Media Mentions

Two student advocacy groups have filed separate lawsuits against Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, one alleging her Department of Education allowed an operator of for-profit schools to mislead students and sack them with debt they are now unable to repay, and another that accused her of continuing to refuse to discharge the student loan debt of borrowers previously enrolled in for-profit schools that abruptly shuttered. ... The Project on Predatory Student Lending, part of the Legal Services Center at Harvard Law School, also filed a lawsuit Tuesday against DeVos on behalf of approximately 7,200 former students enrolled in now-defunct for-profit schools in Massachusetts operated by Corinthian Colleges, demanding department officials cancel their student loans.

In November, Seattle will elect a new city council. It is the second election in which the city’s democracy vouchers are in play, a first-of-its-kind financing program for taxpayers, which is either, depending on who you ask, the roadmap to fixing big money in politics across America or responsible for a $3 million jump in PAC spending. In 2015, Seattle overwhelmingly passed Initiative 112  with 63 percent of the vote. The idea first surfaced in the broader public sphere in 2011, 13 months after the Citizens United decision allowed a new flood of corporate money into politics. Harvard law professor Lawerence Lessig proposed a counterbalance in a New York Times op-ed: “more money.” Lessig argued that if corporations were able to classify vast sums of money as protected speech, it might be time to start asking how to match that capitalistic tide with money from ‘the people.’ “[I]magine a system that gave a rebate of that first $50 [we pay in taxes] in the form of a ‘democracy voucher,'” Lessig proposed.

Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe shares with CNN's Anderson Cooper why he thinks President Donald Trump's decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine amounts to an impeachable offense.

Aexander hamilton warned in 1788 that impeachment risks “agitat[ing] the passions of the whole community” and spurring “pre-existing factions” to “animosities, partialities, influence and interest”. The process, he wrote, carries the “greatest danger” that “real demonstrations of innocence or guilt” will amount to little in the face of raw political calculations. But the constitution carves a path around the maelstrom, Hamilton insisted: the United States Senate will have the “sole power to try all impeachments” sent its way by the House of Representatives. ...Keeping the Senate proceedings “civil and orderly”—a task that the constitution assigns to the chief justice—may be a struggle, says Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor and co-author of “To End a Presidency”. The previous chief justice, William Rehnquist, said of his role in the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton in 1999 that “I did nothing in particular, and I did it very well.” John Roberts, the chief today, faces a more partisan environment but, Mr Tribe says, will seek to emulate his predecessor.

Laurence Tribe on Wednesday suggested that Democrats are now in possession of the “smoking Howitzer” with which to impeach President Donald Trump. The Harvard constitutional law professor told CNN’s Anderson Cooper he believed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was “wise to hold off” until last month to begin an impeachment investigation, after she had “what amounts to not just a smoking gun, but a smoking Howitzer.”

Former Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker on Tuesday attempted to defend President Donald Trump against the onslaught of increasingly inculpatory evidence emerging from Democrats’ impeachment inquiry by claiming that abusing the power of the presidency is not a crime. Appearing on Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle, Whitaker argued that Trump’s conduct was not criminal and therefore not impeachable...Harvard Law professor Laurence H. Tribe, one of the nation’s leading constitutional scholars, described Whitaker’s comments as “the epitome of ignorance.” “Matt Whitaker’s statement that ‘abuse of power is not a crime’ is the epitome of ignorance – ignorance of the Constitution, ignorance of the purposes and history of the Impeachment Clause, ignorance of America’s history, ignorance of the law,” Tribe told Law and Crime. “Impeachable offenses, which the Constitution quaintly calls ‘high Crimes and Misdemeanors,’ are offenses against the nation and its Constitution, not necessarily violations of criminal statutes.”

Costa Rican magistrate Victor Madrigal-Borloz has served for the past 21 months as the U.N. independent expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual…

With the 2020 race for the White House in full swing, speakers at a Harvard panel on Saturday sharply differed on whether an interstate compact to effectively disable the Electoral College and move to a national popular vote offers an antidote to problems with the presidential selection system. “We are not seeking perfection. We are seeking a more perfect union,” National Popular Vote advocate Rob Richie said during the discussion, part of a conference at Harvard Law School on the history and future of the Electoral College hosted by the Harvard Law & Policy Review...While he backs the compact, in a keynote speech Lawrence Lessig, the Roy. L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School, outlined a new proposal for a constitutional amendment he suggested could garner broader support. The proposal would award the support of each state’s electors to the top two candidates on a “fractional proportional” basis, meaning they would receive votes equal to their percentage of the overall state results. It also includes a provision aimed at lessening what some critics consider the unfair advantage small states enjoy in the allotment of electoral votes. “If we had fractional proportional allocation by states, the swing-state problem disappears,” Lessig said. “Presidential candidates would … at least try to campaign to everyone throughout the whole country.”

Costa Rican magistrate Victor Madrigal-Borloz has served for the past 21 months as the U.N. independent expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. He will present his report on how laws and cultural norms adversely affect LGBT individuals to the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday. The Gazette interviewed Madrigal-Borloz, who is the Eleanor Roosevelt Senior Visiting Researcher with the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, to talk about his work and his hopes for the future.

Did ExxonMobil mislead investors about the financial risks of climate change? That's the charge in an unprecedented trial against the oil and gas giant that got underway Tuesday and is likely to feature testimony by Rex Tillerson. The proceedings, which have been described as "historic" by environmental law experts, is expected to see former US secretary of state Tillerson give evidence and will be closely watched by energy companies and climate campaigners...Whatever the outcome of the trial, Hana Vizcarra, an environmental expert at Harvard Law School, says it will impact how large energy companies communicate their climate risk, particularly because Exxon is facing other lawsuits brought against it by shareholders that are yet to come to trial. "Investors and shareholders want more information on the climate and how it affects companies," Vizcarra told AFP. "Almost all oil and gas companies now produce climate-related reports -- the question is what information should be included in these reports," she added.

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is the closest thing to a Ken Starr that exists for President Trump's impeachment inquiry — at least for now — lawmakers and committee staff tell Axios. The bottom line: In the absence of an independent or special counsel to manage the Ukraine investigation, Schiff has taken on a dual-hat role, as both a key committee chairman and chief investigator. Much like Starr, Schiff is there at the crux of key interviews behind closed doors and efforts to gather evidence that may further the impeachment inquiry. What they’re saying: Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard and a Trump critic, told me Schiff would have been less likely to play this role — and might have had a harder time justifying it — if not for Attorney General Bill Barr. "If Attorney General Barr had accepted [a CIA lawyer’s attempt to make a] criminal referral and opened a meaningful inquiry, presumably with the appointment of a special counsel, he would’ve been in a position to say that the current congressional inquiry had to be put on hold." Tribe says, in hindsight, Trump may have wished that process had been put in place because it might have pre-empted the congressional inquiry and run out the clock between now and the election. "Now it’s too late. The irony is that, by trying to play the role of Roy Cohn to Donald Trump, William Barr has basically screwed his boss. If Trump had half a brain, he would be, well, pissed."

Jamarria Hall stood outside Osborn High School, where he graduated at the top of his class in 2017, now saying that time there was four years lost. Hall knew something was wrong the moment he stepped in the door his freshman year in 2014: the moldy smell of the school hallway, dead mice in the bathroom, water falling from the classroom ceilings into buckets or onto students' heads. Teachers failed to show up for class for days, Hall said, and students were sent to the gymnasium to watch movies. Classrooms lacked textbooks...The long-term impact of a substandard K-12 public education is among several legal arguments raised in a high-profile civil lawsuit before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit on Thursday. It was filed by Hall and six other Detroit school students...Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard University who is not part of the litigation, said the Detroit case gives the federal court system a chance to consider what he called the "massive body of evidence" demonstrating what under-funded schools do to the children attending them, including making them a "permanent underclass," a term referenced in a prior U.S. Supreme Court ruling involving education. Tribe said every state makes K-12 education mandatory and basic education has been recognized unanimously by the Supreme Court as “necessary to prepare citizens to participate effectively and intelligently" in an open political system.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe and Ron Fein: President Trump’s favorite sheriff is back in court. On Wednesday, lawyers for former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio will argue a strange federal appeal in San Francisco. Part of what makes it strange: The court was so concerned about the Department of Justice’s position in the case that it appointed an outside special prosecutor. The House’s impeachment inquiry ought to pay attention...It’s tempting for the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry to zero in on Ukraine. The case for focusing the nation’s attention on abuse of power is compelling, but the committee needs to consider broadening whatever article of impeachment accuses the president of abusing his presidential authority to encompass abuses unrelated to the Ukraine fiasco. This broader article should include such abuses as unjustifiably refusing to cooperate with the impeachment process authorized by the Constitution; corruptly seeking to undermine all legitimate inquiries into how the president ascended to his high office in the first instance; and blatantly misusing the pardon power, not to temper justice with mercy, but rather to cover up executive misconduct or to facilitate violations of individual rights. The arguments in Arpaio’s case on Wednesday should remind us that the Constitution is too important to leave only to the courts.

Exxon Mobil Corp. is heading to trial today over "shadow prices." The oil giant is accused of misrepresenting proxy costs of carbon to its investors — hypothetical prices on carbon dioxide that companies all over the world have begun incorporating into their business plans to account for climate change regulations. The use of these theoretical numbers is growing as companies grapple with the possibility that oil revenue could fall as governments address climate change through carbon taxes...But Hana Vizcarra, a staff attorney with Harvard Law School's Environmental and Energy Law Program, cautions against putting detrimental pressure on a burgeoning landscape of corporate climate disclosures. She suggests that attorneys general like James wield their legal power like a "blunt instrument" when used for policymaking, and that complex securities and disclosures laws could put a chilling effect on companies that want to disclose their climate risks. "AGs must walk a thin line to insure companies do not mislead investors and consumers while also not jeopardizing existing investor efforts to encourage more detailed climate-related disclosures from energy companies," Vizcarra wrote in a recent white paper.

On July 25, just a day after former Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified before Congress and essentially concluded his investigation of President Donald Trump’s various intersections with Russia, Trump asked Ukraine’s leader to find dirt on a political opponent – indulging in some of the very behavior that Mueller had been investigating but couldn’t prove. In other words, Trump escaped Mueller’s probe and then turned right around and hit a self-destruct button...Laurence Tribe, a professor at the Harvard Law School and a leading constitutional scholar, told me that he sees some method in Trump’s madness on the White House lawn. “He obviously believes that if he commits his felonies in broad daylight and out in the open that he hasn’t done anything wrong -- and that no one would think he’s stupid enough to commit an impeachable offense in front of everyone,” he said. If Trump is muddying the waters by giving Democrats too many impeachable acts to track, Tribe suggests that they focus solely on building their case around two articles of impeachment that involve his Ukraine and Russia dealings: betrayal of country and stonewalling Congress. Trump’s comments Thursday about China can inform those charges, Tribe says, but he thinks it would be a strategic mistake for it to be turned into a standalone article of impeachment.

After a decade of improvements in air pollution, the U.S. is backsliding. And that means more people are dying prematurely, according to new research. The paper authors don’t point to a specific reason why the increase happened, but the numbers are clear that it occurred under the presidency of Donald Trump. A team of economists at Carnegie Mellon University published their working paper Monday with the National Bureau of Economic Research... “Since 2017, the agency, through a variety of actions, has signaled it is going to take a more relaxed approach,” Joe Goffman, former associate administrator for Climate and Senior Counsel at the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation who now helps run Harvard Law School’s Environmental Law Program, told Earther. “This administration has sent enough signals to sources that they are operating under a more lenient regime that could corroborate the data that is the focus of this report.”

Presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is getting some attention for her recently released labor platform, which focuses on unions and “sectoral bargaining,” a concept new to most Americans. Sectoral bargaining is when an entire field or industry agrees on basics, such as safety standards or minimum wages, rather than each company bargaining with its own workers. Benjamin Sachs, professor of labor and industry at Harvard Law School, said it’s worth noting because union membership has decreased in the United States. He said he thinks that’s partly because of the way businesses or enterprises handle their bargaining now. “The problem with enterprise bargaining,” he said, “is that as soon as you have a union in one enterprise, that puts that enterprise at a competitive disadvantage with all the other enterprises in the same market.”...While fewer Americans are union members than in the past, Sachs argued that doesn’t mean unions are less popular. According to Gallup polling, Americans increasingly have approved of labor unions since 2009, soon after the recession.

President Trump urged his party to “get tougher and fight” against his impeachment Monday as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) distributed a “fact sheet” outlining what her office called a gross abuse of presidential power, including a “shakedown,” “pressure campaign” and “cover up.” A Republican effort to censure House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) for his handling of the inquiry failed Monday, with the House voting along party lines to block a floor vote on the measure...Matz, who clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, recently wrote a book, “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment,” with another impeachment scholar Democrats are consulting, Laurence Tribe. Tribe, while not on staff or being paid, has also become a regular source of advice for House Democrats, particularly for his former students who are now in the thick of the impeachment probe: Schiff and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), both of whom studied under Tribe at Harvard Law School.

You've probably seen the ads. “They have spiffy marketing machines that are really good at drawing people in,” says Toby Merrill, director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard's Legal Services Center. “So, of course people see those ads and think that it's a good opportunity, that's what they're meant to make you think.” Merrill is talking about for-profit colleges. She warns many for-profit schools fail to deliver on the promises they advertise. “What the schools are telling people is that they're providing high quality state of the art training, often times like vocational hands on learning,” explains Merrill. “And either when students enroll they find out that's not true, or often it's even after they leave the school and find out their degree isn't valued by employers.” Merrill says graduates of for-profit colleges are often saddled with a worthless degree, and massive debt.

Pressure is mounting on Senate Republicans to do something about the Trump administration’s human rights violations, blatant corruption, Giuliani-hackery, and mounting counterintelligence problems, mostly thanks to the House Democrats finally opening an impeachment inquiry into the president’s behavior. While the idea of 20 GOP senators openly defecting to support a vote to convict Donald Trump in the Senate still remains whimsical, we’re seeing significant cracks in the wall of support for any and all Trump-y conduct...As professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School (also a Slate contributor) noted in an email to me: "Sen. Graham does seem to be parroting WH talking points, and not the most effective ones, either. Saying he needs to be 'shown' that 'Trump was actually engaging in a quid pro quo, outside the phone call,' is particularly bizarre. What about the call itself? It was hardly chopped liver. Its explicit use of the word 'though' to link (a) the president’s willingness to release the aid that Congress had voted and that Ukraine was desperately seeking to defend itself from Putin’s aggression, to (b) the favor Trump wanted in return was enough in itself to establish that Trump was conditioning the aid package on assistance in his political quest both to erase Russia’s influence on his original election and to undermine his most likely 2020 opponent. If that’s not 'quid pro quo,' nothing is."

With the 2020 race for the White House in full swing, speakers at a Harvard panel on Saturday sharply differed on whether an interstate compact…