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Like others in Harvard Law School’s LL.M. class of 2013, Maryna Kavaleuskaya practiced law abroad before coming to America for additional legal training. And, like many of her 187 classmates—most of them from overseas—she had to overcome obstacles along the way. But unlike most others, Kavaleuskaya will be unable to return to a normal life back home after she receives her Harvard degree.

With national attention focused on the obesity epidemic and the diabetes crisis—along with rapidly growing concerns about social justice and environmental problems related to the current food-production system—there may be no hotter topic in law schools right now than food law and policy. The wildly popular new Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, the first law school clinic of its kind in the world, is right at the center, with students working on a wide range of projects to make healthy food more accessible, help farmers’ markets overcome regulatory barriers so they can sell more of their products, guide states and local communities in creating food policy councils, and more.

Professor Benjamin I. Sachs is this year’s winner of the prestigious Albert M. Sacks-Paul A. Freund Award for Teaching Excellence, an honor bestowed each spring by the Harvard Law School graduating class. The award recognizes teaching ability, attentiveness to student concerns and general contributions to student life at the law school.

Isabel Lima, office manager at the HLS WilmerHale Legal Services Center in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, received the Suzanne L. Richardson Staff Appreciation Award during Class Day exercises on May 29. She was selected by the Class of 2013 for going above and beyond in assisting the many students who pass through the WilmerHale center, helping the organization to run effectively, as well as acting as a liaison to the many Spanish-speaking clients and neighbors in the community.

Harvard Law School graduation festivities began on Class Day, Wednesday, May 29, and continued through Commencement Day on Thursday, May 30.

A number of Harvard Law students received special awards during the 2013 Class Day exercises on May 29. The honored students were recognized for their outstanding leadership, citizenship, compassion and dedication to their studies and the profession.

Lena Silver ’13 is the winner of this year’s Andrew L. Kaufman Pro Bono Service Award, performing the highest number of pro bono service hours in the Class of 2013. During Silver’s time at Harvard Law School, she provided 2,270 hours of free legal services.

On May 14, several members of the Harvard Law School community came together aboard the U.S.S. Constitution as three Harvard Law School students swore oaths to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States" as part of their commission as officers in the United States Navy Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps.

The American Law and Economics Association announced at its annual meeting on May 17 that Professor Steven Shavell will be the 2014 recipient of the Ronald H. Coase Medal. Shavell is the Samuel R. Rosenthal Professor of Law and Economics and director of the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics and Business at Harvard Law School.

Author, lawyer and Emmy Award-winning legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin ’86 will serve as Class Day speaker on May 29 at Harvard Law School.

William Thaddeus Coleman Jr. ’43 will receive the 2013 Harvard Medal from the Harvard Alumni Association for his extraordinary service to the University. Coleman, who was recognized along with James V. Baker A.B. ’68, M.B.A. ’71 and Georgene Botyos Herschbach Ph.D. ’69, will receive the award on Commencement Day, May 30.

Graduating HLS students help build a new court mediation program to meet demand for protection from harassment.

In the May 21 edition of The New York Times’ ‘Room for Debate,’ Harvard Law School Professor Charles Fried considers the question of whether the Obama administration’s actions against journalists in leak inquiries has protected national security or violated the First Amendment.

This semester, Harvard Law School launched the Law and History program of study, which is headed by two faculty leaders: Professor Tomiko Brown-Nagin, who is also a Professor of History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Professor Kenneth Mack. In a Q&A, Brown-Nagin discusses the origins and goals of the new program of study as well as her own scholarship.

Fifty years after the Supreme Court determined in Gideon v. Wainwright that criminal defendants must be provided with counsel, scholars and practitioners from around the country grappled with continued limits on access to justice during an Harvard Law School conference in April titled “Toward a Civil Gideon: The Future of Legal Services.”

In April, Harvard Law School Professor Mark Tushnet, a specialist in constitutional law and theory, was interviewed by his colleague and former collaborator Vicki Jackson on the new book “Routledge Handbook of Constitutional Law” (Routledge 2012). Tushnet co-edited the book with Thomas Fleiner and Cheryl Saunders.

The Law School’s Class Day program was held on Wednesday, May 29, on Holmes Field, in front of Langdell Library. This year’s Class Day speaker, author and legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin reflected on his time at the law school. Professor Benjamin I. Sachs, who was selected by the class of 2012 to receive the Sacks-Freund Teaching Award, delivered remarks at the ceremony, as did Isabel Lima, Office Manager at WilmerHale Legal Services, who was the recipient of the Suzanne L. Richardson Staff Appreciation Award. Several students were recognized for their outstanding leadership, citizenship, compassion and dedication to their studies and the profession.

Harvard Law School Professor Jeannie Suk '02 received the Charles Fried Intellectual Diversity Award from the Harvard Federalist Society in April. The award is bestowed upon a faculty member who has furthered the cause of intellectual diversity and free and open debate at Harvard Law School, both inside and outside of the classroom, regardless of that professor's ideological leanings or favored theories of jurisprudence.

In March, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick ’82 nominated Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Institute clinical instructor Gloria Tan to a seat on the Massachusetts Juvenile Court. Tan came to CJI, which supervises third-year law students representing indigent criminal defendants in local district and juvenile courts, after serving as a public defender for the Committee for Public Counsel Services in Boston. When a spot opened up on CPCS's Youth Advocacy Project, Tan switched to working on juvenile cases and has spent her career doing so ever since. Tan was sworn in on May 3rd.