Media Mentions

There are more reactions today to a July call President Trump made in which he asked Ukraine's leader to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son. This weekend, the president admitted to discussing the vice president and his son, Hunter, with Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelensky. "The conversation I had was largely congratulatory, largely corruption, all of the corruption taking place. Was largely the fact that we don't want our people, like Vice President Biden and his son, creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine," the president said. The call raises a number of critical questions, including whether the president acted unlawfully. Guests [include]...Nancy Gertner.

A new book penned by Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and the former U.S. assistant attorney general, claims the FBI knows who killed legendary labor leader Jimmy Hoffa, but it won't admit that it blamed the wrong man. In his new book, "In Hoffa's Shadow," Goldsmith lays out his case for why he believes federal investigators allowed Chuckie O'Brien, the labor boss's protege, to be known as the key suspect in Hoffa's mysterious disappearance in 1975, despite evidence proving otherwise. Hoffa served as the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters labor union until 1971, making him a hero to many blue-collar Americans. He also had powerful enemies and ties to organized crime. Goldsmith is also O'Brien's stepson.

For more than four decades, Chuckie O’Brien has been known as a key suspect in Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance. Now, the author of a new book, "In Hoffa's Shadow," says the feds were planning to clear O’Brien. He also says the feds know who’s responsible for one of the most notorious crimes in American history, but they’re not revealing any names. Author Jack Goldsmith has a unique connection to the case: He’s Chuckie O’Brien’s stepson.

Having a criminal record can make it harder to find work and housing, but a new local study asks whether it helps to have your record expunged. Expungement erases past arrests and charges, and removes old or low-level convictions from public view. But no empirical data show how much of an impact it has on job or housing prospects, or on the chances of future arrests. Harvard University’s Access to Justice Lab hopes to answer that question by following people who get their records cleared over a seven-year period. Participants in Pennsylvania will come from Allegheny, Beaver, Butler and Lawrence counties. Similar research will also be conducted in Kansas. “What we are trying to do is to establish and create rigorous evidence … about whether expungement does in fact help people,” said Harvard Law School professor Jim Greiner, who is leading the project. Greiner expects expungement to be helpful. But he said that past studies have shown only that it tends to be associated with better outcomes, such as better access to job and lower rates of recidivism. No research, he said, measures the effect of expungement alone.

Four feminist law professors at Harvard Law School have been telling some alarming truths about the tribunals that have been adjudicating collegiate sex for the past five years. Campus Title IX tribunals are “so unfair as to be truly shocking,” Janet Halley, Jeannie Suk Gersen, Elizabeth Bartholet, and Nancy Gertner proclaimed in a jointly authored document titled “Fairness for All Students.” That document followed up on a previous open letter signed by 28 members of the Harvard Law School faculty in 2014 arguing that the updated sexual assault policy recently installed at Harvard was “inconsistent with some of the most basic principles we teach” and “would do more harm than good.”

Ariana Grande's voice fills the rented Chrysler Pacifica minivan: “The light is coming to give back everything the darkness stole.” Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, bops her head, keeping her hands at ten and two on the wheel. “When did this come out?” she asks Jesse Meisenhelter, fellow Sunriser and her copilot on our 10-hour drive between Louisville and Washington, D.C. “It’s so relevant!” Humming along, Meisenhelter, 25, and Prakash, 26 (the same age as Grande), seem more like carefree coeds than leaders of a self-described “army of young people” touring the country to rally support for the Green New Deal—the polarizing climate resolution presented in February to Congress by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey. ... In July, centrist Democrats in the House presented a more moderate plan to curb carbon emissions by 2050 rather than the Green New Deal’s eyebrow-raisingly ambitious goal of 2030. “We are inspired by the energy, activism, and outside mobilizing of the Sunrise Movement and the millions of young people across the country who are using their power to bring about transformational change,” Speaker Pelosi wrote me in an email. “Guided by their voices and the vision and values of our caucus, House Democrats are taking decisive action to defend the people and places we love.” When I speak to Jody Freeman, a professor of environmental law at Harvard University and a former legal counsel in the Obama administration, she tells me that while she admires the ambitiousness of the plan, “I’m not sure that the folks pushing these policies have a pragmatic view of what is possible, given how hard this is politically.”

One day after hundreds of people massed downtown to protest inaction on climate change, a smaller group gathered at Pulaski Park to call for greater accountability from lawmakers on issues such as gun control and immigrant rights. ... Last to speak at the rally was Jennifer Taub, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and an occasional cable news commentator. After leading the group in singing the U.S. Constitution’s preamble in “Schoolhouse Rock” style, she called for people to petition lawmakers for a vote in the House of Representatives on potential articles of impeachment regarding alleged obstruction of justice against President Donald Trump. “The House has control that they’re not using,” she said.

A clashing array of cultural forces virtually assures a rough landing for Samantha Power’s memoir, “The Education of an Idealist.” Power, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her brilliant and controversial 2002 book “‘A Problem from Hell’: America and the Age of Genocide,” managed a career move that has been causing problems for its practitioners since at least the days of Machiavelli: She moved from the theoretical worlds of academia and literature to the real-consequences world of diplomacy. “The Education of an Idealist” is both the story of that transformation and the next step in the process.

Want a clean slate but don’t know if you qualify for an expungement in Kansas? A free event later this week in downtown Wichita will help people figure out whether they’re eligible to have their criminal record sealed. Kansas Legal Services and others will be at the Advanced Learning Library, 711 W. Second, from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday looking over criminal cases and giving advice to people seeking expungement. ... People who are immediately eligible for expungements will have options on how to proceed. Kansas Legal Services will have paperwork and instructions on site at the library for those who don’t think they need additional help from an attorney to seal their record. Those with state court convictions who want a lawyer’s help can join a new, multi-year expungement study conducted by Kansas Legal Services and Harvard Law School’s Access to Justice Lab that will look at how sealing criminal records affects housing and job opportunities.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: In April 1910, former president Theodore Roosevelt spoke before a large audience in Paris. “The poorest way to face life,” he said, “is with a sneer.” These days, too many Democrats are sneering — not only at President Donald Trump, but also at one another. From the left, many progressives are describing former Vice President Joe Biden as out of touch, old, too conservative, maybe even a bit racist. From the center, many Democrats are describing Senator Elizabeth Warren as unelectable, unlikable, unrealistic, disconnected from the values and beliefs of ordinary Americans. That’s a shame for many reasons, but one in particular is that it threatens to put Democrats in a position akin to that of Trump-era Republicans. A recurring question, mostly faced by Republicans in the age of Trump, is whether to work for a party nominee or an elected official with whom they have intense disagreements. Over the last two years, many Republicans have declined to join the Trump administration, others have been criticized for doing so, and some have been, and now are, torn about whether to resign.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: There are a lot of misconceptions about impeachment. Incompetence isn’t impeachable. It’s terrible for a president to violate the oath of office, but doing so is not, by itself, an impeachable offense. Even posing a danger to the American people isn’t a legitimate basis for impeachment. Under the Constitution, what is necessary is a “high crime or misdemeanor,” meaning an egregious abuse of presidential authority. Some crimes would not count; consider shoplifting or disorderly conduct. An action that is not criminal might be impeachable; consider a six-month vacation, an effort to jail political enemies or an abuse of the pardon power (by, for example, pardoning associates who have engaged in criminal activity at the president’s behest). If you want to understand what counts as impeachable, read the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution’s impeachment provisions were written against the background set by the Declaration. Read against that background, one thing becomes blindingly obvious: If the president has clearly committed an impeachable offense, the House of Representatives is not entitled to look the other way.

Tired of throwing away spoiled produce? Apeel Sciences says it has gotten to the root of the problem and developed a technology that can double or possibly triple the shelf life of many types of produce, including avocados. ... According to Kroger, 40 percent of food produced in the U.S. is thrown away and households waste more than $1,300 in unused food annually. About 160 billion pounds of discarded food ends up in landfills each year, according to Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic.

Having a criminal record can make it harder to find work and housing, but a new local study asks whether it helps to have your record expunged. Expungement erases past arrests and charges, and removes old or low-level convictions from public view. But no empirical data show how much of an impact it has on job or housing prospects, or on the chances of future arrests. Harvard University’s Access to Justice Lab hopes to answer that question by following people who get their records cleared over a seven-year period. Participants in Pennsylvania will come from Allegheny, Beaver, Butler and Lawrence counties. Similar research will also be conducted in Kansas. “What we are trying to do is to establish and create rigorous evidence ... about whether expungement does in fact help people,” said Harvard Law School professor Jim Greiner, who is leading the project.  

Chuckie O’Brien should not be confused with Robert O’Brien, the new national security adviser to President Trump whom I wrote about last week. In fact, finding two Americans more different in upbringings and career paths is hard to imagine. There’s a new book out this week about the first O’Brien, and it is the unlikeliest riveting read of the year: “In Hoffa’s Shadow” by Jack Goldsmith — Harvard Law professor, national security law maven and former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel. It was Goldsmith who, while in the last role, played Samson in the temple to the Stellarwind surveillance program and its demise during the George W. Bush administration.

In response to reports that President Donald Trump repeatedly pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden, the President and his defenders have been quick to point out that there was never a mention of any kind of “quid pro quo” bribery deal. According to Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, despite reportedly urging Zelensky to initiate the inquiry eight times in one conversation, the lack an explicit tit-for-tat proposition rendered the entire interaction innocuous. ... Similarly, Harvard Law professor and author of the book “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment,” Laurence Tribe pointed out that Trump’s alleged actions unequivocally constitute a violation of his oath of office. “If Trump was pressing Ukraine to go after Biden’s family at the same time that Trump was withholding aid from Ukraine to defend itself from Russian aggression, that’s enough,” Tribe tweeted Sunday. “No explicit quid pro quo is needed to make this a betrayal of his oath and a ‘High Crime and Misdemeanor.’”

If a secret whistleblower complaint covers President Donald Trump's dealings with the president of Ukraine, as two major newspapers have reported, it raises profound constitutional questions about whether Congress can police the president's conversations with foreign leaders, legal experts say. ... Some legal scholars, such as Harvard's Jack Goldsmith, are making an even broader argument: that the president can say and do anything he wants in the conduct of foreign relations, which is purely an executive branch function. ... "Putting it brutally, Article II gives the president the authority to do, and say, and pledge, awful things in the secret conduct of U.S. foreign policy," Goldsmith, a former Bush Administration lawyer, said on Twitter. "That is a very dangerous discretion, to be sure, but has long been thought worth it on balance."

An article by Niku Jafarnia ’20: On June 2, Walter Lübcke, a German politician who had defended Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy of welcoming migrants, was murdered by a right-wing extremist. The incident was one of several such attacks against European politicians who had advocated for generous immigration policies, and one of many more right-wing attacks perpetrated directly against immigrant communities. In response to the disturbing trend, a number of policymakers in the United States and in Europe have suggested that immigrants, rather than xenophobia or racism, are at the root of extremist violence. Whether immigrants are the perpetrators or the victims of an act of terrorist violence — and regardless of the ideological motivation behind the attack — their presence is portrayed as the primary problem.

... The Education Department is refunding some student loan payments made by thousands of borrowers who attended Corinthian Colleges. A federal judge last year had ordered it to stop collecting on the debt amid an ongoing class action lawsuit. ... Toby Merrill, director of Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, which represents the Corinthian borrowers in the case, blasted the Trump administration for “an illegal and unacceptable breach of a court order that students won.”

President Donald Trump faces renewed allegations of conflicts of interest between his official office and personal business after a letter from House Democrats revealed the Pentagon had spent more than $184,000 at his Scottish golf club. ... "It’s a clear violation of the Domestic Emoluments Clause of Article II, which flatly and unconditionally prohibits the president from receiving financial benefits from any state or any part of the federal government over and above his congressionally fixed compensation," Laurence H. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, told Salon by email.

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.”