Richard Fallon

Harvard undergraduates bid their final farewell to summer Wednesday as they crowded classrooms and lecture halls on the College’s first day of classes. Though some classes consistently popular with students, like Economics 10a: “Principles of Economics” and Statistics 104: “Introduction to Quantitative Methods for Economics,” received expectedly high turnouts, others not as well known also drew large numbers...Richard H. Fallon, a Law School professor who teaches Government 1510, said the large turnout in his course may be due to increased interest in the U.S. Constitution. “If you want to speculate, we seem to be in a political climate in which we lurch from one looming constitutional crisis to the next,” Fallon said.

Bill Cohen was certain of one thing in June of 1974: The voters of Maine would not send him back to Congress. The 33-year-old Bangor mayor had been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives less than two years earlier but had done something unthinkable to many of his Republican colleagues and constituents: He’d voted to hold a president of his own party accountable to congressional investigators, opening a path that could lead to his impeachment...Harvard University law professor Richard Fallon was then Cohen’s press secretary. “I was 22 years old and had not even graduated from college yet,” he recalls. “It’s striking to me in retrospect how hugely junior his staff was, with no lawyers on it. My sense was that he just took those transcripts and went off by himself and pored over them so he could be as prepared as he could be for every set of questioning. He wrote all his Watergate speeches, and he handled almost all the national media stuff himself. My role was pretty much limited to cranking out press releases for the Maine media.”

Martin Shkreli—the price-hiking former pharmaceutical executive once dubbed the “most hated man in America”—hadn’t even started speaking when someone pulled the fire alarm...Quickly, Shkreli’s visit brought questions of free speech—what it means, and what, if anything, justifies its limitation—to the forefront of campus discourse. While some students argued that Shkreli should be free to state his views on campus, others said his appearance was dangerous and provocative without substance...Richard H. Fallon, a professor at Harvard Law School who teaches a course on the First Amendment, said that he thinks the University has dedicated itself to the protection of free speech. “On the whole, Harvard is absolutely an institution committed to freedom of speech,” Fallon said.

President Trump's new executive order sets up a court battle that could create a long-lasting precedent for presidential power — and not just on immigration law. Trump rewrote his travel ban order Monday, hoping to fortify it against court challenges that have argued that it discriminates against Muslims. A key question now is: If the first order was discriminatory in its intent, can a rewrite of the order make that intent go away? "This case about the president's authority will undoubtedly be tremendously consequential for the scope of executive authority going forward," said Richard Fallon, a Harvard law professor.

Harvard Law professors rank highest nationwide in the judicial impact of their legal scholarship, according to a new study examining citations of law review articles by U.S. high courts, but no women scholars across the country placed in the top 25. The study ranked the top 25 law professors according to the number of judicial citations their scholarly works receive, and Harvard Law School professors Richard H. Fallon, Cass R. Sunstein ’75, and John F. Manning ’82 claimed the top three spots...Fallon described the challenge law professors face in trying to bridge two groups—“practicing lawyers and judges” and “more theoretically minded professors and students”—whose interests often diverge. “I would like to think that we at Harvard Law School do a good job at keeping a foot successfully in both camps.”...Manning, who wrote in an email that he believes that judicial citations are not the most meaningful measure of scholarly impact, thinks that women should already rank higher. “By any reasonable measure of quality of legal scholarship (which citation counts capture only very imperfectly), there are certainly women who belong in the top 25,” he wrote.

Chief Justice John Roberts may not think much of legal scholarship coming out of the academy these days, but judges (or at least their clerks) do read law reviews. That much is apparent in a new study gauging the judicial impact of articles published in peer-reviewed and student-edited law journals. ...Below is the paper’s ranking of professors by judicial citations. The top three all come from Harvard law school: constitutional scholars Richard Fallon and Cass Sunstein and administrative law professor John Manning. UCLA professor and Washington Post legal blogger Eugene Volokh and Yale professor Akhil Amar follow right below them.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the Supreme Court’s most ardent protector of abortion rights, outspoken enough about their importance to become an icon to young feminists and a source of outrage among her detractors...."Although she cares deeply about abortion rights, I would guess that she may have had less of an impact in this area than she might have wished," said Richard Fallon, a Harvard law professor who studies the court.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the Supreme Court’s most ardent protector of abortion rights, outspoken enough about their importance to become an icon to young feminists and a source of outrage among her detractors. With her valedictory on the court undetermined but within sight, Ginsburg, 82, may have only one more chance to leave a mark on reproductive rights. It comes in the most consequential abortion case during her time on the court...“Although she cares deeply about abortion rights, I would guess that she may have had less of an impact in this area than she might have wished,” said Richard Fallon, a Harvard law professor who studies the court.

In the wake of the shooting in San Bernardino, California, prominent conservative politicians have again squashed momentum to step up gun regulation, using the Second Amendment to make their case for maintaining the status quo....Mic spoke with several top constitutional lawyers who reject outright the notion that the Second Amendment prohibits increased limitations on access to guns. Instead, they argue that the Constitution actually allows for a number of gun regulations which have been proposed in Congress, including universal background checks and bans on assault weapons..."The right to bear arms was thought to ensure well-regulated state militias," Harvard constitutional law professor Richard J. Fallon told Mic. "Regulation of firearms was permissible as long as it did not interfere with state militias."...Other constitutional lawyers go even further, saying that although conservatives may not want to admit it, Heller actually paved the way for more gun control restrictions. "I believe 'assault weapons' are indeed what the court had in mind when it wrote in Heller about 'dangerous and unusual weapons," Harvard Law professor and renowned legal scholar Laurence Tribe told Mic. "I believe military-style assault weapons will never be protected by the court in the name of the Second Amendment."

Following the Supreme Court’s landmark decision Friday that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage, several Harvard Law School professors said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who authored the majority opinion, played an extraordinary role in advancing the cause. “The majority opinion by Justice Kennedy was a triumph of reason and passion alike,” Law School professor and former Supreme Court clerk Laurence H. Tribe ’62 wrote in an email. ... Law School professor Michael J. Klarman wrote that Friday’s decision “confirms the extraordinary influence” of Kennedy, adding that he believes Kennedy is “the most powerful justice in history.” ... Law School professor Richard H. Fallon agreed that people opposed to same-sex marriage may be angry about the verdict, they are unlikely to act politically, given a shift in public support for same-sex marriage in recent years.  

Last week’s oral arguments in King v. Burwell suggest that the United States Supreme Court will uphold the Affordable Care Act, according to several Harvard Law School professors...“I would say for people who hoped that the Court would permit the subsidies to be paid, it was a very encouraging oral argument,” said Richard H. Fallon, a law school professor...In particular, professors said Kennedy’s line of questioning suggests that he could vote to uphold the ACA. Einer R. Elhauge, a professor at the Law School, said it seemed “very likely” that Kennedy would vote to uphold the law as it exists now, providing the required fifth vote...Noah R. Feldman ’92, another professor at the Law School, also identified Kennedy as a potential vote in favor of the Obama Administration. “The clear news was that Justice Kennedy is thinking seriously about a problem with the challengers’ interpretation,” he said...For his part, University Professor Laurence H. Tribe ’62 predicted a 6-3 decision in favor of upholding the ACA.

Following a Supreme Court decision last Friday to hear arguments on the issue of same-sex marriage, several Harvard Law School professors predict that the Court will grant a historic constitutional right to same-sex marriage nationwide, but they say a more moderate outcome remains a possibility...“I would guess that the best reading of the tea leaves is that there will be five votes upholding a right to gay marriage,” Richard H. Fallon, a Law School professor, said. He along with Charles Fried and Michael J. Klarman, also Law School professors, identified Justice Anthony Kennedy as the potential “swing vote.”...Law School professor and former Supreme Court clerk Laurence H. Tribe ’62 echoed the prediction in an email, writing that the he thinks the Court will “hold that the U.S. Constitution requires universal marriage equality.”...Mark V. Tushnet ’67, a Law School professor and former Supreme Court clerk, said that the addition of the second question allows the Court to “deal with the issue comprehensively, no matter the which way the first question came out.”

The Supreme Court’s surprising move to pass on deciding whether state prohibitions on same-sex marriage violate the U.S. Constitution may reflect two things about the justices: a natural inclination for incremental steps and a worry on the part of conservatives that the battle — for now — appears lost...“I’m astonished,” said Richard Fallon, a Harvard law professor who is a student of the court. Neither side of the court’s ideological split has enough motive to insist that the issue be taken up now, he believes. “There are some justices who aren’t in any hurry to take this, and four who are worried they are going to lose,” Fallon said.

Just three weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Massachusetts law that created a 35-foot buffer zone around clinics that perform abortions, lawmakers there are rushing through a replacement. The new bill, which they hope to pass before the legislative session ends in two weeks, would give police more power to disperse unruly protesters…Harvard Law professor Richard Fallon says that in spirit, at least, Massachusetts has done what the court directed. “What’s innovative about this is that it’s a buffer zone triggered by bad conduct, and it’s a narrower buffer zone,” he says. “But then the questions will be whether this is narrow enough.”

Following this week’s Supreme Court ruling that some businesses can refuse to offer contraceptive coverage to employees for religious reasons, a prominent antiabortion group used the case as an argument against Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas and other Democrats seeking reelection...Harvard Law School professor Richard Fallon said the high court rarely has had a major impact on off-year elections. But “if we’re in a new era of politics” in which the base plays an increasingly important role, he said, “it’s more possible that it would matter.”