Media Mentions

An op-ed by Jessica Fjeld is the assistant director of the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society: When it comes to AI, Big Tech wants a hand in developing regulation. In a January 20 piece for the Financial Times calling for the regulation of the technology, Google CEO Sundar Pichai argued that his company’s artificial intelligence principles could be used as a template for future laws. Brad Smith of Microsoft said the same in a talk at the World Economic Forum earlier this week. Google and Microsoft are right that it’s time for government to step in and provide safeguards, and that regulation should build on the important thinking that’s already been done. However, looking only to the perspectives of large tech companies, who’ve already established themselves as dominant players, is asking the fox for guidance on henhouse security procedures. We need to take a broader view.

Anderson Cooper interviews Noah Feldman on the House managers case laying out abuse of power charge against President Donald Trump. ... "Everyone who is involved with this impeachment process has to understand, even if the outcome is the one most people predict, that's not what really matters on deepest level. It would be nice if Senators would come around, but that Trump is not just impeachable, but deserves to be removed from office. But even if they don't, it's important for the future of American democracy that others in the future, future generations, will be able to look back, watch this footage, watch the commentary, read the transcripts and see exactly what Donald Trump did and that he was impeached for it, to send the message that this kind of conduct just isn't okay, no matter what two-thirds of the Senate decides."

Stephen Colbert tore into the arguments used by President Donald Trump’s defenders, who claim abuse of power isn’t impeachable because it’s not a crime. “You don’t have to break the law to get fired,” the “Late Show” host said on Monday. “It may not be against the law for you to dunk your junk in my cappuccino, but I still want you fired. America does not run on junk-dunking.” Then, Colbert cited Harvard constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe, who said the idea that only criminal acts are impeachable has “died a thousand deaths” in legal writings, yet “staggers on like a vengeful zombie.”

American Labor Law is broken, argues a report released today by Clean Slate for Worker Power, a project of Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program. So, the report urges, the nation’s labor laws need to be fundamentally rewritten to make it easier for workers to organize, to have a voice in corporate decisions that affect them, and to participate in democracy—all essential to address larger concerns about economic and political equity in a divided, polarized society. At bottom, the project aims “to shift power from corporations to workers,” said Sharon Block, executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program, at the project’s launch Thursday morning. The ambitious, 100-plus page report lays out an agenda for a revitalized, robust labor law for the twenty-first century. ... “The richest 20 people in this country have more wealth than half the nation put together,” said Kestnbaum professor of labor and industry Benjamin Sachs, the co-leader with Block of Clean Slate. “It would take an Amazon worker about 4 million years working full-time to earn what Jeff Bezos now has. This vast disparity in material wealth means that millions of American families struggle just to barely get by.

An op-ed by Kate Andrias, a law professor at the University of Michigan Law School: Cierra Brown works at a McDonald's in Durham, North Carolina. She earns little more than minimum wage, and even with a second job at a local hospital she can’t afford health insurance and pays for her diabetes medication out of pocket. She is frequently asked to stay late and close the store, hours after the bus stops running. If she complains, she knows she could lose her job — and nothing would change anyway. ... A consensus is building for such a system here in the US. Clean Slate for Worker Power, a coalition of more than 80 participants from labor, academia, and nonprofits, convened out of Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program, today released a set of sweeping recommendations to fundamentally rewrite US labor laws. The report calls for sectoral bargaining, as well as other proposals that would help shift the balance of power in this country back into the hands of working people like Cierra.

A pair of energy-producing states may face ideological challenges in their quest for a high court review of Washington state's blockade against the last major coal export project on the West Coast. Wyoming and Montana argued in a Supreme Court petition yesterday that Washington regulators violated constitutional protections on interstate commerce when they denied a Clean Water Act permit for the Millennium Bulk Terminals project in Longview, Wash. ... Justices for the Supreme Court will be more interested in evaluating Washington's denial of the terminal's Clean Water Act permit, rather than any alleged intent to further control global greenhouse gas emissions, said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School. He said the states' claims of discrimination are weak because they compare support for different products: apples versus coal.

The third day of President Trump's Senate impeachment trial. Law experts share their take on the president’s case – and what’s at stake for the Constitution and the country. Guests: Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard University Law School. Co-author of "To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment and the Constitution."

Food insecurity and hunger cost the Commonwealth of Massachusetts nearly $1.9 billion in avoidable health care costs every year. Today, a team of attorneys from the Center for Health Law & Policy Innovation of Harvard Law School (CHLPI) and Community Servings, a nonprofit food and nutrition program, testified at a hearing on proposed legislation to establish a food and health pilot program in the state of Massachusetts. Harvard Law School Clinical Instructor and CHLPI staff attorney Katie Garfield ’11 and Jean Terranova, Community Servings’ director of food and health policy, testified before the Joint Committee on Public Health at the Massachusetts State House.

More than 70 scholars, union leaders, economists and activists called on Thursday for a far-reaching overhaul of American labor laws to vastly increase workers’ power on the job and in politics, recommending new laws to make unionizing easier and to elect worker representatives to corporate boards. ... The Clean Slate report, nearly two years in the making, aims to rethink American labor law from scratch. “We firmly believe that we’re past the point of tinkering around the edges, that to really fix the problems in our economy and political system we need a fundamental rethinking of labor law,” said Sharon Block, one of the report’s main authors and executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. ... “This is an attempt to lay out a comprehensive vision of what labor law reform ought to look like,” said Ben Sachs, a professor at Harvard Law School and one of the report’s main authors. “We need this as a kind of North Star to know where we’re going when we have a chance to do reform of any kind.”

American workers have had the right to unionize since 1935, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in his first term as president and the Great Depression was ravaging the economy. But the parameters haven’t changed much in 85 years. Not as the treatment of women and people of color became more equitable. Not as businesses employed more independent contractors who weren’t protected by labor laws. And not as the gulf between the haves and have-nots expanded. On Thursday, two Harvard Law School faculty members unveiled a sweeping proposal to rewrite US labor law, aimed not at updating what’s on the books but at starting over. ... “ ‘Clean Slate’ is our vision for what labor law would look like if it were actually designed to enable workers to build an equitable economy,” said Benjamin Sachs, Harvard Law School professor and coauthor of the report. “It’s not a project designed to garner bipartisan support. It’s not a project designed to get the maximum amount of business endorsement.” ... The project is not just about unions, said coauthor Sharon Block, executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, who served in the US Labor Department under President Obama. It’s also intended to reform democracy, including proposals to promote workers’ civic engagement by mandating same-day voter registration and granting paid time off to vote and attend meetings.

Sharon Block, executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program, and Benjamin Sachs, the Kestnbaum Professor of Labor and Industry at Harvard Law School (HLS) are calling for an overhaul of American labor law. The Gazette sat down with Block and Sachs to talk about their report “Clean Slate for Worker Power: Building a Just Democracy and Economy,” which was released today.

Right now, too many rideshare drivers are teetering on the edge of the road. Nearly 80% of American workers report living paycheck to paycheck, but we live ride to ride. Despite recent legislative actions in New York and California to bring some stability to the rideshare industry, companies like Uber and Lyft still have too much power over our lives. ... A new blueprint released this week called “Clean Slate for Worker Power” [a project of Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program]  fundamentally rewrites our nation’s labor law and provides a roadmap for a fairer future that would give rideshare drivers like me a seat at the table with the app-based titans.

An article by Sharon Block and Benjamin Sachs: Running throughout the Democratic presidential debates has been a consistent theme: We are living in an era of deep economic and political inequality, and these dual crises now threaten to undermine our democracy. What does economic inequality look like today? Well, it would take an average Amazon worker 3.8 million years, working full time, to earn what CEO Jeff Bezos now possesses. And the country's wealthiest 20 people own more wealth than half of the nation combined—20 people with more wealth than 152 million others. On the political front, the facts are just as stark. Political scientists increasingly believe that our government no longer responds to the views of anyone but the wealthy. Of course, these forms of inequality are mutually reinforcing: As economic wealth gets more concentrated, the wealthy build greater and greater political power that they, in turn, translate into favorable policies that lead to even more profound concentrations of wealth. And on and on.

An article by Noah Feldman: President Donald Trump is on trial in the Senate. But the Senate is on trial, too — to see if it’s capable of fulfilling its constitutional duty to hold a credible impeachment trial. James Madison thought the Supreme Court, not the Senate, should try presidential impeachments. Until now, the other framers’ rejection of Madison’s idea seemed to have been wise. Yet the unprecedented degree of partisanship in Trump’s “trial,” and the possibility that for the first time there will be no witnesses, raises the possibility that the framers’ impeachment design has hit a dead end.

An Iranian student enrolled at Northeastern University who was deported from Logan Airport on Martin Luther King Jr. Day is hardly the first to end up sent home after arriving here. Mohammad Shahab Dehghani Hossein Abadi was deported on Monday night despite a federal judge’s order that he remain in Customs and Border Protection custody and not be deported as his case was being considered...Reihana Emami Arandi, an incoming Harvard Divinity School student, was denied entry in September. She had spent almost four months getting her student visa vetted, with additional security checks. When she was pulled aside at Logan Airport, she was confused...Because she refused to sign the statement prepared by customs officials, Arandi said, she is barred from reentering the US for five years. Her paperwork says that customs agents concluded that she came to the US to stay, not to study...Arandi believes she was deported because she’s Iranian. Since her deportation, Cambridge immigration attorney Susan Church and the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic have stepped in to represent her in a federal case, which is pending.

As President Trump’s impeachment trial opens, his lawyers have increasingly emphasized a striking argument: Even if he did abuse his powers in an attempt to bully Ukraine into interfering in the 2020 election on his behalf, it would not matter because the House never accused him of committing an ordinary crime...Mr. Dershowitz said he intended to model his presentation on an argument put forward at the 1868 impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson by his chief defense counsel...Mr. Johnson was saved from conviction and removal when the vote fell one short of the necessary supermajority. Mr. Curtis had argued that Mr. Johnson was not accused of committing a legitimate crime, and that removing him absent one would subvert the constitutional structure and make impeachment a routine tool of political struggle. But other legal scholars, like Laurence Tribe, a constitutional specialist at Harvard Law School and an outspoken critic of Mr. Trump, have argued that Mr. Dershowitz is overreading and misrepresenting this aspect of the Johnson trial...In an opinion article in The Washington Post, Mr. Tribe accused Mr. Trump’s legal team of using “bogus legal arguments to mislead the American public or the senators weighing his fate.”

The difference between the protections YouTube offers its advertisers and those it provides consumers is stark. A read of advertiser-friendly content guidelines for videos uploaded to the platform, last updated in June 2019, shows the company has rigorous standards to protect advertisers from harmful content and the algorithmic ability to do so. Yet YouTube does not consistently flag these same videos as problematic to viewers, despite ongoing criticism that the platform allows conspiracy theories, the alt-right, and extremism to flourish....No system of identifying harmful videos can be perfect, and YouTube has been criticized previously for allowing ads to run alongside videos promoting hate and terror. Jonas Kaiser, researcher at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, notes that YouTube faces questions of censorship and freedom of speech when it comes to what videos are permitted on the platform. “The relationship YouTube has with advertisers is more straightforward,” he says, adding that YouTube protects itself from suffering financially by working to remove ads from harmful content.

Harvard Law students question the Kenosha County District Attorney's ethics. This comes after a case involving a Milwaukee teenager accused of murdering her alleged sex trafficker gets national attention as the case awaits trial. In 2018, Chrystul Kizer was charged with shooting and killing Randall Volar in his Kenosha home before setting it on fire. She was 17...Kizer is now 19. In a recent interview from jail with The Washington Post, Kizer said she acted in self-defense and claimed Volar had been trafficking her for sex for almost two years. In response, support for Kizer poured in from all over the country asked the DA to drop the charges. The petition was signed by more than 122,000 people...Now Harvard Law School's National Lawyers Guild is getting involved. They sent a letter to the Graveley that said in part, "your conduct in the Chrystul Kizer case is a cause of concern to us." The letter asked the DA to bring his "conduct in line with professional standards" "by dropping charges." Here is the full letter.

Charles Fried was a fervent, superior officer on the frontlines of the Reagan Revolution. As solicitor general of the United States from 1985 to 1989, he urged the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the reining liberal orthodoxies of his day—on abortion, civil rights, executive power and constitutional interpretation. But the Trump Revolution has proven a bridge too far. As he reveals in a scorching interview with Newsweek's Roger Parloff below, Fried has broken ranks. He denounces a president who is "perhaps the most dishonest person to ever sit in the White House." As disgusted as he is by President Donald Trump, Fried is, if possible, even more dismayed by William Barr, Trump's current attorney general, for having stepped up as Trump's chief apologist. Fried says of Barr. "His reputation is gone."

Constitutional scholar Noah Feldman tells Christiane Amanpour that President Trump's legal defense amounts to a "linguistic game."

As President Donald Trump's impeachment trial gets underway on Tuesday, most Democrats will have already come to terms with the reality that the president will almost certainly be cleared of his alleged crimes...However, while Trump's acquittal may feel "inevitable," Laurence Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at the Harvard Law School of Harvard University, told Newsweek on Tuesday, for many voters across the country, the Senate's decision may never feel like a "genuine exoneration" for the president...As Tribe noted, with party lines becoming increasingly divided, expecting lawmakers to vote without party bias feels like wishful thinking for many. The only real hope of keeping the government in check, Tribe said, appears to lie with the American people. "I'm afraid that is very much the message," the scholar said. "That you better not elect a president who is a demagogue wannabe dictator because we don't have a good way of removing the president." Ultimately, Tribe said, the 2020 election may be the only way that Americans can see Trump removed for the crimes he has been accused of committing.