Article

Hauwa Ibrahim first came to international attention in 2003 when she won an appeal for Amina Lawal, a Nigerian woman convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning under Sharia law. Ibrahim has now been involved with more than 150 such cases—using Sharia law to fight Sharia penalties.

Janet Halley, Royall Professor of Law at HLS and a nationally renowned expert on sexuality and the law, helped to organize the conference at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, “Gender and the Law: Unintended Consequences, Unsettled Questions” [see story], which she says was “one of the best conferences on gender and the law in five years.”

Dean of Yale Law School Harold Hongju Koh ’80 has been named legal adviser of the U.S. Department of State, President Barack Obama ’91 has announced. Kate Stith ’77 has been appointed acting dean of Yale Law School.

On March 22, HLS Professor Elizabeth Warren appeared on NBC’s Dateline in a three-part investigative series “Inside the Financial Fiasco,” on how risky home loans helped cause a chain reaction that led to failures on Wall Street and the near collapse of the American economy.

When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’56-’58 was a student at HLS in the 1950s, she was one of nine women in a class of more than 500, and women weren’t allowed to live in the dorms. Still, “I found the professors endlessly stimulating and the discussion with my colleagues equally so,” she recalled as the featured speaker at “Gender and the Law: Unintended Consequences, Unsettled Questions,” a conference at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study co-sponsored by HLS.

LS Professor Mary Ann Glendon, former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, will be honored by the University of Notre Dame with its Laetare Medal.

Brian T. Aune ’10 and Jennifer D. Dein ’11 won the top two spots in the HLS 2009-2010 student government elections held on March 18 and 19. Aune was elected president and Dein was elected vice-president.

The following op-ed, “AIG still isn’t too big to fail,” by HLS Professor Lucian A. Bebchuk, director of the corporate governance program at HLS, appeared in the March 20 issue of The Wall Street Journal. This op-ed is based on his forthcoming paper, “Is AIG Too Big To Fail?”

The United States Senate voted today to confirm Dean Elena Kagan ’86 as the 44th solicitor general of the United States. By a 61 to 31 vote, Kagan became the first woman solicitor general in U.S. history.

Has the Obama administration changed the legal rules for detaining suspects in the war on terrorism, or is it continuing in the footsteps of the Bush administration? HLS Professor Noah Feldman explores the question in an op-ed, “A Prison of Words,” that appeared in the March 19 edition of The New York Times.

Scott Blake Harris ’76, managing partner of Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis in Washington, D.C., has been nominated by President Barack Obama ’91 to be general counsel at the U.S. Department of Energy.

The following is excerpted from a March 17, 2009, post entitled, “When Bonus Contracts Can be Broken,” which appeared on the New York Times Blog, “Room for Debate: A Running Commentary on the News.”

StopBadware.org, a project sponsored by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and Consumer Reports WebWatch announced today the full launch of BadwareBusters.org, a new online community for people looking for help preventing and countering viruses, spyware, and other “badware” on their computers and web sites.

On Saturday, March 7, Harvard Law School’s Program on Law and Mind Sciences held its third annual conference, “The Free Market Mindset: History, Psychology and Consequences.”

President Obama has named three more Harvard Law School graduates to new posts. Tom Perez ’78 has been nominated to be assistant attorney general in charge of the civil rights division in the Department of Justice; Demetrios Marantis ’93 has been nominated to become deputy U.S. trade representative; and Emily Hewitt ’78 has been nominated to become the new chief judge on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

HLS Lecturer Diane Rosenfeld ’96 and New York Law School Professor Nadine Strossen ’75 debated the question “Should Pornography Be Regulated?” in a packed Ames Courtroom on March 10.

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society launched a new Web site called ‘Media Cloud’ in conjunction with Thomson Reuters in July. The goal of Media Cloud is to provide a new search tool that illustrates the nature of news and how information flows between blogs and more traditional news outlets like newspapers.

A team of Harvard Law School students advanced to the semifinals of the National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition held in February at Pace Law School in Albany, NY. The team was comprised of Ed Roggenkamp ’09, Kim Smaczniak ’09, and Rachel Evans ’10.

On Friday, March 6, the Harvard International Law Journal brought together business and nonprofit leaders and academics from a wide range of international legal practices for a conference on “The International Lawyer’s Guide to Development: Current Problems, Future Solutions.”

Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren was on hand in Washington, D.C. this week as U.S. senators introduced legislation to create a new government agency, the Financial Product Safety Commission, to help consumers obtain financial products and services without predatory or deceptive financial practices.

A recently renovated office suite at Harvard Law School has been awarded a platinum rating—the highest possible certification—under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system for commercial interiors.