From the Dean

One of the most exciting aspects of Harvard Law School is its consistent engagement with the most important issues of the day. Often HLS will supply the leading voices on both sides of the great and urgent debates about the law and about the institutions, public and private, that structure society. The work of HLS faculty, students, staff, and alumni helps shape how policymakers understand and solve the most challenging local, national, and international problems.

Training lawyers and leaders for the 21st century Harvard Law School has always been at the forefront of curricular and pedagogical innovation. More than a…

Harvard Law School community members are engaged in exciting and impactful work on issues of large import—work that is framing national conversations among leaders and policymakers. The stories in this Winter 2019 issue of the Bulletin reflect a sample of this influential work.

It’s been a great year. Harvard Law School marked its Bicentennial not merely by bringing our community together to reconnect, make new friends, and celebrate a great institution, but by doing what we do best: engaging with hard and important issues that matter.

Each moment bridges past and future; moments at HLS invite reflections on the past and renewed focus for the future.

Harvard Law School is becoming a “laboratory”—or, more accurately, a collection of laboratories—where theory meets practice. For example, we now have the Food Law Lab,…

“There is nothing so stable as change.” So said Bob Dylan (and Heraclitus, too). Yet we yearn for continuity. Chief Justice of the United States…

A central purpose of law is accountability. But who holds law itself to account? Law is designed to expose and sanction people, organizations, and nations…

What policies will ensure access for all communities to safe, high-quality food? What can help children dealing with family violence and other adverse experiences succeed…

Law increasingly crosses physical borders; legal work undertaken by members of the Harvard Law School community increasingly crosses borders of disciplines and professions. From 1L property law to laws of war, physical boundaries supply both facts significant to law and the metaphor of borders used in defining legal rights and concepts.

“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.” So, we think, said Yogi Berra. He also supposedly said, “How…

Last summer, HLS alumni and friends welcomed me on my first journey to East Asia. I will never forget the sense of energy, spirit of gratitude, and invitations to learn from leaders in law, academia, business, the judiciary, and government.

“Mutual aid” may not be the first phrase that comes to mind in connection with law schools and lawyers, yet consider these examples. Harvard Law School’s Professor Jonathan Zittrain ’95 created a course joining HLS students with Stanford Law School students to brainstorm “Ideas for a Better Internet.” One student group tackled Internet security at Facebook, whose 1 billion users experience about 5 percent of all phishing attempts—600,000 of which succeed every day in locking users out of their accounts and compromising their personal data, including photos. The students developed an idea for improving security: allow a “cabinet” of friends to help reset a compromised account, instead of going through customer service, which has been chronically (and understandably) overloaded. The students presented the idea to Facebook—and the public—in J-term 2011, and on May 1, 2013, Facebook implemented a feature that resembled it. The approach deploys mutual aid of trusted friends—identified by each user—to veto suspicious activity. It improves on-the-ground user privacy and security without relying upon traditional regulatory approaches.

Why do many law school graduates become leaders? Individuals with legal training lead government, business, civic activities, and nonprofit organizations in the United States and around the world. Of course, leaders of law firms, law schools, and offices of government lawyers have legal training, but often so do leaders of companies, universities and countries. I think that a combination of self-selection, features of the law school experience, and particular elements of law itself contributes to the sizable presence across society of lawyers as leaders—and as effective ones, at that. Does this seem right to you? I offer these thoughts in hopes of prompting your suggestions.

Our environment—all that surrounds us—crucially affects growth and development. Never has this been more apparent at HLS.

President Andrew Jackson once said, “All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous Judiciary.” Harvard Law School has long educated advocates and counselors about the judiciary but has also prepared individuals to serve as judges committed to law’s promise. When our graduates accept the invitation and responsibility of becoming judges, it is a cause for celebration and hope—celebration of individual achievement and hope for the vitality of the rule of law.

Our cover story features students and alumni who are launching their own ventures, and the school’s growing efforts to assist such endeavors.

Creative problem-solving is the hallmark of superb lawyering. The stories in this Bulletin include a profile of Rebecca Onie ’03, whose questions about how best…