Media Mentions

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.

Videoconferencing software, such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, is increasingly used to facilitate access to the courts during the pandemic. While the software can bring physically distant parties together, not all connections are equal. A recent case in Massachusetts, Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Vazquez-Diaz, highlights the potential inequities of virtual hearings...Agreeing that the case presented novel legal issues, the trial judge stayed the ruling to allow Massachusetts’ highest court to hear the appeal. A joint amici brief was filed by the Boston Bar Association, The Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and The Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held oral argument in December 2020 and, as of the writing of this column, has yet to issue its decision...While it is tempting to see virtual hearings as an inclusive solution for physical court access challenges, as Katy Naples-Mitchell, Esq. of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute explains, existing societal inequities can be amplified by virtual technology. Judges may have quality broadband access and zoom-capable devices with large screens that enable them to see and hear all the hearing participants well. For others who appear before the court, what they see and hear may be qualitatively different.

Covid-19 vaccination requirements are fast becoming facts of life in the U.S., spreading business by business even as politicians and privacy advocates rail against them. Brown, Notre Dame and Rutgers are among universities warning students and staff they’ll need shots in order to return to campus this fall. Some sports teams are demanding proof of vaccination or a negative test from fans as arenas reopen. Want to see your favorite band play indoors in California? At bigger venues, the same rules apply...Given the fraught politics, many companies are “not necessarily wanting to be the first in their sector to take the plunge,” said Carmel Shachar, executive director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School. Still, “we’re going to see employers start to require vaccinations if you want to come into the office, if you will have a public-facing job.” ... Some legal experts have cautioned that because vaccines have only emergency federal approval, businesses can’t require them. But that issue is “a bit of a red herring,” Harvard’s Shachar said, because the vaccine data is so strong, the shots are so effective and the virus is so dangerous.

Once obscure, the Senate filibuster is coming under fresh scrutiny not only because of the enormous power it gives a single senator to halt President Joe Biden's agenda, but as a tool historically used for racism. Senators and those advocating for changes to the practice say the procedure that allows endless debate is hardly what the founders intended, but rather a Jim Crow-relic whose time is up...The debate ahead is no longer just academic, but one that could make or break Biden's agenda in the split 50-50 Senate. Carrying echoes of that earlier Civil Rights era, the Senate is poised to consider a sweeping elections and voting rights bill that has been approved by House Democrats but is running into a Senate Republican filibuster...Harvard Law professor Michael Klarman said while the filibuster may not in itself be racist, it certainly has been used that way in the past — as well as in the present. "There's nothing partisan about saying the filibuster has mostly been used for racist reasons, I think everybody would agree that that's true," he said.

Netflix’s “Tiger King” burst into a new world of pandemic streaming and gave viewers exotic animals, personal and professional drama, and a man with a mullet’s attempt to launch a political career in Oklahoma. But years before the theatrics, a legal showdown was brewing between zoo owners featured in the show and animal activist groups that seek to shut down the cub-petting industry with the help of the federal government. Jeffrey Lowe and Timothy Stark separated endangered tiger cubs from their mothers at too early an age to create photo opportunities with a paying public, according to such groups as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Animal Legal Defense Fund...The case against the Lowes is a “breakthrough moment,” said Katherine Meyer, visiting assistant clinical professor of law and director of the Animal Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law. Meyer was involved in one of the first lawsuits brought under the act to protect animals in captivity. PETA alleged in 1993 that Bobby Berosini had abused endangered orangutans for an act at his Las Vegas nightclub. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service eventually revoked the facility’s captive-bred wildlife permit. Environmental groups have brought several cases throughout the past decade using the same theory that the ESA can protect individual, captive animals, according to Meyer.