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By the time Tope Lawani ’95 started law school, he knew he would not likely spend his career practicing law. Already the impact of his Nigerian childhood and a captivation with investment markets had planted the seed of an idea that would eventually pull him back to his homeland in hopes of reaping great returns for investors—and for Africa itself.

On Aug. 25, Benjamin B. Ferencz ’43, who served as a chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg Trials, made the concluding remarks for the prosecution in the International Criminal Court’s first case.

The HLS Library’s recent acquisition and digitization of “Summa de Legibus Normanniae” (Summary of the [Customary] Laws of Normandy) has the attention of legal history scholars, particularly HLS Professor Charles Donahue, author of “Law, Marriage, and Society in the Later Middle Ages: Arguments about Marriage in Five Courts.”

In September, Sarah Carlson ’07 and Kobelah Bennah ’08 sent this update: “This past April, we left our Big Law jobs in Manhattan, got married and moved into a tent in Haiti.

The HLS Executive Education Program offers intensive courses, including Leadership in Law Firms, aimed at law firm managing partners and senior firm leaders, and Leadership in Corporate Counsel, aimed at general counsels and chief legal officers.

HLS Professor William Alford ’77, a member of the executive committee of the board of directors of Special Olympics International and chair of its research and policy committee, met with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in November to discuss disability issues. Alford was a participant in the meeting at the invitation of Timothy Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics, and Na Kyung-won, a member of the South Korean Congress who has been at the forefront of disability rights legislation.

Harvard Law School Assistant Professor of Law I. Glenn Cohen, co-director of HLS’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics, is the author of three recently published articles on health law topics.

HLS Professor Einer Elhauge ’86, the founding director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, wrote “The Irrelevance of the Broccoli Argument against the Insurance Mandate,” which was published online Dec. 21 by the New England Journal of Medicine.

HLS Clinical Professor Ron Sullivan ’94, who serves as director of the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute, was recently appointed to the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services. Sullivan joins Professor Carol Steiker ’86, who is also a member of the committee.

Harvard Law School Professor Noah Feldman was recently a guest on Voice of America’s “Press Conference” radio program, speaking with host Carol Casteil about the meaning of Sharia Law and the role that it could play in the burgeoning democracies of Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt and Libya.

Margaret H. Marshall, who served over a decade as Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, will join the faculty at Harvard Law School this spring as a senior research fellow and lecturer.

In today’s NY Times ‘Room for Debate’ online forum, Harvard Law School Professor David Wilkins ’80 writes on the topic of whether or not the Socratic method should still have a role in American legal education today.

HLS Professor Lawrence Lessig was a guest on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” on Dec. 13.

On Wednesday, Dec. 14, Harvard Law School Professor John Coates testified before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance and Investment at an open-session hearing titled “Examining Investor Risks in Capital Raising.” 

In a recent paper published in the December issue of Science magazine, Harvard Law School Professors Jonathan Zittrain ‘95 and John Palfrey ’01 examine how better forms of measurement of the Internet and the Web can inform Internet policy and regulations.

The Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) has released a summary of “The State of Equity in Metro Boston,” a report studying the ways that inequity affects the residents of greater Boston. The full report was released on Tuesday, Dec. 13 at an event co-hosted by Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice.

Bill Frelick, director of the refugee program at Human Rights Watch, spoke at Harvard Law School at the end of October on European Union migration controls and access to asylum, at an event sponsored by the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program.

Appearing at Harvard Law School a year and a half after being released from federal prison, a contrite Jack Abramoff expressed a desire to thwart the political corruption he once infamously practiced. The event on Dec. 6 was sponsored by the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, whose director, HLS Professor Lawrence Lessig, interviewed Abramoff, a former lobbyist who pleaded guilty in 2006 to charges of fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy to bribe public officials. “His experience,” said Lessig, “has an enormous amount to teach us.”

Six Harvard Law School students and recent graduates have been chosen to receive Skadden Fellowships to support their work in public service.