Nancy Gertner

The audience could sense where the story was going almost as soon as Bryan Stevenson began telling it. Two black children in the barely desegregated South, hurtling with giddy, unguarded elation toward their first swim in a pool that until recently had been available only to whites... Nancy Gertner, a retired U.S. judge and senior lecturer at Harvard Law School, deplored the mandatory sentencing rules that reduce defendants to “the quantity of drugs, their criminal record, and nothing else.” ... Friendly professor of law Carol Steiker looked back at the past few hundred years of American death penalty laws.

For the past 30 years, lawyer and social activist Bryan Stevenson ’85 has battled through the courts, defending wrongly convicted death-row prisoners and children prosecuted as adults, while condemning mass incarceration, excessive sentences, and racial bias in the criminal justice system...Delivering the 2017 Tanner Lecture on Human Values on Wednesday, Stevenson announced a planned memorial to honor more than 4,000 victims of lynching in the U.S. and a museum that traces the country’s history of racial inequality from enslavement to mass incarceration...Afterward, Homi K. Bhabha, director of the Humanities Center, led a panel discussion on the issues of mass incarceration, racial injustice, and the death penalty. Among the panelists were Nancy Gertner, senior lecturer on law at the Law School and a retired U.S. district judge; Tommie Shelby, Caldwell Titcomb Professor in the Department of African and African American Studies and the Department of Philosophy, and Carol S. Steiker, Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law at the Law School. Reflecting on her years on the bench, Gertner criticized mandatory minimum sentencing, a legal trend that was a product of the war on drugs that led to the surge in the number of African-Americans in the federal prison population...Steiker spoke about the history of the death penalty in the United States and talked about its racial basis. The United States is the only Western democracy that uses capital punishment, she said, and is a leader internationally in doing so.

Debra Katz, founding partner of Katz, Marshall & Banks, and Nancy Gertner, a professor at Harvard University Law School, discuss the legal fallout from the recent wave of sexual harassment accusations against powerful men in politics, media and entertainment. They speak with Bloomberg’s Greg Stohr on Bloomberg Radio’s "Bloomberg Law."

...In 2011, following an investigation by NPR and the Center for Public Integrity on campus assault, the Obama administration decided to act. The Office for Civil Rights sent a “dear colleague letter” reminding colleges that sexual harassment and assault create an environment so hostile that women’s access to education is jeopardized, violating their civil rights...“O.C.R.’s rationale” was that preponderance of evidence “was the standard for suits alleging civil rights violations like sexual harassment,” wrote Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge and current Harvard law professor, in The American Prospect in 2015. “True enough, except for the fact that civil trials at which this standard is implemented follow months if not years of discovery.” She continued: “It is the worst of both worlds, the lowest standard of proof coupled with the least protective procedures.”

An op-ed by Nancy Gertner, Vincent Schiraldi and Bruce Western. The Massachusetts Senate recently passed watershed legislation that, among other things, retroactively reduces mandatory sentences and incorporates 18-year-olds into the state’s juvenile court justice system. As researchers, educators, and former criminal justice practitioners, we think the legislation is on solid ground. Nine of the state’s 11 district attorneys have expressed concern that curbing mandatory sentences and raising the juvenile court age would be a “return to the old and discredited ways of the past.” It is just the opposite.

An op-ed by Nancy Gertner. Governor Charlie Baker’s proposal to increase penalties for those whose illegal drug distribution causes an overdose death sounds good — at first glance. Increasing sentences usually does. The approach also sounded good in the 1980s and 1990s, when a crack cocaine epidemic led Congress to approve of mandatory minimum sentences that doubled or tripled drug penalties — 10- or 20-year sentences, even life imprisonment. But the move did little to stem drug-related crimes or addiction.

An interview with Nancy Gertner. More fall out against Harvey Weinstein on Monday — as Hollywood heavyweights come out against the six-time Oscar winning producer. They're reacting to last week's searing New York Times story that Weinstein allegedly sexually harassed women for years, and for years kept it all quiet through at least eight legal settlements.

If President Trump spoke with Paul Manafort while his former campaign manager was being wiretapped, experts say there's no quick legal route to disclose the existence or content of intercepted calls. Public disclosure isn't guaranteed because two reported wiretap orders targeting Manafort were issued under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, rather than via the ordinary criminal wiretap statute...Former federal judge Nancy Gertner, a senior lecturer at Harvard Law School, said "the transcript will not be released unless there is an indictment and a public trial."

When Education Secretary Betsy DeVos last week announced plans to revise the nation’s guidelines on campus sexual assault, the predictable din of outrage drowned out the applause from some unlikely corners of college campuses: Many liberals actually approve...“Betsy DeVos and I don’t have many overlapping normative and political views,” said Janet Halley, a Harvard Law School professor and expert on sexual harassment who supports the change. “But I’m a human being, and I’m entitled to say what I think.”...Also among them were four feminist professors who wrote a letter to the Department of Education last month beseeching DeVos’s department for a revision of the rule. Definitions of sexual wrongdoing are now far too broad, they wrote...The authors — Halley, Elizabeth Bartholet, Nancy Gertner, and Jeannie Suk Gersen — have all researched, taught, and written about sexual assault and feminist legal reform for years. Halley, who has represented both accusers and the accused in campus cases, said her colleagues maintain universities should have robust programs against sexual assault.

...As four Harvard law professors— Jeannie Suk Gersen, Janet Halley, Elizabeth Bartholet and Nancy Gertner —argued in a recent article, a fair process requires “neutral decisionmakers who are independent of the school’s [federal regulatory] compliance interest, and independent decisionmakers providing a check on arbitrary and unlawful decisions.” The four had been among more than two dozen Harvard law professors to express concerns about the Obama administration’s—and Harvard’s—handling of Title IX.

Four Harvard Law School academics have asked the U.S. Department of Education to revisit policies regarding campus sexual misconduct investigations...The Harvard memo (PDF) was signed by Janet E. Halley, Elizabeth D. Bartholet, and Jeannie Suk Gersen, all of whom are Harvard law professors, and Nancy Gertner, a lecturer at the school who is also a retired federal judge. They submitted the memo to the Department of Education Aug. 21. “Definitions of sexual wrongdoing on college campuses are now seriously overbroad. They go way beyond accepted legal definitions of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. They often include sexual conduct that is merely unwelcome, even if it does not create a hostile environment, even if the person accused had no way of knowing it was unwanted, and even if the accuser’s sense that it was unwelcome arose after the encounter,” the memo reads.

Earlier this week, President Trump took a question about the timing of his pardon of former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Trump said, "In the middle of a hurricane, even though it was a Friday evening, I assumed the ratings would be far higher than they would be normally. You know the hurricane was just starting. And I put it out that I had pardoned, as we say, Sheriff Joe.” Hurricane or not, it was a deeply controversial pardon. We dissect the legal questions surrounding it. Guest: Nancy Gertner,

Four Harvard Law School faculty members are pushing for the Department of Education to revise Obama-era Title IX standards governing how universities respond to sexual harassment and assault on campus. In a memo submitted to the Department of Education last week, Law School professors Janet E. Halley, Elizabeth D. Bartholet ’62, and Jeannie Suk Gersen and lecturer Nancy Gertner called on the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights to reevaluate the standards put forth in the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter.

An op-ed by Nancy Gertner. However distasteful, the fact is that President Trump has the legal authority to pardon Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona for his criminal contempt conviction, in accordance with the US Supreme Court’s 1925 ruling in Ex Parte Grossman. Grossman was ordered to stop selling liquor during Prohibition. He ignored the order and was jailed until a presidential pardon led to his release. The district court that had issued the original contempt order persisted and rearrested Grossman, finding that contempt is an offense to the “dignity and authority” of the federal courts. To allow the executive to intervene in the contempt process, the court held, would undermine judicial independence.

President Donald Trump hinted during a speech in Arizona on Tuesday that he plans to pardon former Sheriff Joe Arpaio over his federal contempt-of-court conviction, but the president said he wouldn't take such an action immediately in order to avoid "controversy." Trump, speaking at a rally in Phoenix, suggested that relief was on the way for the 85-year-old ex-lawman known for his tough treatment of illegal immigrants...“It’s ‘in-your-face, court,’” said Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge who now teaches at Harvard Law School. “This is the kind of charge that goes to the integrity of the process…. Part of the symbol here is of basically not paying respect to an order of a federal judge.” “It’s not unlawful, but it says something about his own contempt for the system,” she added.

An op-ed by Nancy Gertner. President Trump is notoriously obsessed with leaks in his administration — so much so that Attorney General Jeff Sessions made leak investigation a Department of Justice priority. But one man’s leak is another man’s whistleblower. And, with a few exceptions, like the leaking of classified information, whistleblowing is often encouraged, even legally protected.

A clash between America's most notorious labor union and the reality TV show Top Chef is coming to a head in federal court this week in a bizarre extortion trial that centers on allegations of nasty slurs and slashed tires. Federal prosecutors say four men from the Boston-based Teamsters Local 25 tried to extort staff on Bravo's wildly popular cooking series—including its star Padma Lakshmi...What remains to be seen is how jurors make sense of an ugly dispute between a local political force and a pop-culture institution—and the nuances of the labor laws in play. As Nancy Gertner, a former federal prosecutor and Harvard Law professor, put it, "The line between protected union activity and unprotected union activity is a fine line, and this case will be about that."

Michelle Carter, the Massachusetts woman convicted in June of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging a close friend, through text messages and phone calls, to commit suicide, was sentenced on Thursday to 15 months in a county jail. Ms. Carter was 17 in 2014 when the friend, Conrad Roy III, who was 18, poisoned himself with carbon monoxide in his truck...Some legal experts said the sentence seemed fair. “It recognizes this is an aberrant crime, a juvenile crime, a crime of social media, of the internet, and of the unique dramas of teenage boys and girls,” said Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge and a professor at Harvard Law School. “It deserves punishment, but you have to put it in context.”

An op-ed by Nancy Gertner. The playbook was familiar. First came the over-the-top campaign attacks on sanctuary cities. Then the rushed executive order warning sanctuary cities that they will not get any federal money, at any time, for anything, unless they cooperate with federal immigration policies. Since the threat was so out of line with the Constitution, so inconsistent with the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches, let alone principles of federalism, it was immediately challenged. The Constitution vests spending powers in the Congress, and the Congress alone. It’s Congress that appropriates the money and sets conditions on its use. The president cannot just make up new rules for appropriated money.

A group of prominent lawyers is behind a new lawsuit filed Wednesday on behalf of Democratic donors against President Donald Trump and Roger Stone, who has advised Trump in an informal capacity. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, was organized by the nonprofit United to Protect Democracy. In addition to the Protect Democracy team, other lawyers include Keker, Van Nest & Peters partner Steven Hirsch, former federal judge and Harvard professor Nancy Gertner and Richard Primus, a professor at the University of Michigan law school. All three are working on the case pro bono.