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Ronald Sullivan

  • Mayors get personal over coffee and eggs

    March 13, 2023

    For Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, the galvanizing event was a family health emergency. For Cambridge Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui, it was picking up from failure and…

  • Venezuelan migrants await transportation at a ferry terminal.

    Sullivan, Criminal Justice Institute part of suit against Florida’s migrant relocation program

    December 9, 2022

    A lawsuit joined by Ronald Sullivan Jr. and Harvard Law School's Criminal Justice Institute alleges that a plan by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to move asylum seekers to Massachusetts violated the Constitution.

  • Harvard lawyer suing Ron DeSantis over Martha’s Vineyard migrants said briefs could also be used in Texas

    December 7, 2022

    A coalition of immigrants’ rights groups filed a lawsuit against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his Department of Transportation secretary in response to their sending…

  • Wooden gavel on conference table in a law firm.

    ‘In pursuit of an atmosphere in which ideas can be followed without fear that you’ll be punished’

    December 6, 2022

    Professors Jeannie Suk Gersen and Janet Halley lead the Academic Freedom Alliance, an organization that protects the rights of faculty to speak or publish without fear of sanction or punishment.

  • Groups sue Florida officials over migrant relocation program

    December 5, 2022

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other officials are being sued in federal court by immigrant rights groups who challenge the constitutionality of the state’s migrant…

  • SPLC, Harvard Law Sue DeSantis Over Migrant Relocation

    December 2, 2022

    Three immigration rights groups, represented by Southern Poverty Law Center and a Harvard Law School organization, sued Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in federal court Thursday,…

  • What will one-party rule mean for Massachusetts?

    November 14, 2022

    Massachusetts Democrats couldn’t have asked for a better week. The party recaptured the governorship, swept the statewide offices, maintained its dominance of the state Legislature,…

  • Musk’s celebrity lawyer now plays key role in Twitter overhaul

    November 7, 2022

    A year ago, attorney Alex Spiro helped rapper Jay-Z win a lawsuit over perfume royalties. This week, he was part of a team that fired…

  • Headshot of Callie House

    Justice for the ‘foremother of the reparations movement’

    September 21, 2022

    Advocates at Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School lead an effort to obtain a presidential posthumous pardon for Callie House, a formerly enslaved woman and early civil rights hero.

  • Obama tells Harvard team basketball was about more than him

    September 12, 2022

    The Washington Post – Former President Barack Obama told the Harvard men’s basketball team on Friday that the sport taught him “it wasn’t just about…

  • ‘Deeply Problematic’: Experts Question Judge’s Intervention in Trump Inquiry

    September 6, 2022

    A federal judge’s extraordinary decision on Monday to interject in the criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s hoarding of sensitive government documents at…

  • International coalition files United Nations appeal over reports of racism at border of Ukraine

    March 3, 2022

    An international coalition of activists and human rights attorneys on Wednesday announced they filed an appeal to the United Nations on behalf of African refugees facing racial discrimination in Ukraine and Poland. The filing follows numerous reports from Black refugees who said they faced segregation, racism and abuse as they tried to flee for safety from war-torn Ukraine to Poland. ... Ronald Sullivan, of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School, called it "offensive" and said the media is comparing pain and suffering of different communities. "It is grotesquely ahistorical as well. Europe certainly cannot claim that it has been immune from the pillages of war," Sullivan said Wednesday. "It cannot stand as it's somehow superior in that regard to the Middle East and parts of Africa. So, they're [the media] not only getting the history wrong, but they're perpetrating a very ugly form of racial stereotyping."

  • In a flawed system, a Black prosecutor wonders if she’s pursuing justice or being complicit

    February 4, 2022

    An op-ed by Ronald S. Sullivan Jr.: When Laura Coates was a federal prosecutor, she learned that the victim in a car theft case she was prosecuting had an outstanding immigration warrant. He had illegally crossed the border at 16, but in the 20 years since then had worked, started a family and lived a law-abiding life. Coates was instructed by her superiors to have the witness come in as planned for the trial, but, instead of testifying, he would be arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

  • ‘So few people have faith’: What do verdicts in Kenosha, Charlottesville and Brunswick say about America’s criminal justice system?

    December 1, 2021

    What do the results of these three different cases say about the American criminal justice system and the country's so-called “racial reckoning”? Ron Sullivan, Harvard Law professor and director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard and Renée Graham, Boston Globe columnist and associate editor, joined Jim Braude on Greater Boston to discuss.

  • Harvard Law Professor Ron Sullivan On The Kyle Rittenhouse Trial

    November 23, 2021

    Friday afternoon, the jury in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse came back to deliver the final verdict, not guilty. WORT Assistant News Director Nate Wegehaupt is joined by Harvard Law Professor Ron Sullivan to discuss the verdict, and the parallels to other cases here in Wisconsin.

  • Rittenhouse verdict flies in the face of legal standards for self-defense

    November 22, 2021

    An op-ed by Ronald S. Sullivan, Jesse Climenko Clinical Professor of Law: In a two-week trial that reignited debate over self-defense laws across the nation, a Wisconsin jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse for shooting three people, two fatally, during a racial justice protest in Kenosha. ... As a professor of criminal law, I teach my students that the law of self-defense in America proceeds from an important concept: Human life is sacred, and the law will justify the taking of human life only in narrowly defined circumstances. The law of self-defense holds that a person who is not the aggressor is justified in using deadly force against an adversary when he reasonably believes that he is in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury. This is the standard that every state uses to define self-defense.

  • Mark Gillespie

    Faith and fellowship

    May 18, 2021

    Growing up with a father in the Air Force, Mark Gillespie ’21 moved around a lot as a child. But far from this being a negative, Gillespie says it gave him the sense that life’s possibilities were endless.

  • Zachary Weinstein

    A brilliant second act

    May 11, 2021

    Zachary Weinstein ’21 didn’t always want to be a lawyer. In fact, for most of his life, he was more likely to be found in front of a camera than in front of a judge.