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In a Mar. 8 talk sponsored by the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, Paul Hoffman, a leading litigator of claims brought under the Alien Tort Statute, offered a look at the history of lawsuits against corporations for their complicity in human rights violations—and a glimpse of some possible future developments.

Professor John G. Palfrey ’01 was declared the winner of an interactive online debate on Internet democracy, hosted by The Economist from Feb. 23 to March 4.

The Harvard Law School Asian Pacific American Law Students Association hosted the 17th Annual National Asian Pacific American Conference on Law and Public Policy on February 25-26, 2011 with the assistance of the Harvard Kennedy School Asian American Policy Review.

Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain appeared on the Mar. 9 edition of American Public Media’s Marketplace Tech Report to discuss the Cybersecurity and Internet Freedom Act of 2011, introduced last year by Senators Joe Lieberman, Susan Collins, and Thomas Carper.

Harvard Law School has been rated number one in the first-ever ranking of best law schools based on a survey of hiring partners and recruiters at the country's top law firms, U.S. News and World Report announced March 7.

Giving the biennial Vaughan Lecture at Harvard Law School, former federal appeals court judge Michael McConnell contemplated the question "What would Hamilton do?"

When HLS Professor Clinical Professor Jim Cavallaro decided there should be "a structured means of studying the broad jurisprudence and practice of the Inter-American system,” he and Stephanie Brewer ’07 created an on-site course in San José, Costa Rica where students can learn the law on the ground from judges, practitioners and stakeholders in the system. This January, the 20 students enrolled in “Doctrine and Practice of the Inter-American Human Rights System” came away with a deeper understanding of that system—plus an immersion in the world of human rights adjudication.

In a lunch with Harvard Law School students, Jeffrey Cohen ’88, Managing Director and Global Head of Retail at Lazard, discussed his journey from a law school and legal training to investment banking.

Harvard Law School Professor Annette Gordon-Reed ’84 was recently appointed to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ newly-established Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences, a national commission charged with bolstering teaching and research in the humanities and social sciences. Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust will also take part in the initiative.

HLS Professors John Goldberg and Henry Smith are working to reinvigorate the study of contracts, torts, and property with the new Private Law Workshop, which they co-teach as part of the Project on the Foundations of Private Law at Harvard Law School. The workshop, said Goldberg, is “an opportunity to introduce students to some of the emerging literature that’s aiming to rethink the significance of private law in modern legal systems.”

On February 22, HLS Beneficial Professor of Law Charles Fried joined more than 10 former elected officials in an amici curiae brief filed in support of the respondents in McComish v. Bennett, now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

An emergency petition campaign spearheaded by Harvard Law School graduate Rebecca Sharpless ’94 and five human rights organizations has prompted the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to urge the U.S. government to halt deportations to Haiti of Haitian citizens who are seriously ill or who have family ties in the U.S.

Where should the line be drawn on executive power? Harvard Law School Professor Adrian Vermeule ’93 and University of Chicago Law Professor Eric A. Posner ’91 examine the current state and the future of the U.S. presidency and Constitution through the context of historical authorities in their new book, “The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic” (Oxford University Press, 2011).

Joseph H. Flom ’48, the last living named partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and a leader in the field of mergers and acquisitions, died February 23, 2011 in New York City. He was 87. Flom helped transform a small New York firm into one of the most powerful legal institutions in the world, and he was also a dedicated philanthropist and supporter of Harvard Law School.

Shareholders could reduce the toxicity of corporate boards’ use of a “poison pill”—a device designed to block shareholders from considering a takeover bid—if they could replace board majorities more quickly, writes Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84 in an op-ed that appeared in the Feb. 24, 2011, edition of the Wall Street Journal.

After countless hours of interviewing their client, digging through documents and working with experts to prepare for two court hearings, students in the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic got what they were after: a grant of asylum.

The article “Revising Egypt’s Constitution: A Contribution to the Constitutional Amendment Debate” was published by the Harvard International Law Journal on Feb. 22, written by Harvard Law School Visiting Professor Chibli Mallat with co-authors Maria van Wagenberg ’11, Mostafa Abdelkarim ’11 and Harvard Kennedy School student Julian Simcock.

War between Israel and Iran is not inevitable, argued Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, in an event sponsored by the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School last week. 

Harvard Law School Dean and Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law Martha L. Minow delivered the annual Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Distinguished Lecture on Women and the Law, sponsored by the New York City Bar Association, on February 7. The title of the talk was “Gender and the Law Stories: Learning from Longstanding Debates.”