Media Mentions

Food businesses and nonprofit organizations recently released an open letter urging Congress to pass a bill intended to fight hunger by removing barriers to food donation. ... The open letter, which is signed by more than 25 groups including WW International, City Harvest, and the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, advocates for these protections to include businesses that are donating directly to recipients in need. Current protections only cover companies that donate to nonprofit organizations. “Promoting and enabling the donation of safe, surplus food is a highly effective and simple tool to curb food waste, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and address food insecurity,” Emily Broad Leib, Director for the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic tells Food Tank. “Yet, our current laws fall short of really encouraging businesses to donate food instead of tossing it into landfill.”

The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in a challenge to Mississippi’s law that bans abortion after the 15th week of pregnancy. It’s the most significant abortion case in years and a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade. Plus, Stacey Abrams announces a run for Georgia governor in 2022. And, putting high gas prices in perspective. Guests: Harvard University constitutional law professor Noah Feldman and Axios' Emma Hurt and Ben Geman.

When the U.S. Supreme Court decided an important voting rights case earlier this year, its ruling made it more difficult for voters to challenge restrictive state voting laws.  Now, the state of Texas is making an argument that, if adopted, would further hobble use of what remains of the Voting Rights Act. ...In a one-paragraph concurring opinion in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the voting rights case decided last summer, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch said the court’s previous cases assumed that private parties had the right to bring lawsuits challenging state election laws under Section 2 of the VRA, but it was an “open question” the Supreme Court had not yet decided. Justice Clarence Thomas was the only other member to sign on to Gorsuch’s concurrence.  “If it hadn’t been for the Gorsuch line in Brnovich, I would have thought it was kind of a crazy argument,” said Ruth Greenwood, director of the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School, of the Texas brief.

By now, it’s clear that Beijing is greatly discouraging, if not completely forbidding, listings of Chinese tech companies in the U.S. What’s unclear is what Beijing will do with existing Chinese ADRs, an overwhelming majority of which used variable-interest entities to circumvent Chinese laws to get listed. ...The fate of VIEs isn’t the only concern for Chinese ADRs. Under a law (HFCA) passed under the Trump administration in December, Chinese companies may face delisting if they refuse to hand over financial information to American regulators, a demand that Beijing has refused so far. “Unless something unexpected happens, the Chinese ADR market should be eliminated within three years because of HFCA,” said Jesse Fried, professor at Harvard Law School. “Even absent the HFCA, China might have prevented companies from listing in the U.S. to build up its own markets and have greater control over the companies. But the U.S. government seems to be doing China’s work for it.”

Laurence Tribe tells Lawrence O’Donnell that he anticipates the Supreme Court will gut the fundamental right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade after hearing arguments on Mississippi’s abortion ban and warns the legitimacy of the court and the rule of law are at risk given the conservative justices’ willingness to “reverse the trend of expanding rights” for the first time in our nation’s history.

A column by Noah Feldman: Chief Justice John Roberts is searching for a compromise to preserve some basic right to abortion while moving it earlier in pregnancy, perhaps as early as 15 weeks. But based on today’s oral argument, it seems unlikely that any of the other justices is interested. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in particular, seemed to telegraph a willingness to overturn Roe v. Wade altogether.

It was supposed to be the beginning of a new era for Black farmers. After the 2020 election, the Biden administration and a new Democratic majority in Congress promised to rectify the results of years of discrimination and systemic racism, and incoming Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and House Agriculture Committee Chair David Scott identified justice for Black farmers as a top priority. But their biggest push to correct historic wrongs—$4 billion in direct debt relief payments authorized in the American Rescue Plan—was stymied by lawsuits from white farmers before any checks were cut. ... On November 19, the House narrowly passed the Build Back Better Act, but it is unclear whether Democratic lawmakers will get it through the Senate and how it might be reshaped in the process. If it does make it to the president’s desk, said Dania Davy, director of land retention and advocacy at the Federation, she’s concerned that the new debt relief program will replace—instead of supplement—the more targeted help for Black farmers. ... During a discussion on debt cancellation hosted by the Food Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School this week, multiple panelists echoed that point. “You can’t effectively address racial discrimination without using racial language,” said Keisha Stokes-Hough, a senior supervising attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center. But as a result of the lawsuits, advocates have no choice but to try.

What do the results of these three different cases say about the American criminal justice system and the country's so-called “racial reckoning”? Ron Sullivan, Harvard Law professor and director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard and Renée Graham, Boston Globe columnist and associate editor, joined Jim Braude on Greater Boston to discuss.

Mississippi on Wednesday is challenging Roe v. Wade, the law of the land for nearly 50 years. Nine Supreme Court justices will hear arguments on whether to preserve or undo abortion rights, but, experts say, Americans should pay close attention to two members of the court: Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Legal scholars anticipate that either one of them could have an outsize impact in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization and determine the fate of reproductive rights in the United States. ... "It's very clear where Justice Kagan, Justice Sotomayor, and Justice Breyer are," I. Glenn Cohen, a professor at Harvard Law School, told Insider. "They are going to vote to strike down the Mississippi law as unconstitutional … They don't want to reverse Roe v. Wade. This has been consistent in their jurisprudence." ... "Justice Thomas and Justice Alito are pretty clear from their prior votes that they are on the side of thinking that the right to abortion in the Constitution is wrong. It doesn't exist," Cohen said. "So their votes are pretty set."

Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in October to confirm Catherine Lhamon to lead the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR). When Lhamon held the same position under the Obama administration, her office enforced Title IX—the federal statute prohibiting sex-based discrimination in education—in a manner that endangered fundamental free speech and due process rights. ... Last year, the Department of Education enacted new, balanced regulations that protect the rights of all students, consistent with many judicial rulings. ... Prominent feminist legal scholars, including Harvard Law professors Jeannie Suk Gersen and Janet Halley, as well as the University of San Francisco Law School's Lara Bazelon, heralded the regulations for their overall fairness and for rectifying injustices in OCR's prior policies.

On Juneteenth By Annette Gordon-Reed. This book weaves together history and memoir into a short volume that is insightful, touching and courageous. Exploring the racial and social complexities of Texas, her home state, Gordon-Reed asks readers to step back from the current heated debates and take a more nuanced look at history and the surprises it can offer. Such a perspective comes easy to her because she was a part of history — the first Black child to integrate her East Texas school. On several occasions, she found herself shunned by whites and Blacks alike, learning at an early age that breaking the color line can be threatening to both races.

An op-ed by Charles Fried: In 1989 I argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, a case challenging a Missouri statute that forbade the use of any state funds or facilities for the conducting of abortions. On behalf of the United States I argued that Roe should be overruled, except in extreme cases such as when the life or health of the pregnant woman was at risk. I made these points in good conscience, drawing on a mix of history, precedent and what I saw as the interests of the rule of law. I was a law clerk to Justice John Marshall Harlan II in 1961 when he dissented in Poe v. Ullman, a case involving the liberty of married couples to use contraceptives without interference or inquiry by the government, and provided what I then considered — and still do — the foundation of the law of privacy and personal dignity.

Twitter Inc. on Monday became the latest Silicon Valley titan to appoint an Indian-born chief executive officer, joining the likes of Microsoft and Google in recognizing the Asian country as one of the world’s richest pools of tech talent. ...“Being an Indian is a big advantage now, people expect us to be good engineers and good managers,” said Vivek Wadhwa, a Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School and the author of a book profiling Nadella’s rise at Microsoft. “From what I know, Parag Agrawal shares Satya’s values and has a similar management style.”

Last Tuesday, a pharmaceutical company traded on the New York Stock Exchange announced a grant to Manhattan’s prestigious Lenox Hill Hospital to launch a new psychotherapy treatment clinic focused on serving marginalized and underserved communities. ... Apart from FDA-approved medications, which present the prospect of a multibillion-dollar industry by the end of the this decade, Oregon is poised to become the first state to open recreational markets in 2022 for mushrooms containing psilocybin. “People are starting to figure out what they need to do to go to Oregon and set up shop,” said Mason Marks, an attorney with Harris Bricken in Portland who also leads the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation at Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics.

Happy the elephant will get her day in court, and potentially open the door for other animals to follow, with the help of high-profile advocates who contend the lumbering zoo resident deserves a fundamental legal right. In a potentially groundbreaking case, famed Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe has joined philosophers, theologians and a menagerie of others in arguing that Happy is a “legal person” with the corresponding right to seek freedom from what Tribe calls “her imprisonment” by the Bronx Zoo. “Now fifty years old, Happy remains in solitary confinement, unable to lead a physically, intellectually, emotionally and socially complex life despite her capacity to do so,” Tribe and several other prominent law professors wrote in a legal brief filed late last month. Tribe’s amicus brief is the latest of many to be filed with the New York state Court of Appeals, which sometime next year will hear the Nonhuman Rights Project argue that Happy, just like a person, enjoys habeas corpus protections (Greenwire, Dec. 18, 2020).

The U.S. Supreme Court should reverse an Eighth Circuit decision finding that a law firm's day-late levy challenge was barred by a tax code deadline, tax clinics and professors told the justices Monday, arguing the finding contravenes congressional intent. ... In its brief, the Tax Clinic at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School rejected arguments from the government saying the deadline under Section 6330 is not subject to equitable tolling, or time extensions in certain circumstances. ... T. Keith Fogg, who filed the brief for Harvard's tax clinic, told Law360 on Monday that equitable tolling is an "issue that particularly impacts low income taxpayers who must navigate the filing rules without legal assistance."

Inspired by family, Samantha Maltais, the first Wampanoag to attend Harvard Law School, plans a future focused on Indigenous rights and environmental justice.

Ketanji Brown Jackson, seen by Democrats as a top contender for a future Supreme Court vacancy, is one of three judges assigned the weighty task of reviewing former President Trump's bid to block a congressional subpoena for records related to the Jan. 6 attack. ... Still, if Jackson votes against Trump in the pending case, they said, it’s a near certainty that Republicans would use it against her if she is eventually tapped for the high court. “The chance is 100 percent that Republicans will use her vote against her,” said Mark Tushnet, a law professor at Harvard. “The only interesting question is how they would spin a vote for Trump against her — probably to say that it shows that she casts her votes with an eye to how it's going to benefit her.”

Adira Levine ’22, a third-year Harvard Law School student, was recently recognized by the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice for her essay on the intersection of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and environmental law. Levine’s paper, “FOIA Disclosure and the Supreme Court,” received the 2021 Gellhorn-Sargentich Law Student Essay Award, which was announced at the organization’s Administrative Law Conference on November 18. “It was such an honor to receive this award, and to be asked to speak about my work with the section’s audience,” said Levine, who delivered remarks on her work and its findings at the conference. “I was inspired to write the paper during a spring 2021 seminar with Professor Richard Lazarus ’79, called Environmental Law and the Supreme Court. I was particularly interested in writing on a topic related to administrative law, and found the recent FOIA cases to be a perfect opportunity.”

The Department of Justice announced this week that it would crack down on airline passengers who throw tantrums. Now, if Attorney General Merrick Garland would only get around to doing something about people who plot the overthrow of our government and a former president who’s serially obstructed justice and abused power we might be getting someplace. ... Revered legal scholar, Laurence Tribe, who taught Garland when the attorney general was a student at Harvard Law School, suggests we give his former student a little more time, but not an unlimited amount. He hears the clock ticking too. Tribe told me, “If Merrick Garland hadn’t authorized the Bannon indictment when he did, I’d certainly have gotten mad long since. At least with respect to someone like me, he bought a few weeks with that indictment—but not a few months.” “All things considered,” he continued, “I’ll be both disappointed and angry if we find ourselves going into January 2022 without strong evidence—in a town that leaks like a sieve—that DOJ is moving full speed ahead on holding Trump and his enablers, facilitators, funders and co-conspirators criminally accountable for the coup d’état they tried to pull off and the violent insurrection they mounted against the Capitol to delay, obstruct and, if possible, subvert the solemn electoral proceeding there underway.”

When state legislators passed a criminal justice reform bill in 2018, Massachusetts residents won the ability to clear away certain criminal records — including convictions for marijuana possession and other now-legal activities — that can make it difficult to land a job, rent an apartment, and otherwise move on with life. ... “Our expungement statute has been an utter failure,” said Katy Naples-Mitchell, an attorney at Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice who specializes in criminal justice policies. “We could be helping people on a much grander scale, but instead we’re seeing this paltry, piecemeal effort — and even that has been almost totally frustrated, in part by a bench that is often a lot less progressive than the legislation it’s charged with carrying out.”