Media Mentions

Alan Dershowitz, a member of President Trump's legal team, cited Harvard Law Professor Nikolas Bowie as a scholar who supports the argument that abuse of power doesn't warrant impeachment. Bowie told CNN's Anderson Cooper and Jeffrey Toobin that Dershowitz is wrong.

Facebook is a step away from creating its global Oversight Board for content moderation. The bylaws for the board, released on Jan. 28, lay out the blueprint for an unprecedented experiment in corporate self-governance for the tech sector. While there’s good reason to be skeptical of whether Facebook itself can fix problems like hate speech and disinformation on the platform, we should pay closer attention to how the board proposes to make decisions. ... When I spoke with Noah Feldman from Harvard Law School, who came up with the Supreme Court for Facebook concept and advises Zuckerberg, he imagined that other tech companies might one day bring their predicaments to the Oversight Board if they agreed the decision would be binding.

John F. Cogan Jr. ’52, a legal leader, civic activist and dedicated supporter of Harvard Law School, has died. He was 93. Cogan was a longtime attorney of the Boston law firm Hale & Dorr, now WilmerHale, joining the firm in 1952. During his nearly 50-year career, he served as chairman of the firm’s corporate department and was a member of the executive committee. He was managing partner from 1976 to 1984 and was chairman from 1984 to 1996. After retiring as of counsel in 1999, Cogan remained connected to the firm.

An article by Jeannie Suk Gersen: Prosecuting a case in front of a trial jury comes naturally to Representative Adam Schiff, a former federal prosecutor and the lead House manager in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Schiff has urged senators to think of themselves as “impartial jurors” with a constitutional responsibility “to hold a fair and thorough trial.” But, more than a week into the trial, the question of the President’s guilt of the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress has been upstaged by suspense over whether the Senate will vote to allow the process for examining evidence that we ordinarily associate with a “trial”—particularly, hearing witness testimony. Once the allotted time for speeches by both sides has run, and after senators have a chance to put questions to each side, Democrats want the Senate to issue subpoenas for evidence, while Republicans aim to move immediately to a vote to acquit.

Clean energy advocates have issued numerous warnings that a controversial December decision by federal regulators to raise the floor price for state-subsidized resources bidding in the PJM Interconnection's capacity market would harm the ability of new clean energy technologies to enter the market. But options to challenge the order from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in court are extremely limited. Stakeholders from the grid operator to confectioner Hershey have filed requests with FERC for a rehearing of the Dec. 19 order, but language in the Federal Power Act shields regulators from litigation when they delay responses to such requests...However, it's become a norm for FERC to delay, or toll, rehearing requests received on its orders, according to several attorneys... "There's been a lot of grumbling about FERC's practices of sitting on these rehearing requests," Ari Peskoe, director of Harvard University's Electricity Law Initiative, told Utility Dive.

Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe urged the GOP-controlled Senate to allow witnesses to testify in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump ― or risk setting a “terrible” precedent for the country. On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,” Tribe argued the only way to hold a fair trial was for lawmakers to vote to hear from Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton “and other witnesses and the evidence.” Bolton reportedly confirms the Democrats’ case for impeachment in his forthcoming book “The Room Where It Happened,” in which he writes Trump tied military aid for Ukraine to its announcement of a probe into Joe Biden. Tribe described the defense argument being made by Trump impeachment lawyer Alan Dershowitz as “remarkably absurd and extreme and dangerous.” “Namely, it doesn’t matter if a president uses the vast powers of his office to shake down an ally and help an adversary in order to get dirt on an enemy and corrupt an election,” he said, summarizing Dershowitz’s argument.

By many accounts, the 2020 election cycle features the most debate about labor we’ve seen in decades. There is widespread agreement that workers are struggling in today’s economy, that worker organizing must be supported and that all workers should have the right to equitable opportunities and just jobs. When workers can come together collectively, they counterbalance the forces that generate inequality—and our labor laws play a key role in shaping access to opportunity and power. In a time when we are seeing record levels of economic inequality and concentration of economic power by corporations and the wealthy, the stifling of worker power in our economy threatens the very viability of American democracy...A redesign of U.S. labor law released this week by the Clean Slate for Worker Power coalition takes an important step forward by arguing that we need to overhaul our labor laws. Critically, the report argues that the starting point for this redesign needs to be contesting the systems of oppression so foundational to our existing labor laws that they often feel inevitable.

For the past 45 years, just about all of the income gains of America’s increasing productivity have gone to the elite and upper-middle class, while real worker wages have remained roughly flat. Today, the top one-tenth percent of earners, those earning more than $1.5m a year, own as much of the nation’s wealth as the entire bottom 90%. This obscene concentration of wealth, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the Great Depression, is unsustainable and a threat to our democracy....With enthusiasm, we join the Clean Slate for Worker Power project out of Harvard Law School, and endorse the slate of recommendations stemming from this project that are due out this week. This bold vision is necessary to bring about a more equitable and engaged society that rebalances the power in the workplace that has left so many workers vulnerable to the whims of a so-called “trickle down” that for the past 45 years our neoliberal political economy has yet to deliver.

Every year, I teach a class on labor and workplace policy for graduate students at Columbia University. And every year, I begin class by asking students what comes to mind when they think about the labor movement. When I first started teaching, students mainly described unions as organizations that were once important, but probably out of date in the current economy. "Good for people who made cars," quipped one student. This year the answers could not have been more different. Thanks to a massive wave of strikes and new efforts to unionize across tech companies and media outlets, my students saw unions in a different light. They were now interested in what unions could offer them in terms of better wages and benefits and voice on the job...Unions are thinking bigger, too: Both the American Federation of Labor and Service Employees International Union have announced proposals for broadening the scope of labor cooperation and bargaining at the sector-wide level. And the Clean Slate for Worker Power initiative at Harvard Law School recently released a sweeping set of proposals aimed at empowering workers — both by expanding traditional unions but also by creating other alternative mechanisms for worker voice.

Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe tells Lawrence O’Donnell that senators must vote for witnesses to ensure a fair trial, and that to acquit Trump on the Dershowitz defense would set a terrible precedent for future presidents and the country.

One of the most significant bills to strengthen workers’ abilities to organize in the past 80 years is headed to a vote next week in the House, where it will probably pass amid a newfound momentum for progressive legislation. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act would amend some of the country’s decades-old labor laws to give workers more power during disputes at work, add penalties for companies that violate labor law, and grant potentially hundreds of thousands of workers collective-bargaining rights they don’t currently have... “This is the most ambitious labor law reform to get to the floor of the house in a very long time,” said Sharon Block, executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and a former member of the National Labor Relations Board. “I think it’s really important.” The bill addresses what Democrats, union organizers and labor advocates say are fundamental weaknesses with the U.S. labor law. Republicans have argued strongly against it, saying that it will erode worker privacy and strengthen union power.

For years, Facebook has had a content moderation problem. It’s struggled to make unpopular decisions about content — like whether it should take down a viral doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that made it appear like she was slurring her words (it didn’t) or if it should ban prominent conspiracy theorist Alex Jones (it did). And as the 2020 presidential election gets closer, the company is attempting to do a better job than it did in 2016, when it was accused of allowing misinformation on its platform to influence the democratic process. That’s why Facebook will soon outsource some of its toughest content moderation problems to a new, much-anticipated but not yet fully formed outside group: its independent oversight board... “Content moderation is really hard — and these are really consequential decisions about public discourse and human rights,” said Evelyn Douek, a doctoral student at Harvard Law School researching the regulation of online speech. Douek, along with many other academics, gave Facebook early feedback on a draft of its new rules. “While it’s unacceptable to be having completely unaccountable and private entities making decisions, we also don’t want governments having their hands all over it…So the oversight board is a new model for handling this.”

The content appeals board, which will grow to about 40 members and will be able to overrule Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, is one of the company’s high-profile responses to criticism over how it handles problematic content on Facebook and Instagram...The board’s cases can be referred either by Facebook or by a user who has exhausted the appeals process. The proposed bylaws give a 90-day period for the board to make a decision and Facebook to act on it. For cases with “urgent real-world consequences,” there will a 30-day expedited review. Initially, Facebook said users will only be able to appeal to the board when their content has been removed, though in future it wants the board to also handle cases where content was left up...Evelyn Douek, a doctoral student at Harvard Law School who studies online speech legislation, told Reuters she was disappointed with this limitation. “A lot of the really controversial cases in the past few years have been not take-downs but leave-up decisions, things like the Nancy Pelosi video, hate speech in Myanmar,” said Douek. “And at the moment those aren’t in scope for the board to review them unless Facebook itself refers them to the board.”

He’s the Harvard law professor advising Democrats on their impeachment playbook. There’s just one problem: His adventures in the extremely online world of the anti-Trump “Resistance” took him a little off the deep end for a while. Laurence Tribe has spent decades as a respected constitutional law scholar, but the Trump era saw him buddy up for a bit with the fringiest of fringey #Resistance conspiracists online in amplifying far-fetched theories about how President Trump and his crew might finally meet justice, some of which Tribe now regrets partaking in. And in another sign of the divisiveness of the Trump era, Tribe and his more MAGA-friendly Harvard Law colleague Alan Dershowitz—who is defending the president in his impeachment trial—have descended into a bitter feud, with Dershowitz accusing Tribe of harboring a “vendetta” against him for supporting Trump throughout his various legal woes. Tribe has been pushing for Trump’s impeachment and removal from office from the day former FBI Director James Comey was sacked. Since then, he’s urged House Democrats to take the impeachment plunge and, when they finally got there, counseled top lawmakers on how to handle it, even huddling with them personally ahead of key hearings.

An article by Nikolas Bowie: Watching CNN last week, I learned that I’m partly responsible for President Trump’s legal defense. On the screen was one of the president’s lawyers, Alan Dershowitz, explaining his new position that impeachment requires “criminal-like behavior.” When the legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin interjected that “every single law professor” disagreed with him, Mr. Dershowitz rejoined that one professor — me! — was “completely” on his side. Mr. Dershowitz encouraged Mr. Toobin to read a law review article I wrote on the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, in which a former Supreme Court justice, Benjamin Curtis, successfully argued that no one should ever be punished for doing something that wasn’t a crime. Mr. Dershowitz apparently thought my article supported his view that even if Mr. Trump did everything the House has accused him of doing, the president shouldn’t be convicted because he hasn’t been accused of criminal behavior. As an academic, my first reaction was to be grateful that someone had actually read one of my articles. But as a legal academic, my second reaction was confusion. Even if you think impeachment requires a crime, as I do, that belief hardly supports the president’s defense or Mr. Dershowitz’s position. President Trump has been accused of a crime. Two in fact: “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress.”

An article by David Benger '20: The government cannot take something away from a religious person simply because she is religious. That principle has been enshrined in American law as long as we have had a Constitution. The Supreme Court has the chance to protect this principle in the case currently before them: Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. Ms. Kendra Espinoza, the plaintiff, wished to take advantage of a Montana state program that offered her daughter a scholarship through a privately run program. The Montana Department of Revenue, however, swiftly issued a rule that prohibited families from using the scholarship at religious schools. Wanting to use the scholarship for such a school, Ms. Espinoza’s daughter was suddenly ineligible for the program. In short, The Montana Department of Revenue deprived Ms. Espinoza of this scholarship funding purely because she wanted to educate her daughter at a school that espoused her faith. This discrimination was made possible by an old, insidious carve-out in the Montana constitution known as the Blaine Amendment. This amendment is not unique to Montana; in fact, many states have them.

As the U.S. Senate continues the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, a meme is circulating claiming that if the Senate does not convict, Trump can run for president two more times. The grammatically challenged post reads: "Want to blow a snowflakes mind? Remind them if Trump is impeached in the house and not senate, he can run 2 more times. The U.S. Constitution states that if a president is impeached by the House but not convicted by the Senate, that person’s first term is nullified and they are eligible to run for office two more times." The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed... "It’s totally false. Ludicrous. Wholly made up," said Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, co-author of "To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment." It’s as simple as the beginning of  Section 1 of the 22nd Amendment, University of Missouri law professor and impeachment expert Frank Bowman told us. It reads: "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once."

An article by Nancy Gertner: From the beginning, Alan Dershowitz, a member of Donald Trump’s legal team, tried to distance himself from the rest of the president’s White House lawyers. He didn’t sign onto the brief because his mandate was “to determine what is constitutionally authorized criteria for impeachment.” They may be partisan defenders of the president but he was in this as a matter of principle: “I’ve always taken positions that are principled and often unpopular and often in defense of people I don’t particularly support,” Dershowitz told the Associated Press, citing his defense of Neo-Nazis who wanted the right to march through Skokie, Illinois. It was an odd position for a lawyer from the outset and on Monday night, after listening to Dershowitz’s Senate presentation, it didn’t last long. No one is saying that Dershowitz — as the president’s lawyer — should be tarred with Trump’s politics. Dershowitz represented OJ Simpson, whatever he thought of Simpson’s guilt. Representing Jeffrey Epstein has given rise to a host of allegations against Dershowitz personally, which he has vehemently denied.

MSNBC's Chris Hayes with Neal Katyal and Laurence Tribe about Bolton's new information and how Chief Justice Roberts can make rulings.

Exxon Mobil dodged a bullet last month when a judge rejected a novel climate-change lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general. The case began with a promise from state officials that there would be a historic reckoning for the fossil fuel giant. It ended ignominiously as a failed accounting fraud claim. But that was just the beginning. Globally, humans are on the hook for trillions of dollars if they want to sufficiently reduce greenhouse gas emissions, acclimate to the damage already done and prepare for what is yet to come. As more governments and taxpayers find themselves staring down the barrel at rising climate costs, they are increasingly turning to the courts to hold Big Oil accountable...Hana Vizcarra, a staff attorney at Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program, said the increasing need to find someone other than taxpayers to pay the costs of climate change will continue to drive state and local governments toward litigation. Nevertheless, she’s skeptical about their chances for victory. “Plaintiffs in the remaining cases may yet see some success at the state level as they refine their claims,” she said. “But the federal court decisions indicate this remains a difficult path.”

The SEC should rethink proposed rules that impose new requirements on proxy advisory firms and raise thresholds for submitting shareholder proposals, members of the agency's investor advisory committee said Friday. A divided committee voted 10-to-5 to support a recommendation of the group's investor-as-owner subcommittee that SEC officials rework the two proposals and in the meantime address more pressing issues such as "proxy-plumbing" reforms, including ways to correctly count votes and universal proxies...Committee members supporting the recommendation also would like to see the SEC consider "reasonable alternatives" to address the issues raised, including ways to correct errors made by proxy advisers and adjustments to shareholder proposal thresholds. "We do believe the commission could improve conflict of interest disclosure for proxy advisers. Right now, they simply haven't laid out (the case)," said John Coates, John F. Cogan Jr., professor of law and economics at Harvard Law School and research director of the Center on the Legal Profession. In addition to making proxy plumbing a higher priority, the committee recommended that SEC officials "do a better job of analyzing the issues" that led to the two proposed rule- makings, including following SEC guidance on cost-benefit analysis. "The current draft proposals lack what we would like to see added as basic components, such as a statement of the market failure that is creating a need for regulation," Mr. Coates said during a committee telephone conference call.