Media Mentions

In May 2008, the Buffalo Police Department fired Cariol Horne just months shy of her pension for 20 years of service vesting after she intervened when a fellow officer applied a chokehold to an unarmed Black man. This week a litigation team led by lawyers from Kirkland + Ellis and Harvard Law School won a ruling from a state court judge in New York awarding Horne back pay and benefits that she had previously been denied in another legal challenge to her firing more than a decade ago...Ronald Sullivan: “At stake was not only Cariol’s pension and her ability to support herself, but also the message being sent to other officers. She fulfilled her duty to protect and serve, but her first trip to court in 2010, where the court confirmed her termination, created a chilling effect on an officer’s duty to intervene. Despite what the official policy was, a court decision that terminated a fellow officer and denied her a pension did not encourage officers to follow Cariol’s lead—even though her behavior is what the nation was calling for and requiring.” ... Intisar Rabb: “Cariol presented a model for what we the people expect police officers to do when another officer is using excessive force against an unarmed civilian: She intervened to save a life and was punished for it. We thought it imperative that she get not only her pension, but that our laws are correct that led to the injustice of her losing it.”

Some companies are using persuasion, insisting that employees who don’t get a COVID-19 vaccine wear a mask at all times once they return to the workplace. A growing number of colleges are taking a firmer stance, saying they will require shots for all students. Many sports and entertainment venues, however, are taking a wait-and-see approach about requiring patrons to prove they’re vaccinated...States have long had the legal right to mandate vaccinations, such as for enrolling children in school. But the ability to carry around digital proof of vaccination status is new. And now the push to return to a more normal life has triggered a lot of discussion about vaccine passports, in which users can upload proof of vaccination on a smartphone app for potential entry into work, school, or other venues. That phenomenon has sparked a debate about equity, security, and privacy. “Not everybody has smartphone access, so how do you build a system without smartphone access to still prove someone has been vaccinated or it’s not appropriate for them to be vaccinated,” said Carmel Shachar, executive director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.

CEOs are frustrated. They seek greater transparency from their legal departments to understand and control their risk management programs. General counsel are frustrated in turn: they say they do not have the technology or data to do so, according to an Ernst + Young report published earlier this month. Sixty-one percent of the CEOs interviewed for the report said they would like their legal departments to take a more data-driven approach to their legal department’s risk management practices. David Wilkins, professor of law and faculty director at the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said the number of risks CEOs have to worry about is growing. At the outset of the pandemic, for example, legal departments struggled to go through contracts to find force majeure clauses and pull out the necessary information that could prevent litigation flowing from business disruption. Those pandemic-related risks are coupled with cybersecurity and data privacy risks. On top of it all, comes a patchwork of state and international laws governing how consumer data can be used.

An op-ed by Dean A. Strang and Nancy Gertner: Caron Nazario had a newly purchased SUV with a temporary plate taped to the back of the vehicle, properly and lawfully, until his new plates arrived. Daunte Wright had an expired license plate and an air freshener hanging from his rear view mirror. Police officers in both situations said that’s why they were stopped. Nazario was held at gun point and pepper sprayed, but survived. Wright, who had an open arrest warrant for missing a court appearance on a misdemeanor charge, was fatally shot by police. Although Nazario’s stop happened last December, in rural Virginia, and Wright’s last Sunday, in suburban Minnesota, the patterns are clear. Both are Black men. Both were stopped for minor traffic offenses, or for no offense at all. Of course, we don’t know the actual intentions of the police officers who stopped both men. We don’t know what racial attitudes or suspicions or anger they harbored, if any. But that is the point: According to the Supreme Court, the real reason for the stop — even if it was blatant racism — doesn’t matter. The court’s 1996 decision in Whren v. United States held that a traffic stop is lawful if police can come up with some traffic infraction to justify it, however trivial. The subjective intentions of the police — which could be the real reasons for the stop — are irrelevant.

In this sample from Third Degree, Elie Honig and Harvard Law student Eli Nachmany ‘22 discuss Derek Chauvin’s decision not to testify in his own murder trial.

On this episode of Conversations with Jim Zirin, renowned Harvard constitutional law Professor Laurence H. Tribe discusses all the civil suits and potential criminal charges targeting Donald Trump. He tells Jim Zirin that Trump has some interesting defenses in the possible criminal cases, but, at the end of the day, he will be held accountable.

About a dozen colleges have said they will require students to receive a Covid-19 vaccine before returning for in-person instruction this fall. The mandate from this small but growing number of schools inserts them into the increasingly politically charged debate over whether businesses and other institutions should be able to make inoculation a condition of participating in events in person. Here’s what we know about colleges and student Covid-19 vaccinations. ... Glenn Cohen, a professor at Harvard Law School, said some schools are likely getting tripped up by legal language requiring the federal government to inform people they have the right to refuse a vaccine approved under an emergency-use authorization. The three vaccines that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration—manufactured by Pfizer Inc., Moderna Inc. and Johnson & Johnson — were only approved for emergency use.

A Latina law school professor has been tasked with examining the future of one of the country's three branches of government. President Joe Biden has signed an executive order creating a presidential commission to study whether the Supreme Court should be overhauled, and he has named Yale Law School professor Cristina M. Rodríguez as its co-chair. Rodríguez and Bob Bauer, a professor at the New York University School of Law, will head the bipartisan commission to examine arguments both for and against a reform. ... The commission includes some of the nation’s best-known legal scholars and experts: Laurence H. Tribe of the Harvard Law School, Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, and Andrew Crespo, also of the Harvard Law School. Crespo, who is of Puerto Rican heritage, was the first Latino president of the Harvard Law Review.

As we mark a year of remote work, some organizations are trying to regulate the look of virtual communications and offering branded templates. Before the Zoom background becomes policed by corporate branding cops, it’s time to peer into the creativity and diversity on people’s screens. ... 45: Number of ready-to-use virtual backgrounds Harvard Law School offers to its students.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer told the ABA's International Law Section on Wednesday that his court will continue its recent trend of looking to overseas legal authorities and briefs from foreign interests as it weighs cases with worldwide implications. ... Swartz referred participants to Breyer’s two-hour speech to Harvard Law School last week in which the 82-year-old justice argued that public trust in the court rests on a public perception that “the court is guided by legal principle, not politics” and that such trust would be eroded if the court’s structure were changed in response to concerns about the influence of politics on the Supreme Court.

Yogurt was everywhere as volunteers opened boxes of fruit, frozen meat and dairy products that had shifted and spilled in transit to a food bank in Walworth County, Wis. They rushed to clean and transfer the packages of frozen meatballs, apples, milk and yogurt into cars for needy families to take home before they spoiled. The food came from The Farmers to Families Food Box program that the Trump administration launched to feed out-of-work Americans with food rescued from farmers who would otherwise throw it away as the coronavirus pandemic upended food supply chains. ... The USDA specified food boxes delivered in 2021 to the continental U.S. cost between $27 and $48 per box. But cheaper boxes presented new challenges and put additional burdens on food banks, said Emily Broad Leib, director of Harvard Law School's Food Law and Policy Clinic. The lower-cost boxes contained lower quality food, and food companies at times refused to deliver them to smaller pantries, leaving local organizations scrambling to find extra money for delivery, she said.

A small but growing number of colleges will require students to receive a Covid-19 vaccine, saying it is the most assured way of returning to some semblance of pre-pandemic campus life. ... Glenn Cohen, a professor at Harvard Law School, said schools are likely getting tripped up by legal language requiring the federal government to inform people they have the right to refuse a vaccine approved under an emergency-use authorization.

Loeb University Professor Annette Gordon-Reed is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning history, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. Her slender new book, On Juneteenth (Liveright / W.W. Norton, $15.95), is part history, part memoir and meditation on her own growing up in Texas, the original home to Juneteenth — the commemoration of the June 19, 1865, proclamation that slavery had ended in that state, and of late, a nationally recognized and now Harvard official holiday. She sets the stage with a brisk overview of the historical state.

Federal prosecutors’ show of leniency for some defendants charged in the long-running unrest in the streets of Portland could have an impact on similar criminal cases stemming from the Capitol riot, lawyers say...Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge, said she expected Portland comparisons as defense lawyers and the government jockey over the terms of potential plea deals. “Sure, it would be relevant … but that feels very different than entering into the Capitol,” said Gertner, now a lecturer at Harvard Law School. Gertner said many of the Capitol cases were headed for what she called a “no-time resolution,” meaning no prison time. But she emphasized that offering a deferred prosecution with no criminal record — like the Portland deals — was really up to prosecutors, who may be reluctant to agree to them amid lingering outrage over the Jan. 6 takeover. “I can see prosecutors not wanting to give them — and a judge can’t,” she said.

One Saturday morning in late March, Milicia Praca and her roommate grabbed their passports and a bag of crisps and drove towards the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and the Republic of Serbia. They were keen to accomplish an important task – enter Serbia, pull up their sleeves, and get vaccinated against COVID-19... “In Europe, for a person to literally drive to another country, get a vaccine and return home or to their place of residency, strikes me as unethical tourism,” said Glenn Cohen, a professor at Harvard Law School, who has specialised in health law policy, biotechnology and bioethics. “It increases the risk of the spread of COVID-19 and you may be taking a vaccine from someone who is entitled to it under that country’s law. People are putting themselves and others at risk as vaccine tourists,” he said...Most European countries require people to show proof of residency, citizenship or share details about their national health insurance, to get vaccinated. Professor Cohen believes these legal requirements may discourage vulnerable communities, such as undocumented migrants, from trying to get a jab. “To tackle the pandemic, everybody should be eligible to get the vaccine in the region they live in,” he said.

Yogurt was everywhere as volunteers opened boxes of fruit, frozen meat and dairy products that had shifted and spilled in transit to a food bank in Walworth County, Wisconsin...The food came from The Farmers to Families Food Box program that the Trump administration launched to feed out-of-work Americans with food rescued from farmers who would otherwise throw it away as the coronavirus pandemic upended food supply chains...The USDA specified food boxes delivered in 2021 to the continental U.S. cost between $27 and $48 per box. But cheaper boxes presented new challenges and put additional burdens on food banks, said Emily Broad Leib, director of Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic. The lower-cost boxes contained lower quality food, and food companies at times refused to deliver them to smaller pantries, leaving local organizations scrambling to find extra money for delivery, she said...Every six to twelve weeks, the USDA introduced a new phase of the program, changing food suppliers and forcing food banks to scramble to connect with new vendors or lose food supplies. “USDA didn’t give (distributors) any guidance as to who to serve or keep serving,” said Harvard’s Broad Leib. “You can’t rely on something if one day it’s there, then the next day it’s not.”

A podcast by Noah Feldman: Dr. Jeannine Bell, law professor at Indiana University who has studied hate crimes for more than 20 years, discusses the complex process of defining and charging someone with a hate crime. She also explains the larger significance of hate crime legislation and how police departments can expand prosecution of hate crimes.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: The consensus among legal experts seems to be that states have the right to mandate vaccine passports. The main basis is a 1905 Supreme Court case, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, which held that the Constitution wasn’t violated when the city of Cambridge required all adults to get the smallpox vaccine. Following the same logic, courts have upheld state laws mandating vaccines for schoolchildren. But we should not assume that this deference to state power would continue under the current Supreme Court. For one thing, the constitutional tests for infringements on personal liberty have been refined in the last half century. For another, the current court is deeply sympathetic to religious exemptions. If large numbers of people decline vaccination on religious grounds, it would effectively undermine the power of any passport system. The Jacobson precedent is certainly well established. It was written by Justice John Marshall Harlan (the first of two justices of that name), who established his place in the court’s pantheon by dissenting in the shameful case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld racial segregation.

About a year ago, the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s office stopped prosecuting several low-level offenses—minor drug possession, prostitution, and minor traffic offenses—to reduce the flow of people in and out of local jails and slow the spread of COVID-19. In March, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced she was making the changes permanent. The decision to stay the course, Mosby told The Appeal, was clear...Researchers and advocates have argued for years that more attention needs to be paid to the misdemeanor system, which ensnares millions of people each year but generally gets less public attention than the felony system. Roughly 80 percent of all criminal cases—more than 13 million annually—are misdemeanors, Harvard Law Professor Alexandra Natapoff told The Appeal. “We cannot reduce mass incarceration without reducing the misdemeanor net that sweeps the vast majority of people into the system in the first place,” she said. New declination policies, she added, “are extraordinarily important” to that effort.

A struggle is underway over how prosecutors charge gun crimes in Washington, D.C. The Justice Department says it needs flexibility to bring some cases in federal court, where penalties are higher. But civil rights groups say the policy discriminates against Black residents. NPR national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson reports. Featuring Harvard Law professor Andrew Crespo.

Coverage of the recent union election by Amazon warehouse workers has often referred to “national attention” around the “high-profile” event, for which “the world” and “we” have breathlessly awaited the outcome. The implied “we” are mostly news media, politicians, celebrities, and a pro-labor contingent of avid tweeters. It’s my job to relay Amazon workers’ reports of dehumanizing graveyard shifts and paranoia-inducing surveillance. But what about everyone else? ... Since people can’t protest at an e-commerce site, however, some labor reform advocates have floated the idea of a virtual picket line. This comes up in the Clean Slate Agenda, a report from Harvard Law School, produced by over 70 researchers, labor professionals, tech workers; they suggest lawmakers compel a company to post a notice on its website that informs consumers of a labor dispute and forces them to actively decide to cross the picket line...We asked Benjamin Sachs, a co-founder of the Clean Slate for Worker Powerproject, to elaborate. Sachs pointed to the existing legal framework and—a great idea—an easily achievable self-install that wouldn’t require any political battle at all.