Media Mentions

During a recent talk convened by the Harvard Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning, Harvard Law Professor Jody Freeman LL.M ’91 S.J.D. ’95 discussed the legal landscape for addressing climate change in the U.S.

It's Black History Month, which is likely to bring boundless stories of Black Excellence and Black Firsts. So today on the show, we're talking about Constance Baker Motley — a trailblazing civil rights judge who ruled in some landmark cases and helped pave the way for many to come after her (including, perhaps, the next Supreme Court justice?) But, as we learned, Motley's life was full of contradictions, and her many achievements also came with many costs. On this episode, we spoke to Tomiko Brown-Nagin, author of Civil Rights Queen, the new biography about Constance Baker Motley. Motley was the first Black woman to serve as a federal judge and the first Black woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court.

Joe Biden said during his presidential campaign that he would reduce student debt for millions of Americans, but his allies remain divided on the issue, and some of his supporters are losing hope he will deliver. ... “Administrative agencies have more latitude” with courts when they go through the regulatory process, said Howell Jackson, a Harvard law professor.

Following Donald Trump’s rally in Texas in which he defended the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters, the former president issued a statement repeating the claim that his vice president, Mike Pence, had the authority to overturn the 2020 election results. ... Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School, said via email that efforts to re-emphasize the limited role of the vice president “in no way demonstrate that the vice president has more than a largely ceremonial role to play in that capacity.”

Justice Stephen G. Breyer has a mild temperament, and he writes cautious opinions. But his questions from the bench can be wild flights of fancy, enlivening the proceedings with musings about marshmallow guns, aspirin fingers, tomato children and the Pussycat Burglar. In an affectionate tribute issued soon after Justice Breyer announced last week that he planned to retire, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. noted this striking aspect of his colleague’s work. ... “Breyer’s unique signature at oral argument — which challenged and often befuddled lawyers appearing before the bench — was the sheer length of his questions,” Richard J. Lazarus, a law professor at Harvard, wrote in an essay published on Friday.

Washington Post Live today announced the “Race in America: History Matters” series will spotlight the contributions of Black women throughout American history this February. The upcoming conversations marking Black History Month will highlight Ida B. Wells, Mamie Till-Mobley and Judge Constance Baker Motley, among others. ... The series will feature Michelle Duster, historian and great granddaughter of Ida B. Wells, Deborah Watts, co-founder of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, and Tomiko Brown-Nagin, author of the new book “Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality.” Janai Nelson, associate director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, will also share her reflections connecting the past and the present.

"Civil Rights Queen," the new book by Radcliffe Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin, explores the life of social justice pioneer, lawyer, politician, and judge Constance Baker Motley.

The Harvard Law Review has named a California-born daughter of Mexican immigrants as its newest president, elevating a Latina to the top of one of the most prestigious U.S. law journals for the first time in its 135-year history. Harvard Law School student Priscila Coronado, 24, said in an email Sunday that her experiences growing up as a Mexican American have informed her perspectives and that she wanted to "work hard to show how being a Latina is an important part of who I am."

Biden administration officials are kicking off a crackdown on power plant pollution, aiming to shift the nation’s electricity supply to cleaner energy in the face of congressional resistance and a Supreme Court that could limit the federal government’s ability to tighten public health standards. ... “Normally the court would wait until they have a new rule to review,” said Carrie Jenks, executive director of Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program, adding that EPA officials “obviously have to see what the Supreme Court says. And the Supreme Court could say things that would change their timing.”

In her new book, “Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality,” Radcliffe Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin shines a light on a lesser-known, yet central player in the Civil Rights Movement and women’s rights pioneer. The daughter of working-class immigrants, Motley attended Columbia Law School, argued several cases before the Supreme Court, became the first woman of color in the New York State Senate, the first woman to serve as Manhattan borough president, and the first Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary. Brown-Nagin, who is also the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law and Professor of History, spoke with the Gazette about her new book and Motley’s lasting impact. This interview was edited for clarity and length.

Though confidential informants are often utilized by law enforcement agencies to produce more arrests, the lack of transparency around the process has long had experts concerned. In most cases, confidential informants are suspects that have been arrested or convicted for crimes of their own, but cut a deal with police and prosecutors to reduce their sentence in exchange for information that leads to a more valuable arrest. ... “Criminal law is highly tolerant of the secrecy and the confidentiality, and therefore the lack of transparency and accountability that goes with that in the use of informants,” said Harvard law professor and criminal justice expert Alexandra Natapoff. In some ways, Natapoff said, Texas has set an example on the issue.

Ninth Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke’s writings are again getting attention as he crafted a majority opinion and an alternative attached as a concurrence he said liberal colleagues could adopt en banc in the Second Amendment case. “You’re welcome,” he added, in a sarcastic aside. .. “It really undermines the relationships on the court,” said Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge in the District of Massachusetts and current professor at Harvard Law. “And you may not care about the relationships, but these are people who have to live together for some time.”

Justice Stephen Breyer had not even formally announced his retirement before Republicans and conservative legal operatives began their racist crusade against his as-yet-to-be-named successor. During the 2020 presidential campaign, then-candidate Joe Biden promised to nominate a Black woman to the first seat that came open. Biden has many extraordinary candidates on his short list. But for reasons that should surprise nobody who’s been paying attention to recent history, these early commenters do not appear to see these candidates’ impeccable credentials and extraordinary accomplishments. Instead, they have opted to prejudge any Black woman, and indeed all Black women nominees, as inherently inferior and underqualified. ... Some background that is too often left out of these discussions: Women of color were locked out of the judiciary for most of American history. The first Black woman to serve on a federal court, Constance Baker Motley, was not appointed until 1966. Motley had a sterling track record of accomplishments: She argued before the Supreme Court on 10 occasions and won nine times, assisted Thurgood Marshall in litigating Brown v. Board of Education, and tried myriad cases in lower courts, including several in New York.* But as Harvard law professor and legal historian Tomiko Brown-Nagin has recently documented, the American Bar Association hesitated to approve Motley. Why? The white men who ran the ABA doubted whether she was sufficiently qualified. They ultimately gave her a lukewarm rating of “qualified” rather than “well qualified,” even though she was one of the most successful and experienced litigators of her era—an advocate so committed that she risked her life to defend her Black clients in the Jim Crow South.

As President Joe Biden reaffirms his commitment to nominate the first Black woman to the US Supreme Court, it makes sense to revisit the life and work of another Black woman who profoundly shaped the law: Constance Baker Motley. Motley was a “desegregation architect” who over the course of decades inspired numerous women lawyers and judges — including some on the short list of potential nominees. Yet she’s often missing from the pantheon of great Americans. Many are familiar with Thurgood Marshall, but few outside judiciary circles talk about Motley’s vital role in dismantling racial segregation and gender discrimination. ... In her magnificent new volume, “Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality,” Tomiko Brown-Nagin, the dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, offers a gripping chronicle of Motley’s life and career, and in the process gives the trailblazer’s leviathan achievements the attention they deserve.

An op-ed co-authored by Laurence Tribe: On Saturday, Trump is set to throw red meat to his base — and continue gearing up for a possible 2024 presidential run — at the Houston-area "Save America" rally. In this alternate reality, the ongoing investigation into his election scheming is all a witch hunt, those "alternate electors" were just trying to help America, and he and his fellow plotters are the real victims. Back in the real world, the Justice Department announced on Tuesday it was investigating the Trump campaign’s bogus elector slate scheme, which has quickly become a focus of the House select committee investigating Jan. 6. The scheme began in December 2020 and involved Republicans in seven states’ sending Congress forged and fraudulent alternate electoral slates naming Donald Trump the winner of the presidential election.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring, and President Joe Biden has promised to nominate a Black woman in his place. Laurence Tribe, Harvard professor emeritus, speaks with Jim Braude about Breyer’s legacy, and what his absence will mean on the Supreme Court.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: The conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court is ushering in a new era of judicial activism. But if it overturns the 1973 abortion-rights precedent Roe v. Wade, as it seems poised to do, the same majority is walking into a conceptual trap. The case against Roe rests on nearly 50 years of conservative argument that the landmark decision was the culmination of a liberal generational failure to exercise judicial restraint, of creating constitutional rights unsupported by constitutional principles. Hence the contradiction: Today’s conservative majority appears ready to issue an epoch-making decision endorsing restraint as it enters a period of aggressive activism.

President Biden has vowed to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court as Justice Stephen Breyer prepares to retire. Harvard Law professor Alan Jenkins joins CBS News to discuss who the potential nominees are and what the appointment will mean for the highest court in the country.

A judge’s decision this week to invalidate the largest offshore oil and gas lease sale in the nation’s history, on grounds that the government had failed to take climate change into consideration, shows that regulatory decisions that disregard global warming are increasingly vulnerable to legal challenges, analysts said Friday. ... “This would not have been true 10 years ago for climate analysis,” said Richard Lazarus, a professor of environmental law at Harvard University. He said it is “a big win” that courts are forcing government agencies to include “a very robust and holistic analysis of climate” as part of the decision-making when it comes to whether or not to drill on public lands and waters.

Scientists and international governing bodies have been very clear: In order to have a shot at limiting the worst impacts of global warming, investment in new fossil fuel projects must stop. Yet the federal body that regulates America’s pipelines has created a perverse incentive for companies to keep building methane-leaking fossil fuel infrastructure that doesn’t serve anybody except shareholders. ... The ruling was notable, and may signal a shifting view of the federal courts on FERC, explained Ari Peskoe, Director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School. “The court found that FERC had failed to justify that the pipeline was needed, which is the core determination that FERC has to make — that the pipeline is needed for the ‘public convenience and necessity,’” said Peskoe. “It’s the sort of squishy legal standard that courts are typically very deferential to regulators on. So for the court to say that FERC didn’t properly implement its own policy — that has resulted in FERC approving nearly 500 projects and disapproving of only two since 1999 — was unusual and noteworthy.”

In a column for MSNBC, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe and former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut claim Donald Trump's rally in Texas on Saturday will be all about putting on a brave face as the House committee investigating the Jan 6th insurrection closes in on the former president and his plot to steal the 2020 presidential election. ... Writing, "On Saturday, Trump is set to throw red meat to his base — and continue gearing up for a possible 2024 presidential run — at the Houston-area 'Save America' rally. In this alternate reality, the ongoing investigation into his election scheming is all a witch hunt, those 'alternate electors' were just trying to help America, and he and his fellow plotters are the real victims," the two added Trump has good reason to be nervous about what is happening outside his circle of adoring fans.