Media Mentions

During the final presidential debate of 2019, one of the moderators posed a question about a topic that rarely gets attention on the debate stage: What steps would candidates take to help disabled people get more integrated into the workforce and their local communities? For Andrew Yang, the question was both political and personal. His oldest son, Christopher, is on the autism spectrum...At the event in Salem, Yang rolled out a new plan to fund research and support children with disabilities and their families. Ari Ne'eman, a senior research associate at Harvard Law School's Project on Disability and a co-founder of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, said he welcomed some parts of Yang's plan, including his commitment to ending seclusion as a punishment in schools. He also praised Yang's call for increased funding for the federal law called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which gives every child the right to services and accommodations that will allow them to learn.

Running for president four years ago, Donald Trump called John Roberts, the chief justice of the US supreme court, “an absolute disaster” and “a nightmare for conservatives." Now Trump faces an impeachment trial in the US Senate in which his political fate could rest in the hands of the presiding judge: Roberts. The chief justice’s role in impeachment is broadly described in the constitution. But there are few guidelines and little precedent indicating what duties, precisely, the chief justice can or might discharge... “I think a lot of this is going to depend on the role that the chief justice decides to play,” said Hilary Hurd '20, a JD candidate at Harvard Law who has written about past impeachment trials. “We don’t know whether there’s going to be a tie on any particular motion. There could be, and we know from precedent that the chief justice is empowered to break a tie.”

As more evidence has come to light concerning President Trump’s withholding of U.S. aid to Ukraine and the concerns of members of the administration about its effect on national security and dubious legality, the decision by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to delay sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate looks smarter by the day...Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe tells me, “The documents made available in unredacted form for the first time destroy any remaining argument for waiting until mid-trial to decide whether witnesses like [Office of Management and Budget official Michael] Duffey, [Defense Secretary Mark T.] Esper, [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo, [acting White House chief of staff Mick] Mulvaney and Bolton should be called, by subpoena if necessary, to testify at the forthcoming impeachment trial and whether key documents should be demanded from the White House, OMB, the State Department and the Pentagon.”

Some groundbreaking state laws aimed at improving worker conditions have been blocked by courts, just as they were set to take effect early this year, a sign that industry groups will continue to fight measures that they say could upend business models and upset the status quo. A judge temporarily blocked parts of a law that provides new protections for agricultural workers in New York; the trucking industry in California successfully fended off enforcement of a new test for determining when a worker is a contractor; and a separate California law that would limit mandatory arbitration agreements was similarly halted... “There are different factual and legal issues in these cases, but they have some common threads,” said Terri Gerstein, director of the State and Local Enforcement Project at Harvard University’s Labor and Worklife Program. “Business and industry groups have lost in the political realm, so now they’re trying the courts. But in the end, there’s an urgent need for change right now. Economic inequality has gotten so extreme, and working conditions have become so degraded for many people, that there’s clear will among policymakers and the public to do something.” Gerstein said the industry should instead focus on complying with the new laws.

Terming its as a "gross violation of human rights" around 400 Indian students studying in various American universities have condemned the "brutal police violence unleashed against students" of Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University last Sunday. They have also called upon Union Home Minister Amit Shah to immediately take the necessary steps to curb police brutality or resign... "By every account, it appears that police and paramilitary, both at Jamia and at AMU, have used violence and pursued unlawful and reckless tactics against student protesters in violation of protections under the Constitution of India and international human rights law," the statement released through Jhalak M. Kakkar '19 of Harvard Law School said. They also termed the entry of police and paramilitary in university premises, indiscriminate attacks within the campuses, releasing tear gas in libraries and brutal use of force against civilians "as a blatant violation of the law and can only shock the conscience of any democratic society".

An article by Laurence Tribe: The greatest chief justice of the United States, by common consent, was John Marshall. In McCulloch v. Maryland, the 1819 decision laying down the foundations of our government structure, Marshall wisely insisted that “we must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding.” That meant, among other things, that we should not confuse the Constitution for an abstruse “legal code” intended to be deciphered only by specially ordained experts. Its basic structures and provisions must be interpreted so as to “be understood by the public,” in Marshall's words, to be consistent with “the common affairs of the world.” In propounding their sometimes idiosyncratic constructions of the Constitution’s basic terms, a few current or former academic stars seem to have forgotten that most essential truth. Specifically, they would have us believe that, when the Constitution assigns to the House of Representatives “the sole Power of Impeachment,” those words “actually mean” that the House can “impeach” the president only by formally transmitting to the Senate its articles of impeachment, as English legislatures of the late Middle Ages transmitted them to the House of Lords.

President Trump said he would sign the recently negotiated phase-one trade deal with China in Washington on Jan. 15 — marking a formal truce in the U.S-China trade war — and would later travel to Beijing to negotiate a broader pact...Mr. Trump has focused most of his attention on the Chinese farm purchases. According to U.S. negotiators, China has agreed to buy an average of at least $40 billion annually in agricultural goods starting in 2020...In addition, the U.S. has claimed, China has agreed to increase overall imports of U.S. goods and services by $200 billion over the next two years — a growth spurt that China hasn’t come close to reaching in the years since it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001...Both sides say that any purchases must conform to WTO rules — a requirement that could give China a way to argue that it can’t meet purchase goals. For instance, soybean purchases diverted from Brazil to the U.S. could violate WTO rules. “The trick is for the agreement to be crafted in a manner that’s ambiguous enough so as not to raise WTO challenges, but is clear enough to satisfy the U.S. that the Chinese government will use the tools available to it to direct farm purchases to the U.S.,” said Mark Wu, a WTO expert at Harvard Law School.

When faced with the worst of the internet — trolls, Russian propaganda machines or global terrorism — Facebook turns to Monika Bickert. Bickert is Facebook's vice president of global policy management. Her team oversees the social media giant's rules for what types of content are and aren't allowed on the platform. This past fall, Bickert taught Harvard Law School students about the challenges of managing online content in a course called "Social Media and the Law." It's an issue that's one of Facebook's biggest challenges. The company has repeatedly faced criticism for allowing misinformation and hate speech to spread on its platform, and has shifted strategies under public pressure and rising scrutiny — especially since the 2016 election. Here's what Bickert, a Harvard Law School alum, had to say about her class, and how Facebook is now tackling the problems she discusses.

A cabal of doctors is hiding the cure for cancer, berries are more effective than vaccines, and eating instant noodles can kill you: These are some of the claims from the internet's most viral fake health news in 2019. Health misinformation was a big deal this year...The impact of health misinformation can be enormous. The most common concerns among health professionals are compliance with health treatments or prevention efforts, said Nat Gyenes, who leads the Digital Health Lab at the technology nonprofit Meedan and researches technology and health at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. "It can lead to vaccination levels below herd immunity, harmful impacts on minors whose parents are responsible for their health care and well-being, engaging in alternative or homeopathic treatments as a primary approach and only complying with necessary medical treatments at a time where effectiveness is decreased," Gyenes said.

Judith Donath, author of "The Social Machine" and adviser at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center, and Boston Globe tech writer Hiawatha Bray join us as we look at some of the major moments in technology, social media, and artificial intelligence from the last 10 years, as well as look beyond 2020.

Laurence Tribe, a legal scholar at Harvard University who specializes in constitutional law, told Salon on Sunday that President Donald Trump "has violated yet another law" by tweeting the name of a man believed by some to be the whistleblower who drew attention to the Ukraine scandal. "If by 'legal ramifications' you mean to ask me whether Donald Trump has violated yet another law, my answer is yes," Tribe told Salon by email when asked whether there could be legal ramifications to the president's tweeting. "The Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998 (ICWPA) outlaws actions by government officials or agencies that directly or indirectly encourage retaliatory actions against employees who legitimately perform a whistleblower role in the intelligence community, as the whistleblower in this case clearly did regarding a matter of urgent concern, as determined by the Inspector General." Tribe added that Trump "violated the letter and spirit of the ICWPA" by sharing a name that he held to be that of the whistleblower with over 60 million people on Twitter "for vengeful reasons."

Hosted by June Grasso. Guests: Frank Wilkinson, Bloomberg Opinion Editor, on gun control. Max Nisen, Bloomberg Opinion health care columnist, on Medicare for All. Noah Feldman, Harvard Law professor and Bloomberg Opinion columnist, on the impeachment hearings. Shira Ovide, Bloomberg Opinion technology columnist, on "techlash." Noah Smith, Bloomberg Opinion columnist, on automation.

An article by Cass Sunstein: Here’s what movie fans and insiders have been waiting for: the 2019 winners of the Behavioral Economics Oscars, known as the Becons. Isabelle Huppert, Daniel Day-Lewis, Ryan Gosling and Jessica Chastain – where would they be without a prestigious Becon? This year has been a spectacular one for movies, and the secretive Becons Award Committee (said, by some, to consist of just one person) has had to make some especially tough choices.

An article by Noah Feldman: The year in impeachment was a true roller coaster ride: A slow build to a high peak at the time of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report; a deep and fast dive in its aftermath; a rocket-like ascent following the whistle-blower’s report of President Donald Trump’s call with Ukraine; and now, at year’s end, a harrowing run to an impeachment that itself will likely end in the “pffft” of a Senate vote not to remove the president...But the ride won’t end when the year does. January 2020 will see the Senate trial. It’s hard to imagine that the trial will feel like any kind of roller coast ride at all. The outcome is as close to foregone as it gets in U.S. politics.

An article by Noah Feldman: A presidential impeachment trial in the Senate is one man’s worst nightmare. That man isn’t President Donald Trump, however. He’ll take it in stride. It’s Chief Justice John Roberts, who will have to preside. Roberts has devoted his whole career to trying to keep the Supreme Court from being seen as a partisan body. That started with the famous baseball analogy he offered at his Senate confirmation, according to which the justices are like umpires who call balls and strikes. The comparison is pretty dubious: balls and strikes aren’t infused with controversial moral questions like when life begins and who can marry whom. But Roberts was trying to illustrate his ideal of a justice who stays out of the partisan fray of team spirit.

An article by Noah Feldman: The 2010s will go down in history as a contradictory period at the Supreme Court. The decade featured one liberal decision — the gay marriage case, Obergefell v. Hodges — that will be read as long as the justices’ opinions are taught in law schools. Yet the decade also saw the emergence of important new libertarian trends in First Amendment law, regarding both free speech and religious liberty, that are widely seen as conservative. And although the court shifted rightward over the last ten years, that may seem mild compared to the rightward shift we could see in the 2020s.

An op-ed by Roberto Unger: South America is falling apart. The popular rebellion in Chile — a country often held up as an example of success predicated on good behavior — is only the most extreme instance of a discontent that is either breaking out or simmering in almost every South American nation. The struggle between the right and the left has intensified. But so far nothing that contributes to socially inclusive economic growth has resulted from these protests. What does it all mean? And how do South America’s troubles mirror the United States’ own?

Adiós, 2010s. The 2020s are here. But before the clock strikes midnight on the decade, the Gazette asked Harvard experts to weigh in on the biggest events and most important cultural shifts of the past 10 years.... Equally important, unlike with Brown, Obergefell failed to produce a wave of massive resistance. To be sure, a county clerk in eastern Kentucky briefly went to jail rather than grant marriage licenses to gay couples, and a state Supreme Court justice in Alabama shouted defiance at the Supreme Court’s ruling (much as an Alabama governor had shouted defiance of Brown more than 50 years earlier). But almost everywhere else in the U.S., the court’s ruling was peacefully implemented. The sky did not fall, and gay and lesbian couples began to enjoy a basic human right that had long been wrongfully denied to them. Michael Klarman Kirkland & Ellis Professor at Harvard Law School and the author of “From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage” (2013).

Lawyers for former Corinthian College students are asking a federal judge in San Francisco to increase the amount of sanctions the Department of Education must pay for violating a court order barring the collection of certain student loan payments. Lawyers at Housing and Economic Rights Advocates in Oakland and the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School have asked U.S. District Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim of the Northern District of California to reconsider the $100,000 sanction order she issued in October. Kim in May issued an order putting a hold on all government collection on loans that were subject to “borrower defense” to repayment, or the contention that borrowers were defrauded by the for-profit school. The judge held Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the Education Department in contempt and sanctioned them in October for continuing to collect on loans despite her order.

Historian Jon Meacham, Harvard Law School Professor Annette Gordon-Reed and CNN Presidential Historian Tim Naftali discuss with Fareed what makes President Trump's impeachment unique to past presidents. Naftali tells Fareed the House withholding the articles of impeachment from the Senate has never happened before in an impeachment crisis because this is the first time control of Congress has been split during an impeachment.

Top Democrats on Sunday renewed their demands for witnesses to testify at President Trump’s impeachment trial, citing newly released emails showing that the White House asked officials to keep quiet over the suspension of military aid to Ukraine just 90 minutes after Mr. Trump leaned on that country’s president to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. The emails, released late Friday by the Trump administration to the Center for Public Integrity, shed new light on Mr. Trump’s effort to solicit Ukraine to help him win re-election in 2020, the matter at the heart of the House’s vote on Wednesday to impeach him...At least one academic, Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor who testified as an expert for Democrats during the impeachment inquiry, has argued that Mr. Trump will not be impeached until the articles are transmitted. Republicans have cited that position in their demands for Ms. Pelosi to move forward.