Media Mentions

... Yet this game plan is still rare: Reichheld cites a recent Bain & Company survey: “Only 10% of business leaders believe that the primary purpose of their firm is to maximize value for customers. Many companies still operate in the old-school financial capitalist mindset in which maximizing shareholder value is front and center.” ...According to studies made by Harvard Law Professor Lucian Bebchuk and his colleagues, there is no evidence that the firms in question have made any change in their actions since the 2019 declaration. Bebchuk concludes that the 2019 BRT declaration was “only for show.” In effect, we are dealing with a smokescreen: the goal of many major corporations has become undiscussable.

...A six-justice majority is a different animal. A six-justice majority, such as the one now firmly in control, is the judicial equivalent of the monarchy’s “heir and a spare.” The pathways to victory are enlarged. The overall impact is far greater than the single-digit difference suggests. ... But even the more patient justices — Roberts, sometimes Kavanaugh, and, at least judging from her first year, Barrett — are no moderates. All three, for instance, joined a particularly radical Alito opinion last term that neutered the remaining major enforcement mechanism in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. “I dislike the fact that journalists refer to the six as conservative,” said Harvard Law School professor Charles Fried, who served as solicitor general under Reagan. “They’re not. They’re reactionaries. That’s the only correct term for them.”

Aircraft pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright had to resort to a coin toss to decide who would attempt the first powered flight, but almost all modern aviation relies on at least two pilots in the cockpit. That could soon change, as airlines and planemakers develop new technology that would rely to a greater extent on automation and eliminate the need for a co-pilot. ... Whether passengers will be willing to use a single-pilot plane depends largely on cost, according to Ashley Nunes, a research fellow at Harvard Law School.“For the average consumer, cash is king. If the price is low enough, you’re going to catch that flight,” he said. “The saga with the Boeing 737 MAX is a great example of this; in the aftermath of that particular event, large groups of consumers said, ‘We’re not going to fly that plane.’ And guess what? They’re flying it today.” But reducing the number of pilots on board may not in fact drive down airlines' costs and allow them to offer cheaper flights, Nunes warned: “There are numerous industries where you remove the human, your costs actually increase because of the amount of safety oversight that is required for the technology."

Op-ed by Terri Gerstein, Director, State and Local Enforcement Project: One of the most interesting union campaigns in recent years is happening right now in Buffalo, New York. Workers in three Starbucks outlets started a union organizing effort over their concerns about seniority pay, scheduling, staffing levels, and safety and health during COVID (plus, at one store an infestation of bees was left festering for months). Earlier this month, the National Labor Relations Board mailed ballots to the workers in these stores, who will have four weeks to vote on whether to unionize with Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union. If they do, these stores would be the first unionized locations among the ubiquitous chain’s thousands of U.S. locations.

Incoming mayor Eric Adams sought to distance himself Monday from a Brooklyn for-profit college president who was recently reinstated despite allegations of serial sexual misconduct as Gov. Hochul vowed an investigation into the “deeply disturbing situation.” An Adams spokesman promised to look into returning $4,000 in campaign contributions from ASA College president Alex Shchegol and his wife following a Daily News expose. At least 10 women have accused Shchegol of sexual misconduct... The News reported exclusively Saturday that Shchegol — forced out by the college’s board in 2018 when the misconduct allegations surfaced — is back in charge after using his power as owner to fire board members who opposed his reinstatement. ... Higher education experts warned that accreditors often move slowly and don’t have law enforcement power to compel colleges to produce or preserve documents. “Accreditors are notorious for never cutting anyone off,” said Eileen Connor, the director of the Predatory Lending Project at Harvard Law School.

Sidley Austin, taking a page from other professional service industries, recently announced that it is doling out new titles to associates based on seniority as a way to better reflect “where” associates are in their career. With indicators showing the the track to partnership only lengthening, is there value in providing more waypoints toward the coveted counsel or partnership promotion? “There is a long gap between associate and partner, so in some ways it makes sense to create and acknowledge with titles different levels of role. That can help with retention, assuming that the titles are meaningful,” Harvard Law professor Scott Westfahl said.

The first time the Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig told computer scientists they were the unwitting regulators of the digital age — about 20 years ago — he made a coder cry. “I am not a politician. I’m a programmer,” Mr. Lessig recalls her protesting, horrified by the idea. Now, the notion that “code is law”— from Mr. Lessig’s 1999 book “Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace” — does not shock young engineers or lawyers, the professor says. To digital natives it is “obvious” that technology dictates behavior with rules that are not value neutral.

Friday afternoon, the jury in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse came back to deliver the final verdict, not guilty. WORT Assistant News Director Nate Wegehaupt is joined by Harvard Law Professor Ron Sullivan to discuss the verdict, and the parallels to other cases here in Wisconsin.

Say It Loud!: On Race, Law, History, and Culture By Randall Kennedy, Michael R. Klein Professor of Law: This collection of essays offers a full portrait of Kennedy’s thinking as a law professor and public intellectual, demonstrating his commitment to reflection over partisanship, thinking over feeling.

Podcast featuring Jeannie Suk Gersen, John H. Watson, Jr. Professor of Law: Will the Supreme Court Overturn Roe v. Wade? Critical cases on abortion rights are being heard by a 6–3 majority of conservative Justices. The decisions will have repercussions for everyone of childbearing age.

On Juneteenth, By Annette Gordon-Reed, Carl M. Loeb University Professor: In a book that is part memoir, part history, Gordon-Reed (who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for “The Hemingses of Monticello”) recounts her continuing affection for her home state of Texas, despite its reputation for violence and racism, writing that “the things that happened there couldn’t have happened in other places.”

An op-ed by Ronald S. Sullivan, Jesse Climenko Clinical Professor of Law: In a two-week trial that reignited debate over self-defense laws across the nation, a Wisconsin jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse for shooting three people, two fatally, during a racial justice protest in Kenosha. ... As a professor of criminal law, I teach my students that the law of self-defense in America proceeds from an important concept: Human life is sacred, and the law will justify the taking of human life only in narrowly defined circumstances. The law of self-defense holds that a person who is not the aggressor is justified in using deadly force against an adversary when he reasonably believes that he is in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury. This is the standard that every state uses to define self-defense.

Book review by Kenneth W. Mack, Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law: The civil rights activist and leader Fannie Lou Hamer spoke truth to power with an authenticity that makes her words, her actions and even her singing seem to have immediate appeal to us. In 1962, Hamer was a Mississippi sharecropper with little formal schooling when she decided to attend a voting rights organizing meeting at a local church. Two years later, she was facing down President Lyndon Johnson and the national civil rights leadership at the Democratic National Convention. ... The historian Keisha N. Blain’s “Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America” employs “a blend of social commentary, biography, and intellectual history” to harness Hamer’s example for the present.

THE BROKEN CONSTITUTION: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America, by Noah Feldman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30.) Abraham Lincoln, Feldman contends, embraced a new, “moral Constitution” by purging the country’s original sin of slavery and re-establishing the nation on a more noble foundation. A professor at Harvard Law School, Feldman is “a lucid, provocative stylist” as well as “a prolific scholar and commentator on current affairs … well equipped to assess Lincoln’s constitutional record,” Sean Wilentz writes in his review. “‘The Broken Constitution’ displays its author’s usual brilliance and boldness in his contrarianism, and a passionate engagement with the past.”

Questions regarding vaccination status may be more polarizing than talk about politics and religion at this year’s Thanksgiving dinner table. The TEN is here to help you navigate this tough table talk. [With Daniel Shapiro]

When Sangu Delle JD/MBA ’16 was a young boy growing up in Accra, Ghana, his mother would help him up onto the stool in the bathroom before his bedtime prayers. “Look in the mirror,” she’d tell him, “and ask yourself, ‘What have I done today? Was today better than yesterday? Did I make the world better? If you’re not satisfied with the answer, don’t sleep.” Delle laughs, “It was a crazy thing for a child to do, but it sets you on a path where you’re constantly pushing yourself to improve the world around you.” While Delle’s path may have changed along the way, his commitment to improving the world around him has been unyielding.

Willie Phillips, confirmed Tuesday night to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, is poised to be the tie-breaking vote on two proceedings that will shape the future of the U.S. power grid, electric markets and the clean energy rollout. He could vote on a market pricing rule benefiting nuclear and renewable generators that took effect in PJM Interconnection, the country’s largest regional grid operator managing the flow of power to 65 million people in the eastern states. And he’s expected to weigh in on a proposed new wholesale market created by a group of large electric utilities in the Southeast, including Southern Co. and Duke Energy and Tennessee Valley Authority. Opponents say the new market could crowd out independent renewable generators. ...“It’s a huge set of issues on the plate for FERC,” said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School.

Contrary to what local leaders are telling you, building a new 150-bed “misdemeanor jail” is not going to make Jackson safer. In fact, it will make things worse. ... Further support for saying no to proponents of a new misdemeanor jail is found in Harvard Law School Professor Alexandra Natapoff’s recent book “Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal.”

On Juneteenth, by Annette Gordon-Reed. A Harvard law professor and author of The Hemingses of Monticello, which won both the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize, Gordon-Reed is the textbook definition of public intellectual; and yet she gets personal in this slender, evocative memoir, blending textures from her small-town Texas girlhood with the unofficial celebration of slavery’s demise and the broader canvas of race in America, as when she integrated her public school: “My great-great-aunt…the one who lived in Houston and was also quite extravagant—bought boxes and boxes of dresses, tights, blouses, skirts, and hats from the most upscale department store in the city at the time, Sakowitz… Making sure I was dressed to the nines was her contribution to the civil rights movement.”

An article by Jill Lepore: Amicus briefs have been filed on Happy’s behalf by a legion of the country’s most respected lawyers, philosophers, and animal behavioralists, including Laurence Tribe, Martha Nussbaum, and the much-celebrated scientist Joyce Poole, who has studied elephants for nearly as long as Happy has been alive, and who co-directs ElephantVoices, a nonprofit research center that studies elephant communication, cognition, and social behavior. Briefs in support of the WCS, on the other hand, as Tribe pointed out to me in an email, have been filed instead by “groups with a strong economic self-interest,” such as the National Association for Biomedical Research, which claims that establishing personhood for Happy risks the future of all laboratory testing on all animals. ... In 2016, after the NhRP filed a second habeas corpus petition for Kiko, Harvard’s Laurence Tribe submitted an amicus brief, ​​disputing the court’s claim that Kiko could not be a person on the ground that persons bear both rights and duties. The court’s definition of personhood, he argued, “would appear on its face to exclude third-trimester fetuses, children, and comatose adults (among other entities whose rights as persons the law protects).”

In one of the poorest counties in America, at the core of the Deep South’s rural “Black Belt” where sharecroppers worked cotton fields long after Emancipation, sanitation conditions sometimes seem to belong in the antebellum South. With no municipal wastewater treatment for the predominantly Black communities, most residents devise their own septic systems, which may or may not work, and which can leave raw sewage accumulating in backyards. “Nineteenth-century” diseases like hookworm have been found in many residents. Now, the Biden administration is making Alabama’s Lowndes County a test case in environmental justice, applying a never-before-used provision from the 1964 Civil Rights Act that advocates say could lay the groundwork for how the federal government addresses some of the worst problems plaguing communities of color around the country. ... Just days after taking office, the White House issued an executive order titled Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, and one week later followed with another, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, noted Hannah Perls, a fellow at the Environmental & Energy Law Program at Harvard Law. “There’s nothing different about the laws between Obama and Trump and now Biden, it’s just about having the political will to enforce them,” Perls told MarketWatch. Perls thinks the Justice Department, through its investigation, is likely to issue guidelines for how the Alabama and Lowndes agencies may come into compliance with what it determines to be necessary. It may also require measures to mitigate the harm done by the lack of adequate sewer system. That will likely take time and energy, she said.