Article

Harvard Law School Professor David B. Wilkins will receive the Outstanding Scholar Award from The Fellows of the American Bar Foundation. The award is given annually to a member of the academy who has engaged in outstanding scholarship in the law or in government.

In a Jan. 27 talk titled “Line of Fire: On Being a 'Fortune 10' General Counsel," sponsored by the HLS Program on the Legal Profession, Stephen F. Gates ’72 (M.B.A. ’72) addressed the role and responsibilities of in-house counsel in today’s changing world of legal practice, and he spoke candidly about some of the specific situations he has faced in the “line of fire.”

In a recent lecture given at Harvard Law School and sponsored by the Safra Center for Ethics, Jim Cooper '80, a Blue-Dog Democrat from Tennessee's 5th congressional district, said offered the assessment that Congress is "deeply broken." 

African-American children, who account for just 15 percent of all children in the U.S., represent more than a third of children placed in foster care. The question is: Why? That controversial issue and others surrounding society’s efforts to protect children were the focus of the conference “Race & Child Welfare: Disproportionality, Disparity, Discrimination: Re-Assessing the Facts, Re-Thinking the Policy Options,” held January 28-29 at Harvard Law School.

Harvard Law School has announced the appointments of U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner and Stephen Shay, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Tax Affairs in the U.S. Department of the Treasury, as Professors of Practice.

Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee chaired a hearing on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act and the provision that requires, beginning in 2014, every American to maintain health insurance coverage. The law requires all citizens without work-based insurance to purchase plans in the private market.

The Harvard Law Review has elected Mitchell Reich ’12 as its 125th president.

This week, HLS Professors John G. Palfrey, Jonathan Zittrain, and HLS Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law Andrew K. Woods each weighed in on the Egyptian government's recent decision to block Internet access to prevent the use of social media outlets in light of escalating protests in the country. 

In a Jan. 26 review in The New Republic, HLS Professor Adrian Vermeule ’93 examines the book “Honeybee Democracy” by Thomas D. Seeley, which explores group decision-making behavior in apian colonies, and he presents his assessment of its relationship to collective wisdom and decision-making in human societies.

This week, HLS Professors John G. Palfrey, Jonathan Zittrain, and HLS Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law Andrew K. Woods each weighed in on the Egyptian government's recent decision to block Internet access to prevent the use of social media outlets in light of escalating protests in the country.

In a Jan. 31 article in the Opinion section of the New York Daily News online, HLS Professor John G. Palfrey addresses the issue of corporate responsibility in the wake of the Egyptian government’s recent Internet access lockdown to prevent protesters from organizing against President Hosni Mubarak’s regime.

On Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2011, HLS Professor Hal Scott testified before the US House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services in a hearing entitled “Promoting Economic Recovery and Job Creation: The Road Forward.”

Philip Alston, Harvard Law School’s Sidley Austin Visiting Professor of Law, received an honorary doctorate from Maastricht University in the Netherlands on Jan. 20 as part of the university’s 35th anniversary celebration.

An op-ed by HLS Professor Alan Dershowitz “The U.N. gangs up on Israel – again,” appeared in the January 26, 2011 edition of the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of numerous books, including “The Trials of Zion,” “The Case for Moral Clarity: Israel, Hamas and Gaza,” and “Finding, Framing, and Hanging Jefferson: A Lost Letter, a Remarkable Discovery, and Freedom of Speech in an Age of Terrorism.”

On January 7, in a ruling that will likely affect the entire banking industry, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court found that Wells Fargo and US Bancorp had wrongly foreclosed on two homes because the banks could not prove that they owned the mortgages at the time of the foreclosure sales in July 2007. Max Weinstein, a Clinical Instructor at the Wilmer Hale Legal Services Center, represented one of the mortgagers, Antonio Ibanez.

Harvard Law Professor Jeanne Suk ’02 was named a “Top Woman of the Law” by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly and honored at a reception on Dec. 3.  The award recognizes women who have made inspiring contributions and who are pioneers, educators, trailblazers and role models.

HLS Visiting Professor Timothy Wu ’92 spoke at Harvard Law School on Jan. 11 about his new book, “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires.” Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School.

The Conflict Prevention and Resolution Institute (CPR) selected the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program (HNMCP) to be the recipient of its 2010 Problem Solving in the Law School Curriculum Award at its annual awards banquet on January 11, 2011.

Since signing with the Boston Celtics in August 2010, Shaquille O’Neal has posed as a statue in Harvard Square, sang the “Cheers” theme song at the Cheers bar in Boston, and conducted the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall. He can now add “helped teach a class at Harvard Law School” to that list.