Media Mentions

Trump's legal team filed a claim to stop a Manhattan D.A.'s subpoena of his tax returns that said the President cannot be prosecuted or investigated while in office. Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe tells Lawrence why Trump's lawyers are wrong- and why the tax return subpoena cannot be stopped.

When liberals and progressives cite former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s best and worst rulings of the Barack Obama era, they typically praise his support for same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges while slamming him for his support for unlimited corporate donations in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission. The U.S. Supreme Court obviously isn’t going to be overturning Citizens United anytime soon given its swing to the right, but a group of 50 legal experts have another idea for ending that decision: a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. ...The legal experts, according to the Law & Crime website, have signed a joint letter they plan to release on Constitution Day that calls for a constitutional amendment ending Citizens United. Those who have signed the letter range from former Federal Election Commission Chairman Trevor Potter to Zephyr Teachout (a law professor at Fordham University in New York City) to two professors at the Harvard Law School: Lawrence Lessig and Laurence Tribe. The letter states, “As attorneys, law professors and former judges with a wide variety of political beliefs and affiliations, we are convinced that our nation’s current election spending framework is a root cause of dysfunction in our political system and requires fundamental reform.”

In august 2013 a devastating chemical-weapons attack on the Damascus suburbs killed some 1,400 people. Faced with a clear breach of the red line he drew a year earlier, President Barack Obama had to decide what to do. He blinked. Rather than ordering reprisals against the regime of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, he opted to ask for Congress’s permission first. And Congress, it turned out, was not keen. Samantha Power, Mr Obama’s new ambassador to the United Nations, faced a choice, too. She had spent her professional life arguing for a more assertive American response to atrocities. She believed her boss should punish this horrendous crime, and indeed earlier ones, with air strikes. Now her idealism confronted the complexities of government. Should she resign, as some critics urged her to do?

An article by Noah Feldman: The Trump administration is gearing up for its next big legal fight, taking on California’s long-established authority to set vehicle emission standards for new cars. Because the state is so large, this effectively creates national miles-per-gallon targets for any manufacturer selling vehicles in the U.S. Trump would like to take this power away from California and set lower national MPG standards. The question is, can he do it? Or is this just another example of presidential overreach in an administration that specializes in going too far?

... Recently, in order to achieve wide exposure to public equity markets, Harvard Management Company (HMC) has come to rely increasingly on pooled investments and commingled funds typically managed by outside investment firms, rather than directly owning stock in individual companies. This has led to a review of ACSR’s [Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility] role and as a result, going forward, the committee will focus on developing guidelines that can help inform Harvard’s external investment managers, and other interested investors, as they vote on a broad array of shareholder resolutions. ... The Gazette recently sat down with outgoing ACSR Chair Howell Jackson, the James S. Reid Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, to better understand some of these changes, and to get a sense of how the ACSR fulfills its role.

The former secretary of state details his frustrations on Iran, Israel, Russia, his revamp of the State Department, and his old boss…

Rex Tillerson had seen and learned much in his 41-year career at ExxonMobil Corp., and some of it proved useful in his 13 months as U.S. secretary of state.  But in the end, most of the thorniest challenges the former chairman of the multinational oil giant faced had more to do with his relationship with his boss, President Donald Trump, than with the complexities of geopolitics. ... In panel interview with Professors Nicholas Burns, who runs the Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), Robert Mnookin, chair emeritus of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School (HLS), and James Sebenius, who heads the Harvard Negotiation Roundtable at Harvard Business School (HBS), Tillerson’s daylong visit was organized by the American Secretaries of State Project, a joint initiative run by Burns, Mnookin, and Sebenius, who each lead programs on diplomacy and negotiation at all three Schools.

When I started reporting on gig workers in 2014, I was surprised to find some of the people who represented labor organizations would respond to my inquiries with mild irritation. Why would you write about Lyft and Uber’s labor issues, they’d ask me, when there are so many sectors with bigger workforces? ... I ran this idea by Benjamin Sachs, a professor at Harvard Law who has written extensively about the gig economy. “It seems intuitively possible that the reason this is now possible is that the issue has been hitched to a politically salient group of workers,” he said. That analysis seems all the more accurate because it can be observed in reverse: While blue states like California and blue cities like New York and Seattle have been passing laws that grant gig economy workers more rights, red states have started passing legislation that, for instance, preemptively classifies gig economy workers as independent contractors. “Overall,” he said, the attention paid to the gig economy “could make it more likely to move things.”

An op-ed by Terri Gerstein, director of the State and Local Enforcement Project at the Harvard Labor and Worklife Program: When conservative British lawmakers bucked their leader on Brexit, many of us in the United States were left wondering, where are our principled conservatives willing to take on the president? Maybe our conservatives have lost the muscle memory of how to do something like this. It seems unlikely any will take on the president any time soon. But maybe they can begin with smaller steps to start rebuilding that muscle.

Facebook unveiled a series of changes on Tuesday to limit hate speech and extremism on its site, as scrutiny is rising on how the social network may be radicalizing people. ... Evelyn Douek, a doctoral student at Harvard Law School who studies online speech legislation worldwide, said she was looking to future transparency reports that Facebook provides that will include data on extremist content, to see whether the changes make a difference. “A lot of these reports can be ‘transparency theater’ where they give information and statistics, but without enough context or information to make them meaningful,” she said.

NPR's David Green talks to law professor Jody Freeman, who is an ex-Obama staffer, about the expectation that the administration will revoke California's ability to set tighter environmental rules.

In the past year, I’ve been on a mission to pester as many people in my life as possible. The first victim was my editor, whom I abruptly asked one morning to stop messaging me about story ideas on our office’s chat platform, Slack. Instead, I said, let’s talk the ideas out over the phone. ... Guhan Subramanian, the director of the Harvard Program on Negotiation, which teaches business- and law-school students the finer points of conflict resolution, argues that spoken conversation accomplishes far more in a shorter amount of time. In any discussion, “people are asking questions, probing, asking follow-up questions,” he says. “It’s obviously a lot easier to do when you’re over the phone or in person, compared to by email or text.”

Massachusetts Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley is introducing a resolution to open an impeachment inquiry over new and expanded allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. We discuss what we know, what we don't, and where we go from here. Guests: ... Nancy Gertner, WBUR legal analyst, retired federal judge, senior lecturer at Harvard Law School.

An op-ed by Evelyn Douek [S.J.D. candidate and affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society]: You won’t like Facebook’s new Oversight Board. Yesterday, the social-media giant unveiled its “charter” for a 40-person board with the power to review the company’s decisions about which content can appear on Facebook-owned platforms and which rules it applies when taking postings down. Deciding which videos are too violent, which photos too racy, and which behavior too “inauthentic” is a job destined to make the board unpopular. That it can be unpopular—with users, the media, and Facebook employees alike—and still exist is precisely the point.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), in opening remarks before the testimony of Corey Lewandowski, said, “Today’s hearing is entitled ‘Presidential Obstruction of Justice and Abuse of Power.’ This hearing is the first one formally designated under the Committee’s procedures adopted last week in connection with our investigation to determine whether to recommend articles of impeachment with respect to President Trump.” ... Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe weighs in: “Communications by the president to a crony asking the latter to carry out a criminal act on the president’s behalf are covered by no privilege and subject to no immunity, and the president’s lawyers as well as the Justice Department lawyers must know as much.” He added, “Today’s spectacle was just another chapter in the ongoing criminal obstruction of justice in which this president has been engaged for well over a year, obstruction of justice designed to cover up the president’s illicit dealings with a hostile foreign power to help him acquire his office and to hold onto it.”

A New York Times piece over the weekend presented a witness account of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh allegedly sexually assaulting a young, unnamed woman while they were both in college — a new allegation in addition to those levied against the judge during his confirmation hearing last year. ... Now, some Democrats are calling for Kavanaugh’s impeachment, saying they are concerned both about continued allegations of sexual misconduct and the possibility that he may have lied under oath. ... To discuss, Jim Braude was joined by retired federal Judge Nancy Gertner, now a professor at Harvard Law School, and James Rappaport, former chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party and director of the New Boston Fund.

All things have a price – and if not, economists will find one. Researchers have calculated the going rate for thoughts and prayers offered in hard times. Rather than settling on one price for all, the study found the value of a compassionate gesture depended overwhelmingly on a person’s beliefs. While Christian participants were willing to part with money to receive thoughts and prayers from others, the idea made nonbelievers baulk. Instead of shelling out to receive the gestures, on average they were willing to pay to avoid them. ... The Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, who was the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under Barack Obama, called the study “a strong and powerful paper”.

Opening statements are arguably the most important part of a patent trial. But attorneys who tell an interesting story, stay out of the weeds and make a connection with jurors are setting themselves up for success. ... Here, experts share their tips for making a great opening statement. ... During opening statements, jurors will be hearing a lot of information for the first time. WilmerHale partner Louis Tompros said it is critical to present this information in a familiar way, preferably in the form of a simple story. Tompros said he encourages students in his patent trial advocacy course at Harvard Law School to watch movies with great opening statements. One of his favorites is the opening of Capt. Jack Ross, played by Kevin Bacon, in "A Few Good Men." Prosecuting two Marines accused of murder, Ross tells the story of the night that a fellow Marine died in his barracks room.

Elaine Chao, who serves as President Donald Trump's transportation secretary and is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, is being investigated by House Democrats over accusations of conflicts of interest involving her family's shipping company. ... Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, called Chao's potential conflicts of interest "extremely serious." ... "Secretary Elaine Chao’s potential conflicts of interest that the House Democrats’ letter targets are extremely serious, especially given Chao’s proximity to the center of Republican legislative power and Senate confirmation power in her husband, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell," Tribe told Salon by email.

... But history can move in unexpected ways. Last month, 181 American chief executives issued a collective “statement on the purpose of a corporation” that abandoned their long adherence to shareholder primacy. Instead, the group – which was organised by the Business Roundtable under the leadership of Jamie Dimon, head of JPMorgan – pledged “a fundamental commitment to all our stakeholders”. ... In universities, economists such as Eugene Fama declared that free markets were the only valid engine of growth and value, while law professors such as Lucian Bebchuk insisted corporate boards had no right to ever overrule investors, however short-term their focus. ... Shareholder rights are essential for keeping managers and directors accountable,” insists Bebchuk, who often exchanged bitter words with Lipton.

Purdue Pharma, the company that made billions selling the prescription painkiller OxyContin, filed for bankruptcy days after reaching a tentative settlement with many of the state and local governments suing it over the toll of opioids. The filing late Sunday night in White Plains, New York, was anticipated before and after the tentative deal, which could be worth up to $12 billion over time, was announced last week. ... The bankruptcy means Purdue will likely be removed from the first federal opioid trial, scheduled to start in Cleveland on Oct. 21. According to Harvard Law Professor Mark Roe, an expert on corporate bankruptcy, anyone who wants money from Purdue will now have to go through the bankruptcy court.