Media Mentions

As attacks mount on Ukrainian civilians, Alex Whiting, a former head of Investigations and Prosecutions at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, tells MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell what goes into the investigations into potential war crimes and genocide in Ukraine. “All of that evidence will be critical in showing civilians were intentionally targeted,” Whiting says.

The Russian military, in retreat after defeat in the cities around Ukraine’s capital, left behind such horror that war crimes investigators are likely to be kept busy for months, if not years. Bodies were strewn across the northern countryside, including Bucha, where city officials said at least 400 civilians were killed, with more than 260 buried in mass graves. Dozens were found on the streets outside their homes, their hands bound, with some shot in the head. In Mariupol, Russian forces allegedly fired indiscriminately and used bombs to level an art school where some 400 civilians were sheltering. WHO has verified 64 attacks on health facilities. ... “Very often, militaries will make arguments that they were primarily going against military targets, that they didn’t expect that the incidental loss of civilian life would be so high, there was an intelligence error or technical mistake, or that there was information on combatants and fighters being present,” said Ioannis Kalpouzos, a Harvard law professor and co-founder of the Global Legal Action Network. “This information is not necessarily easy to disprove and has led to significant difficulties in bringing such cases [to the courts].”

In early April, as Ukraine started to regain control of Bucha and other small towns northwest of Kyiv, appalling imagery began to spread on Telegram and other social networks. Photos and videos showed bodies in the streets and anguished survivors describing loved ones, civilians, killed by Russian soldiers. In Chernivtsi, in western Ukraine, attorney Denys Rabomizo carefully built an archive of the gruesome evidence. His aim: to preserve social media posts that could help prove Russian war crimes. ... “Capturing social media from Ukraine is an incredible source of evidence,” says Alex Whiting, deputy prosecutor at the Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor’s Office in the Hague, and a visiting professor at Harvard University. A deluge of TikTok and Telegram posts could vastly increase the amount of evidence of alleged Russian war crimes—but they will only aid prosecutions if judges accept such material in court.

The national war of words over whether students should learn about LGBTQ issues in school — ignited by a recently enacted Florida law that critics dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — has taken a charged, and some say dangerous, turn over the last several weeks.  In early March, the press secretary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tweeted that anyone who opposes the bill “is probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.” Several days later, Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked her millions of viewers, “When did our public schools, any schools, become what are essentially grooming centers for gender identity radicals?”... Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law’s Cyber Law Clinic and a transgender-rights advocate, said using such language is “an attempt at the dehumanization and delegitimization of queer people’s identities by associating them with pedophilia and child grooming.” “What terrifies me is that when you start labeling groups with that, the calls for violence are inevitable,” she said.

There have been urgent calls for investigations into allegations of war crimes in previously Russian-held areas of Ukraine after shocking footage of murdered civilians. But there are wider questions over whether widespread Russian attacks on civilian targets amount to war crimes. We've been looking at a series of attacks in one city - Chernihiv - to see whether they are consistent with Russian tactics across Ukraine and reveal something of their strategy. ... A critical factor in any prosecution for war crimes is obtaining clear evidence of a deliberate intent to target civilians. Images and eye-witness statements can be the starting point, says Prof Alex Whiting, a former investigations co-ordinator at the International Criminal Court.

A lawsuit has been filed against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for implementing a secret policy that allows them to avoid conducting inspections required by the Animal Welfare Act. Harvard Law School’s Animal Law and Policy Clinic filed the lawsuit on behalf of Rise for Animals and the Animal Legal Defense Fund. The lawsuit claims that the USDA made a secret policy that evades its obligation to conduct full inspections of research facilities as the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) requires.

Gathering evidence of war crimes in Ukraine will be a fairly straightforward process, international prosecutors have said. The most difficult task will be linking those crimes to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who may escape accountability altogether. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has launched an investigation into the atrocities committed in Ukrainian cities such as the scenes witnessed in Bucha, where horrific images appeared to show dozens of civilians shot at close range with hands bound behind their backs. The gruesome discovery was made after Russian troops abandoned the city on 30 March. ... Time can also help with investigations, Alex Whiting, a former ICC prosecutions coordinator and visiting professor at Harvard Law School in the US, told i. Given the enormous power he yields and the great amount of support he enjoys at home, it seems unlikely that Mr Putin would be surrendered to the ICC by his loyal inner circle if he were to be charged with war crimes. But those close ties could erode as time goes on, especially as the leadership comes under intense pressure from sanctions and international condemnation, Professor Whiting said.

A transgender individual heads to their local DMV for a standard appointment – a registration renewal or driver’s license issuance. Just like the person at the window beside them, they present their birth certificate. According to current West Virginia law, their birth certificate contains either the incorrect gender marker or the corrected gender marker with an indication that it’s been amended, thus outing the individual in the public space. With no way to obtain a birth certificate that affirms their gender identity without flagging the change, a daily errand turns potentially dangerous. “It’s a matter of privacy and dignity for our clients,” said Clay Hackney, JD ‘22, a student in the Harvard LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic. This example reflects the stories of two current plaintiffs being represented by the clinic, in collaboration with the ACLU of West Virginia and the ACLU LGBT and HIV Project.

There’s a big piece of land in lonely northwest Colorado where the grassy plains meet the mountains, wide-antlered elk drink from icy rivers and sage-grouse pump their chests in wild mating dances each spring. Ranch hands still ride herd on thousands of cattle and sheep here, just as they started doing 150 years ago when Texas cowboys first drove cows north into the high country. ... Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School, says the U.S. grid sorely needs the TransWest line. He argues that families like the Boeddekers—who don’t live at Cross Mountain full-time—are living an energy-intensive lifestyle by definition and should be willing to accept some inconvenience. “You want to live in a world where that lifestyle has no consequences and any social costs of that should be borne by others and you shouldn’t have to be inconvenienced by seeing that from your second home?” he said. “I have zero interest in their concerns.”

No one believes Ketanji Brown Jackson, now confirmed to the Supreme Court, would ever vote the same way on an abortion case as her new colleague, Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Their ideologies are too different. As Judge Richard Posner points out, regardless of what they say about their adherence to precedent and the like, judges are fundamentally ideological. They cannot be anything else without a methodological approach to decision-making, such as cost-benefit analysis, that could lead to alternative outcomes. ... Evidence exists that judges’ decisions are not sensible resolutions but are influenced by their ideologies. For example, the legal scholars Alma Cohen and Crystal Yang found that Republican-appointed judges in federal district courts gave longer prison sentences to Black defendants than did Democratic-appointed judges.

Meta Platforms (FB), formerly known as Facebook, lost an attempt last week to quash a proposal from shareholders who want to know whether its planned virtual world will cause real-world harm. The question comes as critics of the metaverse voice concerns that the burgeoning virtual world sorely needs regulation to protect its users. The absence of rules to police the metaverse could hurt consumers in the same ways they've been hurt in other online platforms, critics warn. The metaverse could also create brand-new injuries without proper oversight, according to critics. If the metaverse becomes ubiquitous, regulation could become even more crucial. “The first question we need to be asking of people, like representatives from the place called Meta, is: What is the business model?” Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig said during a panel discussion last week. “The thing to fear is if [Meta] becomes the dominant default platform that you must participate in to do everything...If it becomes Facebook 2.0, and that is the defining existence, then the fact that there is no law I think means it's a very scary prospect.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: We live in a world where the Supreme Court is poised to give conservatives huge wins on abortion, guns and affirmative action. The popular passions over those issues make it hard to interest the general public in the conservative majority’s far more subtle and gradual efforts to change the way the court does its business by essentially deciding cases that are still before the lower courts. Yet that change matters. It tells you a lot about how the conservative majority is thinking about the next few years and its strategy to change the direction of the law beyond the big-ticket cases that make headlines.

Fresh off their historic win against online retailer Amazon, Staten Island warehouse workers who voted to form a union earlier this month are loading up their arsenal as the internet behemoth ratchets up its defenses against the upstart group. Amazon has filed more than two dozen objections with the National Labor Relations Board and seeks to overturn the Amazon Labor Union victory at the Staten Island JFK8 warehouse. The company argues that the union intimidated workers into voting in favor of organizing and alleges that the federal agency gave the ALU preferential treatment by filing a lawsuit against the internet retailer ahead of the vote. ... “Amazon, I think, has demonstrated that they are willing to go to great lengths to prevent their workers from having a union,” [Sharon] Block said. “And because the incentives in the law are to play this out as long as possible, if you’re a company that mistakenly but nevertheless believes that you want to keep the union out of your workplace, the law provides a path for you that is essentially costless to push the date out as much as possible.”

Last week’s arrest of a woman in the Rio Grande Valley on a murder charge for a “self-induced abortion” created confusion over what’s covered by Texas’ new abortion laws. On Thursday, Lizelle Herrera was arrested by the Starr County Sheriff’s department on a murder charge for a self-induced abortion. But the county’s District Attorney Gocha Ramirez announced Sunday he was dropping the charge, saying “the only correct outcome to this matter is to immediately dismiss the indictment against Ms. Herrera.” The motion to dismiss the case was filed Monday. ... No. “Texas law has a provision that essentially says you can’t punish women for self induced abortion, period, across the board, and SB 8 also doesn’t allow on the civil side for lawsuits against women for having abortions. So not only is there no statute authorizing this, there’s an actual statute independently saying this isn’t allowed,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School.

An op-ed by Premal Dharia: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will officially take her place on the Supreme Court later this year, having publicly endured -- and defeated -- no small number of outlandish efforts to block her ascent. This is a historic moment for our country, and for so many people within it; indeed, much has been rightfully shared and celebrated now that a Black woman who is a former public defender has been confirmed to the high court.

Former President Donald Trump will arrive in North Carolina for a "Save America" rally on Saturday as he and his allies—including his son Donald Trump Jr.—face accusations of "treason" and planning a "coup." Supporters of the former president are converging on Selma to attend the right-wing event at The Farm at 95, which is about 30 miles southeast of Raleigh. While thousands of Trump supporters regularly attend his rallies, the venue for this event can only hold about 400 attendees. The rally, which is scheduled to start at 7 p.m., will be live-streamed on YouTube by Right Side Broadcasting Network as well as through the website Rumble. ... Laurence Tribe, a professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard, said he agreed with Rangappa's assessment. ".@AshaRangappa_ has this just right," the legal scholar tweeted, sharing her post. "Most others have missed this key point: Junior's revelations kill the 'innocent state of mind' defense, leaving compelling proof of corrupt intent for each of the several federal felonies the plotters close to the defeated president committed."

Ketanji Brown Jackson has been confirmed as the first black woman to sit on the US Supreme Court in its 233-year history. The judge secured the life-time role following a 53-47 vote in the US Senate, following fierce questioning from critics. Judge Jackson, 51, will also be the first former public defender to sit on the Supreme Court and the third black judge to sit. ... Guy-Uriel Charles, Harvard Law School professor and an expert in race and law, explained how Jackson may impact the court. He said: “I do think that as a black woman she will bring credibility on issues of race and issues of gender. On issues of race, she might serve as a counterweight to Justice Thomas. “In particular, I think young black girls will have an even stronger sense that all avenues, especially in law, are open to them.” ... Former US Solicitor General Charles Fried told Sky News he backed her because she was the “absolutely ideal nominee.” “She’s had life experience, where she’s had to fight her way up and succeeded at every stage,” he said. Mr Fried, who has taught at Harvard Law School since 1961, added that his experience as a public defender “lends a very important dimension of perspective to the court”.

Two days after the 2020 election, Donald Trump Jr texted the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, with strategies for overturning the result, CNN reported. “This is what we need to do please read it and please get it to everyone that needs to see it because I’m not sure we’re doing it,” Trump Jr reportedly wrote, adding: “It’s very simple … We have multiple paths[.] We control them all.” One leading legal authority called the text “a smoking rifle”. CNN said the text was sent on 5 November 2020, two days before Joe Biden was declared the winner of the election and the next president. ... Responding to news of Donald Trump Jr’s communication with Meadows, Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor, said on Twitter: “This text is a smoking rifle.”

As Kamala Harris made history in her speech accepting the vice presidential nomination in 2020, she broke into a broad grin as she invoked the name of her hero: Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to serve as a federal judge. Eighteen months later, Motley’s memory was summoned again, this time by Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson upon her nomination to the Supreme Court. ... “It tells me she knows her history — the history of the civil rights movement,” said Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a Harvard Law professor and author of “Civil Rights Queen,” a newly released biography of Motley.

During periods of autocratic, populist upheaval, judges tend to find themselves in the political crosshairs. Faced with leaders who are bent on hollowing out the rule of law, the judiciary often must choose between bending the knee and defiantly asserting the supremacy of fundamental legal norms, come what may. ... Still, not everyone is quite so worried about the political nature of America’s judiciary, nor with the populist direction that many democracies are taking (or have taken). As Harvard Law’s Mark Tushnet and Bojan Bugarič of the University of Sheffield write in their new book, Power to the People, populism in and of itself is not the threat that many commentators and politicians have painted it to be. They prefer to view populism as a means of governing, which “must be considered together with its host ideology.”

Aljanal Carroll never doubted her ability to beat the odds — not when a doctor told her she would never attend school after battling spinal meningitis as a child, or when she set her sights on a 4.0 G.P.A. in her master’s program, or when she heard it was rare for Black women to earn a doctorate in business administration. Then she enrolled at Walden University. ... Eileen Connor, the director of Harvard’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, which has pursued one of the only other lawsuits to make Title VI claims on behalf of students at for-profit colleges and universities, said courts were “suspicious of, if not hostile to, these reverse-redlining claims.” “It’s not that the claims don’t have merit or are not worth bringing,” she said. “But to stop relentless targeting of people of color by predatory schools, it’s going to require greater involvement from regulators like the Department of Education and the Federal Trade Commission.”