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Second-year student Brian Fletcher has been elected the 119th president of the Harvard Law Review. Fletcher has advocated new policies such as changing submission guidelines in response to overwhelming feedback from professors for shorter articles and launched new initiatives like the "State of Scholarship" dinner series to make the Review an active part of the HLS community.

Following a unanimous confirmation vote in the U.S. Senate, this week President Bush swore in Michael Chertoff, a 1978 Harvard Law graduate, as the nation's secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. The new post is the latest in a series of public services positions Chertoff has held in both the executive and judicial branches of government.

Diane Rosenfeld, lecturer on law, was recently named a recipient of the Champions for Change Award for her contributions in research and advocacy on the subject of sexual violence. The award, presented by the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center and co-sponsored by Beauty and Main and The Charles Hotel, honored Rosenfeld's work particularly in the area of education.

Harvard Law School and Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences will collaborate to renovate Hemenway Gymnasium in a project slated to run from late May to September. The two schools will split the cost of the top-to-bottom interior rehabilitation of the 28,000-square-foot recreational fitness facility, which will be closed during construction.

The following op-ed was written by Professor Elizabeth Warren and published in The Washington Post on February 9, 2005: "Nobody's safe. That's the warning from the first large-scale study of medical bankruptcy...."

Nearly half of all Americans who file for bankruptcy do so because of medical expenses, according to a new study released jointly by researchers at Harvard Law School and Harvard Medical School this week. The study, which is based on surveys of 1,771 individuals filing for bankruptcy, is the first of its kind to gather extensive information on the correlation between medical conditions and expenses and bankruptcy.

Scholars from as faraway as Hong Kong and as nearby as the Faculty of Arts and Sciences gathered last week at Harvard Law School for a conference on professionalism in China. The event, The Professions and Professionalism in China, sponsored by the East Asian Legal Studies Program and the Harvard University Asia Center, addressed fields ranging from law, medicine, and religion to journalism, architecture, and business.

On Wednesday, January 19, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, spoke to students at Harvard Law School. Moderated by Professor Martha Minow, an expert in international justice, Ocampo spoke about his role as the first I.C.C. prosecutor and the challenges of working within an emerging legal system.

Following Friday's decision by the Department of Justice to allow Rodi Alvarado Pena, a Guatamalan woman, to remain in the United States, leaders of the the Harvard Law School Immigration and Refugee Clinic offered cautious praise.

Associate Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court delivered the 2004 Tanner Lecture on Human Values at Harvard University in November, sponsored by the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics. The following is an edited version of Justice Breyer's text, which was published in the January 2005 issue of Harvard Law Today.

Every day on university campuses, graduate students defend their scholarship in front of faculty panels whose interrogations can be withering. At Harvard Law School, the tables are being turned. Professor Kingsfield is in the hot seat, and the students are doing the questioning.

The story of a current Harvard LL.M. student who is taking the Slovakian government to court over allegations of forced sterilization of poor women.

In a wide-ranging conversation, election law expert Heather Gerken, an assistant professor, takes a look at the legal issues surrounding the 2004 race.

On Friday, January 7, beginning promptly at 12:30 pm, the East Asian Legal Studies program is hosting a panel discussion focusing on the catastrophic events following the earthquake and tsunami in Asia. The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held in the Ames Courtroom in Austin Hall.

Professor Morton Horwitz's class on the Supreme Court -- specifically the Warren court -- was the subject of a feature on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" program on Monday, January 3. Click here to listen to a webcast of the NPR piece.

Following a vote of the Harvard Law School faculty, Guhan Subramanian has been promoted from assistant professor to professor of law -- a tenured faculty position. A corporate law expert who specializes in deal making and corporate governance, Subramanian joined the HLS faculty in 2002 as the Joseph Flom Assistant Professor of Law and Business. Prior to this appointment, he spent three years on the faculty of Harvard Business School, where he taught courses on negotiations and business law.

The Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic's Women Refugees Project has submitted an amicus curiae brief in the case of Thomas v. Ashcroft. The brief urges the court to allow asylum in the United States based upon family membership. The case, which was heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday, involves a woman whose family was subjected to attacks and whose lives were threatened because of racist actions taken by her father-in-law.

A recent article by Professor Guhan Subramanian '98 has people in the M-and-A world talking -- and the article has yet to be published. Although it has a decidedly academic title, "Post-Siliconix Freeze-Outs: Theory, Evidence, and Policy," Subramanian’s paper has received significant coverage in legal and business trade journals such as The American Lawyer, The Deal and Corporate Control Alert.