Media Mentions

The state of Washington could be on its way to adopting a law with big implications for the gig economy. State lawmakers have passed a bill that offers ride-hailing drivers some new benefits. The bill bars them from being classified as employees. Washington is the latest state to grapple with providing rideshare driver benefits – like sick leave and minimum pay — while still giving drivers flexibility over their schedules. Lawmakers there sought some input from organized labor. ... Benjamin Sachs at Harvard Law School said under that law, employees can still have control over their hours. “There is nothing inconsistent between being an employee and having a flexible work arrangement,” he said, adding that remote workers often set their own schedules and are still considered employees.

If Ketanji Brown Jackson is confirmed, she will be the first Black woman on the bench in the Supreme Court’s history. Demography is important, because the court’s perceived legitimacy will always to some degree depend on the extent to which it seems to reflect the country as a whole. Ronald Reagan recognized as much when, in 1980, he made a campaign promise to nominate the first woman to the court — a pledge motivated in part by concern that the GOP needed to recruit female voters. Biden’s promise to nominate a Black woman was meant in part to shore up the Black vote in the 2020 South Carolina primary. In both cases, the hard demands of electoral politics and more abstract notions of democratic legitimacy converged. ... Why is educational pedigree so important on the court? Should it be? In Bloomberg, Noah Feldman wrote that Jackson’s “experiences as an African American woman and as someone who had an uncle imprisoned on a drug felony will matter — as will her elite educational background.” I spoke with Feldman, a professor of law at Harvard Law School, about legitimacy, meritocracy, the Federalist Society, the role of clerkships, and how Jackson’s education matters.

When the pandemic hit, many people hunkered down at home, hoping to stay put and ride out the storm until it passed. For others, as the scourge of the coronavirus was spreading fast and seeking new host organisms anywhere it could find them, those early days in the eye of the storm, so to speak, were an anxious race against time. ... As Terri Gerstein, a workers rights lawyer at the Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program, argued in The American Prospect, the bill “would also exempt Uber and Lyft from many important laws that virtually every other employer in the state must follow by flat out enshrining the misclassification of these workers as independent contractors rather than employees. The Tacoma diner, the Seattle coffee shop, and the supermarket in Spokane all are legally required to provide a safe workplace, pay employees for all hours worked, and pay taxes to support the state’s unemployment compensation system.”

As thousands flee the besieged Kyiv suburb Irpin, allegations are emerging of Russian forces looting, hiding military equipment in residential areas, deploying snipers and cutting water and power as they seek to use the area as a potential launchpad to invade the capital. ... “There is nothing clearly to prohibit cutting water and power” in international law, he said in an email. But under the Rome statute, which governs the International Criminal Court, it is a crime to intentionally starve civilians or “cause conditions where they can’t survive,” according to Alex Whiting, an international law expert and visiting professor at Harvard Law School.

After getting enormous pressure from the public, as well as from members of both side of the isle in North Dakota, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the State Investment Board convened a special meeting Thursday to discuss divesting its Russian holdings. During executive session, the SIB voted unanimously to pursue the divestment strategy. ... News Radio reached out to Harvard Professor Mark Wu on any implications that SB 2291 could have in the process. “The decision at hand concerns divestment, as opposed to investment. While the state law places restrictions on the State Investment Board’s investment decisions, it does not place similar restrictions on its divestment decisions.” Professor Wu continued, “What this means practically is that the state investment board could take geopolitical considerations into account for a divestment decision, but should it then decide to divest, the existing law would place restrictions on what the board can and cannot do in deciding how to re-invest the proceeds of the divestment.” Professor Wu is the Henry L. Stimson Professor at Harvard Law School, where he specializes in international trade and international economic law.

On Tuesday morning, jury selection begins in the long-anticipated trial of four men accused of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in the run-up to the 2020 elections. To avoid potential life sentences, the defendants, who argue they were entrapped, will have to overcome a mountain of evidence including hours of their private, often graphic, conversations, as well as testimony from two other defendants in the case who have pleaded guilty and are now cooperating with the investigation. ... BuzzFeed News asked four former federal prosecutors about the use of such statements. None recalled ever having seen one. Harvard Law professor Alexandra Natapoff, among the nation’s preeminent scholars on the use of confidential informants, said she had never heard of informants being asked to sign nondisclosure statements, calling the use of one “interesting.”

“You guys left the streets,” Mexican feminist Verónica Cruz told me last September. We were speaking eight days after a law took effect in Texas that banned abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy—and just a few days after Mexico’s top court ruled that abortion is no longer a crime in that country. ... It was massive street demonstrations in 2015 in Argentina that launched the “Green Wave” movement for abortion rights that spread across Latin America and around the world. Even there, though, much of the work happened across kitchen tables, in taxis, and in televised legislative hearings, according to Alicia Yamin, a lecturer on law and senior fellow on global health at Harvard Law School. A key turning point came in 2018 when Argentina’s congress came close to passing a bill to decriminalize abortion. The bill failed, but the debate inspired people to talk about abortion in their homes and in the streets. “Feminists were doing this arduous stuff in the shadows, behind the scenes, and slowly, iteratively brought in the broader population to realize what’s at stake,” Yamin said.

As much of the international community continues to find ways to help Ukraine fight back against Russia's full-scale invasion, some are already looking to find ways to hold Russian President Vladimir Putin accountable for the attacks that have claimed at least 406 civilian lives. ... "It's a war crime to target civilians or civilian objects, like hospitals, and it's specifically a war crime to target hospitals, but you do have to prove that that was the intent, that it was intended as an attack on the hospital and that there were no military targets nearby," former ICC prosecutor and Harvard Law professor Alex Whiting told Newsweek. "So proving it's a war crime is challenging, but if the hospital is targeted, it is definitely a war crime."

The Washington State Senate on Friday passed a bill granting gig drivers certain benefits and protections while preventing them from being classified as employees — a longstanding priority of ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft. ... Worker advocates worried that other states would try to replicate the legislation. “I hope Governor Inslee seeks additional analysis of its potential impact,” said Terri Gerstein, a workers rights lawyer at Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program. “I would urge other states not to use this bill or cursory public process as a model.”

When Texas Governor Greg Abbott penned a letter directing state officials to investigate healthcare providers or parents who help transgender youth receive gender-affirming care, some believed his order would be ignored. But as of this week, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) has launched investigations into parents of trans minors for possible child abuse. ... “The real risk of these actions is the tremendous chilling effect on providers and parents of trans children,”  [Alejandra] Caraballo said. “Parents may delay seeking care and doctors may stop providing care out of fear from the letter and opinion despite having no actual legal effect. Most importantly, it has the effect of traumatizing trans kids themselves by creating uncertainty and doubt about their safety and care.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: The European-American response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine represents a watershed in the contemporary understanding of how nation-states behave and what motivates their leaders to act. It pits two leading theories of international affairs against each other. The difference between the two theories may even explain why there is a war going on at all.

The International Criminal Court opened an investigation into possible war crimes after Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a "special military operation" in Ukraine Feb. 24, a somber reminder of the number of war crimes committed over the last century. ... "With respect to the situation in Ukraine, the ICC prosecutor may investigate allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide," Dustin Lewis, research director at the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict, said.

An article by Alicia Ely Yamin: Paul Farmer’s far-too-early passing on February 21, 2022 is an incalculable loss to those of us who knew and loved him, to students and patients around the globe, to the world of global health—and to the diverse tapestry of activists, practitioners, and scholars working to advance human rights in health.

Florida legislators voted to ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy on Thursday, a move that would severely restrict access to the procedure in a state that for decades has been a refuge for women from across the South. ... Mary Ziegler, an abortion law expert at Florida State University, said the 15-week cutoff for abortions suggested that Republicans realized they could go only so far without alienating a significant portion of the electorate. “At least some Florida Republicans perceive the Florida electorate as being more pro-choice than it would be in Georgia or Alabama,” she said. “They’re trying to do enough to please the anti-abortion base and anti-abortion donors.”

A U.S. congressional committee says Donald Trump “engaged in a criminal conspiracy” with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, turning up pressure on the Department of Justice to investigate whether the former president broke the law. In a court filing, the House of Representatives panel probing last year’s Capitol riot says the evidence suggests Mr. Trump and members of his campaign team committed fraud and obstruction of Congress. ... Laurence Tribe, a retired Harvard law professor who once taught Mr. Garland, said he wasn’t sure why the Attorney-General “is doing as little as he apparently is doing.” He said Mr. Garland might believe it would be hard to prove Mr. Trump had the requisite state of mind to commit a crime because he may really have believed he had won the election. But Mr. Tribe said he did not think such a concern was a good reason not to investigate.

Fears over environmental catastrophes are growing among humanitarian experts and environmental organizations as the Russian invasion of Ukraine moves into its second week. On Friday, over 1,000 organizations and individuals from more than 75 countries released an open letter expressing their solidarity with the people of Ukraine and voicing concern over the war’s environmental and human toll. ... Alex Whiting, a Harvard Law professor and former prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, said the way the crime is defined, requiring a balancing between military advantage and environmental damage, coupled with the extremely high threshold of “widespread, long-term and severe damage” makes it extremely unlikely the prosecutor’s office will focus on this provision.

The American Institute has designated Nora Freeman Engstrom of Stanford Law School, Reporter for the Restatement of the Law Third, Torts: Concluding Provisions, as the R. Ammi Cutter Reporter’s Chair, and Henry E. Smith of Harvard Law School, Reporter for the Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property, as the A. James Casner Reporter’s Chair. Chairs are designated upon recommendation of the Director to the President of ALI.

Former U.S. Army prosecutor Glenn Kirschner urged again for Donald Trump to be indicted after the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack against the U.S. Capitol submitted a court filing on Wednesday—saying it had "a good-faith basis for concluding" that the former president engaged in a "criminal conspiracy." ... "The filing on behalf of the US House said: 'The select committee has a good-faith basis for concluding that the president and members of his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.' DOJ surely has the same, AG Garland," Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, tweeted.

When Don Creery punches in as a driver for Uber, he’s loath to cross the bridge from Seattle to Bellevue, because when he does, the minimum pay he’s guaranteed disappears. “If I get a ride request and it appears it’s going to the Eastside, I don’t take it,” he said.  ... “This is major legislation that would set a lot of precedence in the state that could have real unintended consequences, and it needs to be really carefully considered,” said Terri Gerstein, director of the State and Local Enforcement Project at the Harvard Law School Labor and Worklife Program.

An op-ed by Terri Gerstein: When Proposition 22, the (sadly, successful) initiative to strip gig workers of rights, was on the California ballot in 2020, there was immense news coverage and analysis. As gig companies like Uber and Lyft prepare similar attempts across the country, with the goal of ensuring their workers remain non-employees, a similarly high-profile fight is brewing in Massachusetts, where worker, environmental, and racial justice advocates have formed a coalition to gear up for a major battle as a similar measure comes before voters in November.

In September, President Larry Bacow announced that Jim Stock had been named the University’s first vice provost for climate and sustainability, charged with guiding and further developing Harvard’s strategies for advancing climate research and its global impact through close collaboration with students, faculty, staff, and academic leadership from across the University. ... The Gazette spoke with Advisory Committee members Jody Freeman, Jim Engell, and Dan Schrag about the timeliness of the new post, Stock’s unique qualifications for the job, and the ways the committee’s initial conversations are starting to help shape the goals of the new office. This interview was edited for clarity and length.