Media Mentions

After Texas passed its restrictive abortion law last fall, Democrats started talking more about abortion than they had in decades. House Democrats coalesced around a bill to turn into law the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing most abortions, Roe v. Wade, voicing their support for the landmark precedent in tweets and public statements. A few days later, three congresswomen shared their abortion stories on the House floor. And when he delivered his State of the Union address in March, President Biden became the first Democratic president since Roe to use that platform to call for action on abortion rights. ... When they addressed abortion in other statements and speeches in the 1990s, Democrats generally tried to appeal to the largest possible cross-section of voters, said Mary Ziegler, a professor at Florida State University’s College of Law and Harvard Law School who specializes in the history of abortion. Democratic leaders at the time emphasized that being “pro-choice” was not being “pro-abortion.” As he campaigned for president in 1992, Bill Clinton said abortion should be “safe, legal and rare,” coining a phrase that defined the party’s position on abortion for years.

A federal judge in Florida ruled on Thursday that sections of the state’s year-old election law were unconstitutional and racially motivated, and barred the state from making similar changes to its laws in the next decade without the approval of the federal government. The sharply worded 288-page order, issued by Judge Mark E. Walker of the Federal District Court in Tallahassee, was the first time a federal court had struck down major elements of the wave of voting laws enacted by Republicans since the 2020 election. Finding a pattern of racial bias, Walker in his ruling relied on a little-used legal provision to impose unusual federal restrictions on how a state legislates. ... “From a realistic perspective, it’s unlikely that the 11th Circuit or the Supreme Court would agree with the district court that there was racially discriminatory intent in Florida,” said Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a Harvard Law School professor and an expert on election law. “There’s a lurking fear that the same court that decided Shelby County might decide that bail-in is unconstitutional.”

A new partnership between George Washington University Law School and the Animal Legal Defense Fund aims to transform animal law from a niche specialty into a widely taught discipline by developing a cadre of faculty trained in the subject. The Fund has already raised money to hire an executive director for George Washington’s new Animal Legal Education Initiative and hopes to have the program up and running in the fall. ... “Anything any law school can do to foster interest in animal law and help further the field and scholarship is only a good thing,” said Chris Green, executive director of Harvard Law’s Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program.

The news that the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 investigation is reaching beyond the Capitol rioters has added fuel to a long-running debate about the pace of the investigation.  One side has criticized the Justice Department for not investigating Donald Trump and his inner circle for subverting the 2020 election. The lack of any public signs of a broader, more aggressive investigation for over a year, they say, shows a troubling lack of urgency. ... To Laurence Tribe, an emeritus professor at Harvard Law School, the recent reports of Trump-adjacent investigations brought welcome news — if slightly belated. “It’s obviously better late than never,” he said, acknowledging that the grand jury activity reported by The Washington Post and New York Times may have started sooner than the reports let on. “Memories can fade, people can adjust their testimony in light of interim discoveries,” Tribe said. “It would be ideal if this had not waited as long as it apparently has.”

War crimes happen whenever there is war, but seldom have they been investigated in real time and within weeks of the outbreak of hostilities, as is happening with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. After a brief initial hesitation to publicly brand the architects of the Ukraine invasion as war criminals, the United States and its European allies began issuing explicit statements about what they were seeing before the war was one month old. ... U.S. laws even limit the ways the U.S. can support ICC investigations, according to Alex Whiting, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. "The U.S. has actually taken the position that there are different ways to hold alleged Russian perpetrators to account, citing Ukrainian law and the possibility of prosecutions under that law, prosecutions by third states with jurisdiction, and then finally the ICC," Whiting told VOA.

Longtime war crimes prosecutor Alex Whiting, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, speaks to reporter Karen Sloan from The Hague about the outlook for indictments by the International Criminal Court.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of remarks made by Ashley Nunes during a Newsweek podcast debate about EVs being the future of transportation. ... Electric vehicles seem like a good idea, because we are often told that they're cleaner to drive and cheaper to own. But when you dig a little deeper, a different truth emerges. Are EVs cleaner than existing alternatives? Not in China, or the United States — where major auto markets derive the bulk of their power from coal. Are EVs cheaper to operate? Yes, but only if you hold onto those cars for a longer period of time, because they have higher upfront costs. Proponents of EVs say that things will get better over time, because they've become cleaner, and costs have dropped. But past performance is certainly no guarantee of future return. I'm not saying that driving gas guzzlers is the way to go; I just think that we should be honest with the public about what EVs can and cannot do, particularly when public funds are used to back climate policies.

The hype around special purpose acquisition companies — and the investor losses that have resulted since the SPAC boom began to fizzle a year ago — has led the Securities and Exchange Commission to issue harsh new SPAC rules and amendments that go beyond what many originally envisioned. The changes are so onerous that Hester Peirce, the lone commissioner who opposed them, said in a hearing Wednesday that they “seem designed to stop SPACs in their tracks.” (Peirce is the only Republican commissioner at the SEC.) ... This change addresses the criticism of SPACs being able to make overly optimistic forward-looking statements in a deSPAC because they are entitled to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Act — something IPOs do not have. Last year, the SEC’s acting director of the division of corporation finance, John Coates, indicated that the SEC was prepared to challenge those protections.

Advocates for a digital dollar in the U.S. point to many possible benefits of such a currency, saying it would lead to greater financial inclusion, allow for a more efficient distribution of government benefits and provide a faster and cheaper way to send money overseas. But the issue of whether to have a digital dollar is far from settled, although it may have received a boost earlier this month when President Joe Biden issued an executive order that asked federal agencies to study the issue. ... A report earlier this month from the Brookings Institution written by Tim Massad, a former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Howell Jackson, a Harvard Law School professor, said that instead of getting the Fed involved, “the Treasury Department could, relatively quickly, create digital accounts to provide payment services that would be especially valuable to unbanked and underbanked individuals.”

Nine people who blocked access to an abortion clinic in Washington in October 2020 have been charged with federal civil rights offenses, prosecutors said on Wednesday, about six months after the Justice Department signaled it would use a 1994 law to prosecute such cases across the country. Prosecutors said the nine had used their bodies, furniture, chains and ropes to block clinic doors and had livestreamed their actions on Facebook. ... Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University College of Law, and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, said the FACE Act had fallen into disuse during the Trump administration, leading to criticism from abortion rights supporters that it had become a “paper tiger” that was encouraging more aggressive actions outside abortion clinics. “It is significant that they’re actually using the FACE Act again in a fairly prominent way,” Professor Ziegler said, adding that the charges send a signal to those who would block clinics that “there will be consequences as long as Biden is in office.”

Cass R. Sunstein ’78, Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard, argues that as great as they were, the early Beatles needed some “serendipity” to break through. 

The Biden administration is throwing its weight behind efforts to boost antitrust enforcement as federal agencies take on the market power of tech giants. President Biden's $5.8 trillion budget proposal requests $227 million in increased funding for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) combined - a bump advocates and agency leaders say is needed to tackle cases against the nation's wealthiest companies. ... "It would represent a serious step toward closing the huge funding gap that the agencies confront today," said Daniel Francis, a Harvard Law School lecturer and former deputy director of the FTC competition bureau. "It would go a long way to help the agencies complete timely evaluations of proposed deals, giving consumers comfort that their interests are being protected, and giving businesses comfort that the agencies have been able to take a real look at transactions before they close," he added.

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell speaks to Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe about the mounting pressure that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is facing after text messages his wife sent in the lead-up to the January 6th Capitol riot were made public.

Hulu’s The Girl From Plainville opens with the death of Conrad Roy III (Colton Ryan). The 18-year-old’s body is discovered in his pickup truck in a Kmart parking lot. He has died by suicide. But questions soon emerge about the role a young woman named Michelle Carter (Elle Fanning) might have played in Conrad’s decision to end his life. ... “Will the next case be a Facebook posting in which someone is encouraged to commit a crime?” Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge and Harvard Law professor, told the Times. “This puts all the things that you say in the mix of criminal responsibility.”

A retired Marine brigadier general will replace the top federal public defender for the Western District of North Carolina after the prior office holder became a defendant in a closely watched sexual discrimination lawsuit against the judiciary. ... Jeannie Suk Gersen, a professor at Harvard Law School who represents Strickland, did not respond to a request for comment.

The Justice Department endorsed House and Senate bills Monday that would keep the biggest digital platforms like Meta, Google, Apple and Amazon from giving preferential treatment to their own products. Why it matters: Support from the Biden Administration's DOJ gives the bipartisan bills a boost, and shows that the department thinks they can be enforced and help boost tech competition in the U.S. The big picture: "The fact that the DOJ’s regulatory goals are consistent with the Hill show the seriousness of the DOJ’s antitrust concerns in the technology sector," Jeffrey Jacobovitz, senior counsel at law firm Arnall Golden Gregory LLP and former Federal Trade Commission attorney, told Axios. Driving the news: The Senate Judiciary Committee approved its bill, the American Competition and Innovation Act, in January. A companion bill awaits full House approval. News of the DOJ letter was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Yes, but: The bills still have to pass the full Senate and House, and face a packed congressional agenda along with bitter partisanship. “It’s always helpful to know where the DOJ stands on competition legislation, but it’s not obvious that this letter will change the legislative dynamics in Congress around the bill," Daniel Francis, former deputy director of the FTC competition bureau and a lecturer at Harvard Law School, told Axios.

Peter Monsini, who died in a tragic accident at a Boston construction site Saturday, was not the first worker to be seriously injured on a JDC Demolition Co. worksite. The Brockton-based company has paid large settlements in recent years in at least three lawsuits brought by workers who got hurt on the job and blamed JDC and other contractors. ... Mark Erlich, a fellow at Harvard Law School's Labor and Worklife Program and a retired officer of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, said big job sites like these are supposed to have many checks on safety protocols. But things don't always go right. "Every now and then, there will be one of these tragic incidents," he said, "that reminds people why construction is so dangerous."

The Justice Department’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2023 includes $34 million to hire 80 attorneys for the investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection. The department has already brought more than 750 cases, and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco made clear at a news briefing on Monday that the department is not stopping there. ... The Justice Department will need to make good on its vow to follow the facts wherever they lead. As constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe tells me, there is no “honorable way for [Attorney General] Merrick Garland to avoid pursuing the path Judge Carter has not only clearly marked but blazingly illuminated. Short of klieg lights, Carter has pointed the way to criminal investigation and prosecution of the former president as forcefully as a federal judge properly can.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear the pork industry’s challenge to California’s Proposition 12, a law that restricts certain confinement practices in industrial animal agriculture. The law, passed by nearly 63 percent of voters in a 2018 ballot measure, effectively bans “gestation crates”—narrow, metal enclosures with slatted floors that confine pregnant sows to only sitting and standing, and restrict them from turning around. The industry argues the crates, which have been used in large-scale hog farming for more than 30 years, minimize aggression and prevent competition for food. ... But it only takes four of the justices—not a majority—to agree to hear a case, and the pork industry’s legal argument is considered weak by many legal scholars because Prop 12 applies the same standard to products raised in California as it does to those in any other state. “I think the odds are not great for Prop 12, but I wouldn’t give up at all,” said Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe. “The Supreme Court’s decisions in this area—going all the way back to the 1920s—I think strongly support California.”

Cooking Practices “can open a window into the lives of enslaved people and help us understand slavery and its legacies,” said Radcliffe Institute dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin on Thursday, introducing a talk by chef and culinary historian Michael Twitty on the intertwined history of slavery and American foodways. The event was part of the initiative on Harvard’s ties to slavery, launched by President Lawrence Bacow in 2019 and headed by Brown-Nagin. The initiative’s faculty committee will be releasing a report of its findings and recommendations next month.

Wild animals possess distinct legal rights, including to exist, to develop their innate instincts and to be free from disproportionate cruelty, fear and distress, Ecuador’s top court ruled in a landmark decision interpreting the country’s “rights of nature” constitutional laws. ... “What makes this decision so important is that now the rights of nature can be used to benefit small groups or individual animals,” Kristen A. Stilt, a Harvard law professor and Faculty Director of the school’s Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law and Policy Program, said. “That makes rights of nature a far more powerful tool than perhaps we have seen before.”