Media Mentions

A longtime leading conservative voice slammed President  on Thursday as “ignorant and foul-mouthed,” and warned the nation is in a constitutional crisis. Charles Fried, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University who was solicitor general to President , told ’s  how he fled Czechoslovakia when the Nazis took over and eventually settled in the United States. “I’ve had a wonderful life here. I love it, as do my children and my grandchildren,” he said. “And this man terrifies me.” Fried added: [Trump] says that the Constitution said ― and he said this to a bunch of high school students ― ‘I can do whatever I want, that’s what Article II says.’ Well it doesn’t, any lawyer knows that, any lawyer except maybe [Attorney General] Bill Barr and Mr. Cipollone [White House counsel Pat Cipollone]. “Our fidelity is to the law, and to the office,” Fried said. “Not to a man.”

In a 65-page critique of early decisions made by William H. Rehnquist, who was then an associate justice on the US Supreme Court, Harvard Law School professor David L. Shapiro wasted no time getting to his point — which he tucked at the end of his first paragraph. Basing his view on the justice’s written opinions and votes, Mr. Shapiro wrote in 1976 that while Rehnquist was “a man of considerable intellectual power and independence of mind, the unyielding character of his ideology has had a substantial adverse effect” on his work. Mr. Shapiro, the law school’s William Nelson Cromwell professor emeritus when he died at 87 on Nov. 19, was considered a leading intellectual light in the field of federal courts philosophy and theory. And for nearly a half-century he coedited editions of “The Federal Courts and the Federal System,” a key text for law students.“David was the heart and soul of ‘The Federal Courts and the Federal System,’ ” John F. Manning, dean of Harvard Law School, said in a statement. “He really shaped the field of federal courts. David was able to bring out the complexity and nuance of the law for judges, scholars, and practitioners, and he always did so with clarity and insight,” added Manning, who had joined Mr. Shapiro as a co-editor of the book’s sixth edition, published in 2010...Charles Fried, a Harvard Law School professor who, as solicitor general in the Reagan administration, hired Mr. Shapiro to serve as one of his deputies, recalled that some critics questioned the wisdom of hiring “somebody who had been so critical of the chief justice. Well, I knew Rehnquist and I think he couldn’t give a damn and it wouldn’t bother him a bit. It turned out there was no issue.”

David L. Shapiro ’57, an icon of federal courts jurisprudence, died Tuesday, November 19. He was 87 years old. A longtime professor of law at Harvard Law School, Shapiro co-edited the leading casebook in the field of federal jurisdiction, Hart and Wechsler’s “The Federal Courts and the Federal System” (Foundation Press). For nearly five decades, from the second edition in 1973 to the supplement to the 7th edition in 2019, he served as a link back to the roots of federal courts as a legal discipline at Harvard Law School decades earlier. “David was the heart and soul of ‘The Federal Courts and the Federal System,’” said Harvard Law School Dean John F. Manning ’85. “He really shaped the field of federal courts,” said Manning, who joined Shapiro as a co-editor on the Hart and Wechsler casebook for the 6th edition in 2010. “David was able to bring out the complexity and nuance of the law for judges, scholars, and practitioners, and he always did so with clarity and insight.”

Legal experts say the fight over whether White House counsel Don McGahn must testify under subpoena before Congress could be settled at the Senate impeachment trial before it finishes its path through the courts. A federal judge on Monday ruled against the Trump administration, deciding that McGahn must comply with a House Judiciary Committee subpoena seeking his testimony... “Technically, the Senate sets its own rules, including evidentiary ones, and has the power to reject the presiding officer's rulings by majority vote,” said Mark Tushnet, a professor at Harvard Law School. He added that there’s no guarantee Roberts would be willing to go along with Democrats’ requests for witnesses, even in light of Monday’s ruling against the Trump administration. “The McGahn ruling won't matter one way or the other, except to the extent that Roberts finds its reasoning persuasive,” Tushnet said. “And it may be worth noting that Judge Brown Jackson has a pretty good reputation as a careful — though of course liberal — judge.”

An article by Noah Feldman: The confusing saga of Donald Trump’s intervention in the case of Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher seems to be over at last. Gallagher’s demotion has been reversed — a demotion that resulted from his posing with the corpse of a captured Islamic State fighter in Iraq — and he will get to keep his trident, the pin that signifies SEAL membership and that Navy officials wanted to take away. The main political casualty is the secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer, who was fired by the secretary of defense after (it would seem) trying to get Trump to stay out of the issue on behalf of the admirals. The whole fight between Trump and his admirals looked remarkably opaque from the outside. That’s because underneath, important and conflicting principles were at stake.

An article by Urs Gasser: From Greta Thunberg’s student-led climate strikes to the youth-driven protests in Hong Kong and Chile, the next generation is increasingly demanding a voice on pressing issues. Youth movements are reenergizing paralyzed debates among adults with fresh perspectives, inconvenient questions, and the rhetorical power of having to live with the long-term fallout of our short-term thinking. With another monumental societal transformation on the horizon—the rise of artificial intelligence—we have an opportunity to engage the power and imagination of youth to shape the world they will inherit...The center I lead at Harvard University, the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, works to integrate youth voices into our research. Through our Youth and Media project, we have partnered with young people, educators, researchers, and practitioners to design more than 100 educational tools to teach and engage youth about the digital world.

Federal court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson held that former White House counsel Donald McGahn must appear before Congress pursuant to a lawful subpoena, rejecting President Trump’s entirely unmeritorious claim of absolute immunity. Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe tells me, “Judge Jackson rightly and predictably rejected Trump’s extreme claim that McGahn is absolutely immune from having to testify in response to a valid House subpoena. The tough issues of executive privilege and national security secrets remain. She followed the precedent set by a respected conservative judge, John Bates. And she ruled in accord with basic principles of the rule of law.”

U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey is hoping to introduce legislation sometime next week aimed at reducing barriers for those who want to donate food. Toomey, R-Pa., on Monday toured New Bethany Ministries, 333 W. Fourth St., Bethlehem and discussed a bill that, if approved, would extend liability protection for reduced-price food and direct donations. Toomey is partnering with U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., on the bipartisan legislation and is working with local food banks, as well as the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, Feeding America, Feeding PA, 412 Food Rescue, and Philabundance to finalize the language of the bill. The announcement comes just days before Thanksgiving and when several Lehigh Valley food banks and pantries are often in need.

Amid the pressure of a House impeachment inquiry, President Donald Trump has continued to stoke the idea that he’s the victim of a coup — shorthand for "coup d’etat," a French term that means the overthrow of the government...The key element of a coup is that it is carried out beyond the bounds of legality...Impeachment is explicitly described in the Constitution as the way to remove a president who has committed "high crimes and misdemeanors." Michael Klarman, a Harvard Law School professor, told us that you can’t get much more within the bounds of legality than an explicit power outlined in the Constitution. "It’s obviously not a coup for the House to launch impeachment proceedings," Klarman told us in early October.

Nancy Gertner, retired federal judge, WBUR's legal commentator, and senior lecturer at Harvard Law School, walks us through what we learned from the impeachment hearings last week and what's next.

Over the course of a few short years, a technological revolution shook the world. New businesses rose and fell, fortunes were made and lost, the practice of reporting the news was reinvented, and the relationship between leaders and the public was thoroughly transformed, for better and for worse. The years were 1912 to 1927 and the technological revolution was radio...Those models, and the ways they shaped the societies from which they emerged, offer a helpful road map as we consider another technological revolution: the rise of the commercial internet...Facebook and other companies have pioneered sophisticated methods of data collection that allow ads to be precisely targeted to individual people’s consumer habits and preferences...When Facebook users were shown that up to six of their friends had voted, they were 0.39 percent more likely to vote than users who had seen no one vote. While the effect is small, Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain observed that even this slight push could influence an election—Facebook could selectively mobilize some voters and not others. Election results could also be influenced by both Facebook and Google if they suppressed information that was damaging to one candidate or disproportionately promoted positive news about another.

An article by Cass Sunstein: Where do dogs come from? What is their relationship to wolves? Where do Homo sapiens come from? What is our relationship to other human species such as Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo erectus? Why do dogs flourish as wolves struggle to survive? Why are we the only remaining humans? New research suggests that these diverse questions have a single answer. In brief: Dogs are far less likely than wolves to respond to challenges with violence (or by running away). Or, in more technical terms, they show low levels of “reactive aggression” in social interactions. As compared to extinct human species, Homo sapiens show precisely the same thing. As a result, we — you and I — are uniquely capable of trust and cooperation. That’s the basis of our evolutionary triumph.

Harvard Law School Professor and former Dean Martha Minow has taught generations of lawyers – including former President Obama – about the power of the law and how a sentence can best match a crime. She sits down with Michel to discuss how the American legal system, whose rate of incarceration is the highest in the world, could use a little compassion.

A group of conservative-leaning lawyers criticized Attorney General William P. Barr for the expansive view of presidential power he espoused in a recent speech and for his conclusion this spring that President Trump had not obstructed justice in the Russia investigation...Mr. Barr’s view on executive power is a misreading of the unitary executive theory, said Charles Fried, a Checks and Balances member and Harvard Law professor who endorsed the theory while he was solicitor general during the Reagan administration. In Mr. Fried’s reading of the theory, “the executive branch cannot be broken up into fragments.” While that branch acts as a unified expression of a president’s priorities, with the president firmly at the helm, “it is also clear that the executive branch is subject to law,” Mr. Fried said. “Barr takes that notion and eliminates the ‘under law’ part.”

An article by Noah Feldman: As a loyal American, I naturally want to side with the Duchess of Sussex (née Meghan Markle) in her growing feud with the British tabloid press. Yet the lawsuit that the Duchess and her husband, Prince Harry, have brought against the Mail on Sunday raises serious questions about the freedom of press. Difficult as it is to find anything sympathetic to say about tabloids, they do consistently test the boundaries of free speech — and in this insistence, there really is reason to think that it would be bad for the free flow of information if the royals were to win their lawsuit. To those accustomed to reading about libel lawsuits focused on salacious facts, the content of the material under dispute in the Sussex lawsuit seems remarkably tame. The central legal claim has to do with a letter the weekend edition of the Daily Mail published from Meghan to her estranged father, presumably provided to the newspaper by the father himself.

Some people are fuming at Facebook for allowing unfiltered political ads, while others are fuming at Twitter for banning them. There’s lots of confusion and speculation, but what we know is that these social media companies have fundamentally changed how people exchange information. What we need to figure out is whether they also change how people spread disinformation — and if so, how to fix it. It’s a question researchers are actively investigating. After “fake news” became the catchphrase of the 2016 election, experts in psychology, political science, computer science and networks stepped up research on disinformation, learning in more detail how it travels through social media and why some things stick in people’s heads...There’s little evidence that targeted ads have the power to change minds or votes, says Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler, co-author of the book “Network Propaganda.” Belief in targeted ads in general is more faith-based than evidence-based, he says. Advertisers assume the targeting causes people to buy things — though this is far from proven.

President Lawrence S. Bacow emailed the community on November 21 to announce an “initiative on Harvard and the legacy of slavery,” backed by an initial $5 million in funding and overseen by a faculty committee led by Radcliffe Institute dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Paul professor of constitutional law and professor of history. ... Joining Brown-Nagin and Beckert on the presidential committee are: Annette Gordon-Reed, Warren professor of American legal history and professor of history; ... Martha Minow, 300thAnniversary University Professor (former Law School dean);

The Democrats brought their last witnesses in the public impeachment hearings Thursday, with President Donald Trump’s former top Russia adviser Fiona Hill using her time to directly confront Republicans on the committee who she said have used the television time to push false conspiracy theories about Ukraine and the 2016 election. Jim Braude was joined by retired federal Judge Nancy Gertner, now a professor at Harvard Law School, and R.J. Lyman, senior fellow at the Niskanen Center.

Gordon Sondland implicated Trump and other top administration officials refusing to testify in the plot to bribe Ukraine as Democrats weigh the next steps in the impeachment inquiry. Laurence Tribe tells Lawrence O’Donnell that Democrats should not delay the inquiry while they fight witness subpoenas because Trump's stonewalling can be used as obstruction: "The evidence is all there and there's nothing left to do but collate it into articles of impeachment."

An op-ed by by Joseph Kristol '09 and Stephen Petraeus '21 (Kristol is a former Marine Corps officer. Petraeus is a former Army officer. Both served combat tours in Afghanistan as infantry platoon leaders.): “I would just say there is one misperception of our veterans and that is they are somehow damaged goods. I don’t buy it.” So said retired Marine Corps general Jim Mattis during remarks at the Marines’ Memorial Club in San Francisco in 2014. The line strikes a chord with us, as we’re sure it would with the great majority of veterans with whom we served. We’ve all, by and large, been trying simply to navigate the sometimes challenging transition to civilian life — finishing school, finding a good job, raising a family — without the added challenge of being perceived by our peers as “damaged goods,” “ticking time bombs” or “killing machines.” While no president could ever shake our pride in our military service, we fear that President Trump’s recent decision to pardon two service members involved in war crimes cases and reverse disciplinary action against another — and his stated motives for doing so — will damage Americans’ perception of the military, encouraging the view that veterans are “broken.”

For decades, when you applied for an apartment, the landlord—or a tenant screening company hired by the landlord—would examine your credit file and pay stubs to verify your ability to pay rent. But today, landlords are using the artificial intelligence revolution to predict something else: Your willingness to pay rent. ... Mutale Nkonde, an AI policy adviser and fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, sees “red flags” in algorithmic tenant screening. Bias worms its way into algorithms via “proxies,” or characteristics that are more common to one group of people than another, she said. While companies may claim their algorithms don’t contain such proxies, that is hard to verify. “Because the algorithms are protected by intellectual property laws, we have no way of scrutinizing them,” Ms. Nkonde said.