime Colorado senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart, who joined this week’s conversation from his cabin a few mountains away from Denver. Martha Minow, a professor at Harvard Law School, also joins.

Our justice system is flawed and inequitable, says Harvard law professor Martha Minow. She calls for a reset to emphasize accountability, apology, and service, rather than punitive punishment. Martha Minow is a professor at Harvard Law School, where she has been teaching since 1981. Previously, she served as the Dean of the Law School between 2009 and 2017. She is an expert in human rights and advocacy for members of racial and religious minorities, women, children, and persons with disabilities. She also writes and teaches about privatization, military justice, and ethnic and religious conflict. Minow is the author of several books. Her most recent title is When Should Law Forgive? Minow received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan, her master's degree in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and her JD from Yale Law School.

Members of the Harvard Law School faculty published an open letter to students and Harvard affiliates Monday criticizing President Donald J. Trump for calling for a military response to ongoing protests against police brutality. The letter received signatures from 160 faculty members, including former Law School Dean Martha L. Minow and former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha J. Power. It was reopened for signatures on June 2 after requests from additional Law School teaching faculty and law librarians. The authors of the letter denounced a tweet posted by Trump on May 29 which included the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” in reference to nationwide protests following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. They argue the president’s language encourages violence by private citizens. “By legitimating lawless action by public officials, the President’s tweet invites other individuals to take similarly destructive action,” the letter reads. The White House press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Law School professor Christine A. Desan, who worked on drafting the letter, said Trump’s tweet signified a commitment to using violence against citizens involved in the protest. She said she finds the message problematic since Trump speaks as the Commander in Chief of the Army. “We don't under our Constitution live in a society where even if somebody is stealing something they get shot,” she said. “To have him pledge to use excessive state violence against people indiscriminately is really unlawful — deeply unlawful.”

An op-ed by Martha Minow:  Why have four federal prosecutors withdrawn from the case they successfully pursued against Roger Stone, and why does it matter? The four were “career lawyers” at the U.S. Department of Justice; they pursued criminal charges against Roger Stone, a friend and advisor of President Donald Trump, and their case produced a conviction on seven counts, including witness tampering and lying to investigators following Stone’s work for  Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Pursuing usual procedures, they requested a sentence of seven to nine years, which ordinarily would then be left to the judge for a decision. But then, President Trump — apparently in response to strong lobbying through the media and perhaps behind closed doors — took to Twitter and called the situation “a miscarriage of justice.” His tweet actually said “cannot allow this miscarriage of justice.” Leaders at the Department of Justice submitted a revised request for a lower sentence — and the White House maintained it had nothing to do with the change...Without public confidence in the integrity of investigations and prosecutions, respect for the criminal process, convictions and the rules themselves can crumble.

The holidays can be emotionally taxing for many people, but especially so for Sarah Montana. It’s been more than a decade since her brother and mother were murdered in her childhood home in Dale City, VA...Montana, who was 21 at the time of the murders, says she’s forgiven Pinckney. She hasn’t said it to his face — he’s serving a life sentence in a Virginia prison with no possibility of parole — but she’s sent him a letter...Forgiveness has never been less fashionable, particularly in this era of social media, when people score points for being nasty to each other. “Forgiveness often requires proximity,” says Martha Minow, a Harvard law professor and author of the recently released book “When Should Law Forgive?” The lack of eye contact in digital media, along with the disinhibition effect, makes it easier to choose rage over forgiving. “It takes time and patience to forgive someone,” she says. “You have to actually listen and hear the apology and decide if it’s trustworthy. You can’t do that online.” Montana agrees that it’s more difficult to forgive in the culture of fear that’s only encouraged online.

America incarcerates people at a higher rate than any other nation in the world. In "When Should Law Forgive?," 300th Anniversary University Professor and former Harvard Law School dean Martha Minow analyzes the tools of forgiveness that are already built into our criminal justice system, and how they could be better utilized to create a more restorative society. On Boston Public Radio on Thursday, Minow said forgiveness in the context of law means "letting go of justified grievances" to focus less on revenge and more on repairing harm. "The focus is forward-looking rather than retrospective," she said. "The focus is actually restoring some sense of peace and developing some norms within the community where people actually participate, not just one-on-one, but as a collective on how do we prevent conflict and how do we actually build a stronger community."

Harvard Law School Professor and former Dean Martha Minow has taught generations of lawyers – including former President Obama – about the power of the law and how a sentence can best match a crime. She sits down with Michel to discuss how the American legal system, whose rate of incarceration is the highest in the world, could use a little compassion.

President Lawrence S. Bacow emailed the community on November 21 to announce an “initiative on Harvard and the legacy of slavery,” backed by an initial $5 million in funding and overseen by a faculty committee led by Radcliffe Institute dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Paul professor of constitutional law and professor of history. ... Joining Brown-Nagin and Beckert on the presidential committee are: Annette Gordon-Reed, Warren professor of American legal history and professor of history; ... Martha Minow, 300thAnniversary University Professor (former Law School dean);