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This past January, three students from Harvard Law School’s Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program traveled to Chile to investigate the Ministry of Justice’s neighborhood multi-door courthouse pilot program.

In an online forum, Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk engaged in a debate with Ohio State University Professor Rene Stulz regarding the role executive compensations played in the financial crisis.

The dispute over raw milk has become one of the most heated debates in the food law community over the last several years—proponents and opponents alike have even staged protests at the White House. Raw milk is currently illegal in 22 states. On Feb. 16, the Harvard Food and Law Society staged a debate on the issue at Harvard Law School.

On Feb. 15, Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection at a hearing entitled “Pay for Performance: Incentive Compensation at Large Financial Institutions.”

Harvard Law School Professor William Alford ’77 recently appeared on the radio program ‘The Takeaway’ to discuss the future of U.S.-China relations, specifically with regard to trade and Chinese intellectual property law, which Alford describes as “a work in progress.”

Since Matthew Schoenfeld ’12 became president of the Harvard Association of Law and Business last year, it has attracted an impressive array of alumni mentors for students interested in business-related careers. This year, he launched an initiative to raise funds to mentor another group—abused children. This January, Schoenfeld arranged for a partnership between the HALB and the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts, to raise money for children in need of mentorship due to abusive situations and child welfare intervention.

On Feb. 1, the Harvard Law School Federalist Society sponsored a debate on the philosophical and legal issues surrounding the field of embryonic research. The event, “Embryo Ethics and the Law,” featured Christopher Tollefsen, a philosophy professor at the University of South Carolina, and HLS Assistant Professor Glenn Cohen, co-director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.

Ralph Nader ’58 and Bruce Fein ’72 visited Harvard Law School for a talk sponsored by the HLS Forum and the Harvard Law Record. At the event, “America's Lawless Empire: The Constitutional Crimes of Bush and Obama,” both men discussed what they called lawless, violent practices by the White House and its agencies that have become institutionalized by both political parties.

On Feb. 2, in a panel discussion at Harvard Law School titled “Are Law Schools in Crisis? The New York Times Editorial and its Discontents,” three law professors addressed questions brought up by two pieces that appeared recently in the Times claiming that law schools are in a state of “crisis.”

Nancy Gertner, HLS professor of practice and former judge of the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts, was counsel of record in an amicus brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in Dorsey v. U.S. and Corey Hill v. U.S. The Court’s decision will determine whether the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which redressed some of the inequities in the sentencing of defendants in crack-cocaine cases, applies to defendants who were sentenced after the law was enacted, but whose crimes were committed beforehand.

On February 3, the Harvard Women’s Law Association held its 6th annual conference. This year’s conference, entitled “Mind the Gap: Achieving Actual Parity,” was an open forum about achieving equality in the courtroom, workplace, and community. Kamala Harris, Attorney General of California, delivered the keynote address. 

In a replica of a high-level White House negotiation session, teams of students in a new advanced negotiation workshop at Harvard Law School offered advice on how to handle Guantanamo detainees. Although the negotiation wasn’t real, for the students the stakes were still high: One team was later selected by fellow students to travel to Washington, D.C., to make a presentation on Guantanamo to U.S. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich.

Whether owners of limited liability companies should be subject to personal liability has been the subject of much controversy lately, in the U.S. and around the world. On Jan. 25, Bruno Salama, spoke to an HLS audience on the topic in the context of his research project and book “The End of Limited Liability in Brazil” tracing the status of corporate limited liability and veil piercing in Brazil. A professor of law at the Fundação Getulio Vargas in Sao Paulo, Salama was joined by HLS Professors Reinier Kraakman and Mark Roe ’75 at an event organized by the Harvard Law School Brazilian Studies Association.

Deans representing law schools in China, Brazil, Canada, and France gathered at Harvard Law School on Friday to discuss the pressures facing law schools to reform curricula in response to globalization.

The Harvard Law Review has elected Conor Tochilin ’13 as its 126th president. Tochilin succeeds Mitchell Reich ’12.

A new study produced by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, in partnership with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Give Foundation, examines a new cohort of charitable givers—those who make donations via text message from their cellphones.

The celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day at Harvard Law School on Monday, Jan. 23 included a panel moderated by Harvard Law School Clinical Professor Ronald Sullivan ’94, and featuring Harvard Medical School Professor Allen Counter and Preston Williams, a theology professor at Harvard Divinity School. Students from across the University, including students from the Medical School, the Divinity School, the Kennedy School, the Business School, and Harvard College attended the celebration.

HLS Professor Charles Fried was counsel of record in an amicus brief filed on Jan. 13 with the Supreme Court on behalf of 104 health law professors supporting the constitutionality of the insurance mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which will be challenged before the Supreme Court in Department of Health and Human Services v. State of Florida in March.

Robert Anderson, Harvard Law Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor of Law, was named to serve on a national commission that will evaluate the management and administration of nearly $4 billion in Native American trust funds and associated assets by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Anderson is a member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.    

Harvard Law School’s faculty and fellows earned the top ranking for the total number of citations of their work on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), according to cumulative statistics released for 2011. HLS faculty members captured five out of the top 10 slots – including the number one slot – among law school faculty in all legal fields.