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For decades, Alan M. Dershowitz has led a frenetic life as author of dozens of books, legal counsel to a multitude of celebrities and ubiquitous TV commentator on myriad issues of the day. Known to many around the world for his brash style and high-profile cases, after 50 years, Dershowitz is now leaving the role he loves best: Harvard Law School teacher.

This summer, when Chelsea Manning (then known as Private Bradley Manning) was on trial for passing hundreds of thousands of documents obtained from military computers to WikiLeaks, Harvard Law Professor Yochai Benkler ’94 testified for the defense. Benkler’s work—including his 2011 case study of the legal wrangling related to WikiLeaks—has put him in the middle of the debate over the balance between civil liberties and security in a post-9/11 networked world.

Some recent faculty and clinical highlights—from research on anti-corruption efforts to conferences on financial regulation.

Shortly after graduating from HLS, David Satterthwaite Wertime ’07 and Rachel Lu ’07 launched Tea Leaf Nation, an e-magazine focusing on Chinese social media. The site had become a go-to destination for Western journalists, academics and decision-makers seeking insights into what average Chinese people are thinking.

just 24 years old, Maeve O’Rourke LL.M. ’10 went to the United Nations with a bold and unprecedented case against the Irish government. Appearing in Geneva before the Committee Against Torture in 2011, O’Rourke argued that Ireland had allowed the enslavement and forced labor of thousands of women throughout most of the 20th century. What she wanted, she told the committee, was for the government to acknowledge its complicity, to apologize and to pay reparations to the victims.

In 2007, Corey Stoughton ’02 began a long, serpentine journey through New York courts when she filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 20 criminal defendants claiming the state’s public defender system had failed them. If all goes as scheduled, Stoughton, a lawyer with the New York Civil Liberties Union, will be in an Albany courtroom in March, when the case finally goes to trial.

Offering humorous quips and reflecting on his always challenging role as chair and CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein ’78 discussed his company, regulation and the state of the economy, as part of a question-and-answer session with Dean Martha Minow during Reunions Weekend in October.

Arnold Mytelka ’61 can no longer remember just how he met Amanuel Andemicael LL.M. ’60. But, as Mytelka recalls now, something always stood out about the man who would become his lifelong friend.

In November, Norman Dorsen ’53 delivered the Harvard Law School Association of New Jersey’s 57th Vanderbilt Lecture. The topic was “Seeking Civil Liberties,” and that’s something the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union has done throughout his career.

The HLS Library collection includes books and documents that highlight some of the historical rules and regulations surrounding everything comestible.

The legacy of an unconventional thinker Joy Covey ’89, former CFO of Amazon.com, died in September in a bicycling accident. A lover of the outdoors…

An unwavering believer in international law Detlev Frederick Vagts ’51, a renowned international law scholar and an expert on transnational business problems and the laws…

Brown uses her own example—after leaving a law partnership upon the birth of her daughter, she is now a professor of business law—and those of many others, from a jewelry designer to a nurse to a rabbi, to show the possibilities for those who are unhappy with the practice of law. Such a change is not easy, but a lawyer’s skills can be reframed and refreshed, she says, adding that she has never met a former lawyer who regrets having left the profession.

Human trafficking. Cybercrime. Consumer protection. Public integrity. With broad constitutional and statutory jurisdiction, state attorneys general handle all these matters and more, often in high-impact litigation. Given this variety of opportunities it provides, Harvard Law School’s Attorney General Clinic, taught by former Maine AG James E. Tierney, has been one of the most popular in the clinical program since it was instituted in 2011. And now Tierney has expanded enrollment in the clinic by using winter term to send HLS students to work in AGs’ offices across the country.

In November, the Harvard Transactional Law Clinics (TLC) welcomed seven middle and high school students from Studio Heat to Harvard Law School as part…

The Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative, a nationally recognized collaboration between Harvard Law School and Massachusetts Advocates for Children (MAC), recently published the second volume of its landmark report “Helping Traumatized Children Learn” which offers a guide to a process for creating trauma-sensitive schools and a policy agenda to provide the support schools need to achieve that goal.

The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School has joined with Duke University, Stanford University and Oxford University Press to launch and publish a new peer-reviewed, open access, online journal in 2014: Journal of Law and the Biosciences (JLB).

A team of students from Harvard Law School was awarded the 2013 Skadden, Arps Trophy for winning first place at the Foreign Direct Investment International Arbitration Moot competition, which took place at the Frankfurt International Arbitration Center, in Germany, in October.

The Internet Monitor project at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University recently released its first annual report, “Internet Monitor 2013: Reflections on the Digital World.” The project evaluates, describes, and summarizes the means, mechanisms, and extent of Internet content controls and Internet activity around the world.

Ten Harvard Law School students will travel internationally in January to pursue law-related projects with the support of the Cravath International Fellowships, which provide funding to a select number of HLS students each year for academic work with an international, transnational, or comparative law focus.