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On Wednesday, September 16, the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice hosted an event to recognize the extraordinary death penalty case of Troy Anthony Davis. Charles Ogletree '78, Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, moderated a panel which brought to together Davis' sister, Martina Correia, his amicus counsel Kathleen Behan, and Jason Ewart, an Arnold and Porter associate who represented Davis during his habeas corpus petition before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

On Friday, November 6, Harvard Law School hosted to a day-long conference entitled “Confronting Legal Injustice/Imagining Legal Justice” in Ames Courtroom. A plethora of speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds addressed shortcomings in the law concerning capital punishment. They also looked at the future of the death penalty.

A recent study by HLS Professor Carol Steiker ’86 and her brother, Professor Jordan Steiker of the University of Texas Law School, has led the American Law Institute (ALI) to vote to withdraw the capital punishment section of its Model Penal Code. The Model Penal Code provisions were cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 when it determined that the death penalty could be administered in a constitutional way. The Steikers’ study examined whether or not the death penalty was in fact being administered in compliance with the Constitution.

On Dec. 14, Harvard Law School Professor Adriaan Lanni gave the annual Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Lecture on Aristotle and the Moderns at Columbia University. The title of the talk was “Reconciliation after Mass Atrocity: Lessons from Ancient Athens.”

It took a Hook to hand a Howe.

Finn M.W. Caspersen ’66: 1941-2009 Bruce Wasserstein ’70: 1947-2009 Two of Harvard Law School’s greatest alumni leaders died this fall, as the building that will stand as a tribute to their support was rising.

Luke Cole ’89, a leader in the environmental justice movement—which holds that many minority neighborhoods have become toxic dumping grounds—died June 6, 2009, in a traffic accident in Uganda at age 46.

Michael Weston ’97, special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan on Oct. 26, 2009, while working with the U.S. military to fight drug trafficking in the region.

America Is on Trial as Much as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Professor Alan Dershowitz
The Globe and Mail
Nov. 13, 2009 Credit: Grady McFerrin “The Obama administration has…

George H. Kidder ’50, a partner for more than 40 years with the Boston law firm Hemenway & Barnes and a civic-minded lawyer who contributed extensively to the Boston community, died Aug. 20 at the age of 84 at his home in Concord, Mass.

Singleton, who hails from North Carolina and now lives in Cincinnati, found himself an “East Coast liberal” professor engaging a crop of young conservative law students in criminal justice reform.

It’s Tuesday afternoon in a Pound Hall classroom. The Socratic method is in use, and the class is engaged. But the professor is a Harvard Law student and he is teaching 13 teenagers—all involved in the juvenile justice system.

A few years ago, retired Judge Bentley Kassal ’40 began giving talks on his World War II experience: He was an air intelligence officer who participated in three invasions and was recognized by the U.S. Army with a Bronze Star for “meritorious service in direct support of combat operations.”

Last spring, David Hackett Souter ’66—the U.S. Supreme Court’s 105th justice—announced his retirement and stepped down at the end of the term. We asked four alumni who had firsthand experience with the justice for their reflections.

Coercive interrogations inflict discomfort or pain with the goal of eliciting information. Yet all too often, says Deborah Popowski ’08, those involved in such interrogations are supposed to be helping people, not hurting them.

In both the public and private sectors, Harvard Law students are facing a tougher job market than in recent memory.

In the wake of the current economic crisis and growing globalization, the job market for lawyers is tougher than at any time in recent history. We asked Professor David Wilkins ’80, head of HLS’s Program on the Legal Profession, how these factors will shape legal practice and education.

The canvassing effort, dubbed Project No One Leaves, was launched in 2008 by two HLAB students, Nick Hartigan ’09 and David Haller ’09, along with WilmerHale Legal Services Center clinical student Tony Borich ’09.

Since U.S. forces started taking alleged terrorists to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the task of crafting American detention policy has migrated decisively from the executive branch to federal judges. These judges, not experts in terrorism or national security and not politically accountable to the electorate, inherited this responsibility because of the Supreme Court's intervention in detention policy. Over time they maintained it because legislative and executive officials of both political parties refused to craft a comprehensive legislative approach to this novel set of problems that cries out for decisive lawmaking.