Media Mentions

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.

A 33-year-old orangutan awarded “non-human” personhood rights in a landmark 2015 court decision in Argentina has settled into a new home in Florida...Sandra landed at the center this month because she’s a hybrid of two orangutan subspecies, and Indonesia, one of the native environments for orangutans — where most preferred sanctuaries are located — has banned orangutans like her from its sanctuaries. As part of implementing Sandra's new rights, the Argentinian judge wanted her to live at an accredited facility — and the Florida center was the only one in the Americas that met those standards. Her arrival has raised the hopes of US activists who are trying to match the successes of lawyers who turn to the courts to fight for animal rights around the world...“You almost get a sense that judges are really looking for reasons not to do what he's asking,” said Kristen Stilt, director of the animal law and policy clinic at Harvard Law School. “One of the reasons is they're just being transferred to another form of captivity. They're not being freely released.”

U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland implicated numerous senior officials and President Trump in a plan to extort Ukraine: No White House meeting until the Ukrainians announced an investigation into nonexistent dirt on former vice president Joe Biden...Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to Sondland, played a key role in the plot and in obstruction of Congress. As such, Pompeo needs to appear as a witness or face impeachment himself... “The Sondland testimony puts Pompeo (as well as Trump, of course) squarely inside impeachment territory — and, under a normal Justice Department, in indictment territory as well,” says constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe. “There is no [Office of Legal Counsel] memo suggesting that a sitting secretary of state is immune from indictment and prosecution, and this one was deeply engaged, if Sondland is to be believed, in a conspiracy to commit bribery and extortion, to violate federal election law against foreign interference, and to obstruct justice, including obstructing congressional investigations.”

Since the head of Bolivia’s armed forces “suggested” to Evo Morales that he resign the presidency on Nov. 10, following contested elections in October that were marred by allegations of fraud, Bolivia has been in a tense limbo. Two days after the military’s nudge, Morales arrived in Mexico, where authorities had granted him political asylum. In La Paz, the conservative vice president of the Senate, Jeanine Anez, declared herself his replacement. Street clashes and crackdowns on protesters have escalated since then. Can the new government, which insists it is only transitional while acting otherwise, establish its legitimacy and reduce the risk of deeper unrest? ... “This is part of the dramatic spike in violence in Bolivia since Evo Morales was forced to resign,” said Thomas Becker, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic who has worked extensively on human rights issues in Bolivia. He interviewed the survivors of the Sacaba attack the next day. “I heard dozens of accounts of soldiers shooting unarmed civilians, including individuals providing assistance to other injured people,” he told me. “People reported that soldiers beat protesters while yelling racial slurs at them, which only escalates an already tense situation.”

An article by Noah Feldman: A liberal group has criticized Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh for meeting last month with an anti-gay-rights activist whose organization had filed a “friend of the court” brief in a major gay-rights case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The group’s director has even called for the justices to recuse themselves. Brian Brown, the activist who met with the justices and runs the National Organization for Marriage, would appear to hold some seriously wrong beliefs. But the objection to justices meeting with people who have filed such briefs is misconceived. Friends of the court aren’t parties to a litigation in the ordinary sense. They’re independent groups or individuals sharing their views with the justices. There’s no scandal if justices interact with them. More fundamentally, the justices shouldn’t be shuttered away from the world like cloistered monks and nuns. It’s valuable for them to meet and talk with all kinds of people, including ideological advocates.

In his new book, Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig argues that American democracy is broken not only because of partisanship in Washington, but also because the American system of government does not properly ensure representation under the ideal of "one person, one vote." To discuss what ails us — and how to potentially fix it — Jim Braude was joined by Lessig to discuss "They Don’t Represent Us: Reclaiming Our Democracy."

As Etelvina Ramos Mamani recovered from giving birth in her home in the rural highlands of Bolivia, a military sharpshooter fired a single bullet through her small bedroom window, striking her 8-year-old daughter Marlene in the chest. The woman held her daughter as she died. The 2003 killing was one of many atrocities committed during a period of unrest in Bolivia sparked by the government's exploitation of the country's natural gas deposits...A federal jury in Fort Lauderdale unanimously found the officials liable for the slayings and awarded damages to the families of eight victims in April 2018. But the judge, saying the evidence presented during the monthlong trial wasn't enough to sustain the verdict, later overturned the jury's finding. The victims' families appealed the judge's decision, and their attorneys will present oral arguments before three judges this morning in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. "We are asking the court to reinstate the jury verdict," says Beth Stephens, an attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization that has been litigating the case together with the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School and various private firms.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was once very reluctant on impeachment, but has now used the term ‘bribery’ to describe communications between Donald Trump and Ukraine’s president, in discussion of possible impeachable offenses. Harvard constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe joins Joy Reid to discuss this and more regarding the impeachment inquiry of the president.

An article by Ashley Nunes: Canadians worry about distracted driving and rightly so. Studies show that taking your eyes off the road – even for a few seconds – dramatically raises the odds of a crash. In 2016, distracted driving was implicated in some 21 per cent of fatal accidents and 27 per cent of serious injury collisions (instances where the car’s occupants were hurt but not killed). The growing ubiquity of this phenomenon has alarmed legislators, law enforcement organizations and safety advocacy groups who – keen to save lives – are asking Canadians to stay focused on the road...It turns out that while we agree distracted driving is dangerous, we aren’t willing to give it up. Nearly 50 per cent of Canadians admit to using cell phones while driving while 30 per cent report taking their eyes off the road to do things such as rummaging through personal belongings, smoking and eating. Texting while driving has increased by 50 per cent since 2010. During the same time period, support for banning cellphone use while driving has fallen by 50 per cent.

For decades, Vermont-based Ben and Jerry’s has enjoyed a reputation as one of the country’s most progressive, forward-thinking companies...In recent years, however, the business started by two friends in a converted Burlington gas station has faced criticism over its own production methods, including a pair of lawsuits accusing the longtime ice cream purveyor of misleading consumers about just how humane its products really are...falsely claiming the milk used in its ice cream comes exclusively from “happy cows” and so-called humane “Caring Dairy” farms....In California, a San Francisco judge tossed out a suit brought by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals accusing the California Milk Advisory Board of false advertising in a “Happy Cows” campaign — ruling that government entities aren’t subject to false advertising laws. But the allegations laid out in last month’s suit paint a compelling picture, says Harvard Law School professor Rebecca Tushnet, who specializes in advertising law. One of the key issues at hand, she says, will be whether the company’s “Caring Dairies” can be considered a factual claim or just marketing puffery. “By defining what ‘Caring Dairies’ means,” Tushnet says, “Ben and Jerry’s may well have made a factual claim that could be shown to be true or false.”

An article by Noah Feldman: The U.S. Supreme Court last week allowed a lawsuit against Remington Arms Co. by families of victims in the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting to go forward, despite a federal law that on its face seemed to block the suit. That raises a challenging question for the manufacturer of the XM15-E2S weapon that gunman Adam Lanza used to kill 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut, back in 2012. Should Remington now fight the case in state court, arguing to a judge and jury that it shouldn’t be held liable under state and federal law? Or should it settle the case and hope that other states don’t follow Connecticut in interpreting federal law to allow for such lawsuits?

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: U.S.-born Hoda Muthana should be in an American prison for joining Islamic State, the caliphate that terrorized, murdered and raped innocent civilians. Instead, she and her 2-year-old son are stuck in a refugee camp in Syria — because the U.S. government, relying on a technicality, has stripped her of her passport and told her that she and her son are not citizens. A federal judge has just held that government had the authority to do so. It’s hard to feel sympathy for Muthana. But the judge’s decisions, and the government’s before that, set a terrible precedent for others whom the government might try to strip of their citizenship in the future. A person who reasonably believes she was born a citizen, and has been issued a passport on that understanding by the government, should be treated as a citizen unless she has lied to get that passport in the first place.

An op-ed by John Ketcham '21: Upon graduation from Harvard Law School, I will return to live in my childhood home in Astoria, Queens with my mother, grandmother, and younger brother. I could pay $3,000 a month for a small one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, but that’s impractical when I could live with my family and save money. What’s more, living where I grew up means that I can participate in the community that has shaped me. Perhaps I’m a stereotypical millennial, failing to launch, but I feel it’s the right decision. In fact, Americans increasingly embrace this way of life. According to Pew, a record 64 million Americans, or 20 percent of the U.S. population, now live in multigenerational homes—a rate not seen since the fifties. Apart from giving people greater access to housing in expensive markets, this arrangement offers a variety of economic and social benefits. As urban planners and policymakers debate future residential development, multigenerational living should be part of the mix.

This week brought the first public hearings in the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. Next week, they will continue with many more witnesses set to testify. The hearings have been long – at times riveting, at times tedious — with partisan bickering on full display. They are also historic. It’s a rare thing for Congress to use this tool crafted by the framers to hold the president’s power in check. My guest, Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, says that’s a good thing. Sunstein is the author of “Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide.” Diane spoke with Sunstein Friday morning as Marie Yovanovitch testified in Congress. She asked what our founding documents say should – and should not – be considered an impeachable offense.

Law and documentary film may seem far apart, but they actually share many connections. Documentary filmmakers confront legal questions about privacy, secrecy, access to public and private spaces, and ownership of images and other materials. With the guidance of filmmaker and producer Joseph Tovares and support from the Hewlett Foundation, 12 Harvard Law School students from eight countries have worked since January on the Legal Lens project, producing the five short films hosted here.

An op-ed by Laurence H. Tribe: After just one week of public impeachment hearings, Donald Trump has unmistakably emerged as America's anti-president, the very model of the charlatan George Washington warned might be overtaken by "the insidious wiles of foreign influence." We have learned that Trump is so obsessed with the legitimacy of his 2016 election—and so terrified of becoming a private citizen (subject to indictment and imprisonment) after the 2020 election—that he embraces a conspiratorial myth of Ukrainian responsibility for Russian lawlessness hatched by an oligarch in Vladimir Putin's orbit. We have heard an official's first-hand account of a president so beholden to Putin that he blithely dismisses Russia's aggression as not "big stuff" compared with a public announcement by Ukraine's new president to the effect that, contrary to fact, its government is investigating (nonexistent) corruption by Trump's political rival.

The U.S. Department of Education agreed to hand over department records late Thursday to Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., the Democratic chairman of the U.S. House education committee, just hours before Scott was set to subpoena Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for the records. The information relates to the Education Department’s unwillingness to fully forgive the federal student loans of borrowers who say they were defrauded by for-profit colleges, including the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges. ... “Our clients aren’t asking the government for a handout or a bailout. They’re asking the government to follow the existing law,” says Toby Merrill, director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard Law School. The group filed the lawsuit that includes Davis.

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. ... There is still hope for democracy, however. There’s little evidence that targeted ads have the power to 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.

Governments should make a commitment to protect civilians from the harmful impacts of explosive weapons used in towns and cities during conflicts, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today at a diplomatic conference in Geneva. The 23-page report, “A Commitment to Civilians: Precedent for a Political Declaration on Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas,” co-published by Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic, lays out the components of a new political declaration on explosive weapons, bolstering its case with precedent from existing declarations. ... “We should not look away from today’s victims of conflict, who are all too often civilians living in towns and cities that are under attack from bombs, rockets, artillery shells, and other explosive weapons,” said Bonnie Docherty, senior arms researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Military forces should avoid using explosive weapons in populated areas due to the unacceptable harm they often cause.”

In her new book, “When Should Law Forgive?,” the lawyer and academic Martha Minow looks at several areas where she believes American society has become too punitive and offers ways to fix them. Minow is interested in why some societies have found it easier than others to grant forgiveness to wrongdoers; she is also captivated by how and why certain societies have been able to put into place policies that minimize crime and misbehavior, which in turn help us understand that bad behavior is the result of more than individual choice. As she writes, “Child soldiers and other adolescents accused of criminal law violations may not be entirely innocent, but neither are they responsible for the social conditions in which they make their choices. The same can be said of individuals who are drowning in consumer debt or student loans, and even of sovereign nations, cities, and states in debt. Each is to blame when they violate promises to pay back loans or laws against violence, but each also is embedded in larger social patterns that construct limited and often poor options.”

An op-ed by Martha Minow: Public knowledge about law is vital in the same way that public engagement with politics and society matters. Liberty and democracy depend on informed and motivated communities. Yet crucial questions involving law are too often inaccessible to nonlawyers. Lawyers tend to spend little time educating anyone other than their clients, or other lawyers when they act as judges and administrators. Lawyers also deploy technical words and seldom know how to produce the visual media so effective in shaping public knowledge. For these reasons, I decided to offer a course on documentary filmmaking for students at Harvard Law School. Law and documentary film may seem far apart, but they actually share many connections. Documentary filmmakers confront legal questions about privacy, secrecy, access to public and private spaces, and ownership of images and other materials. Lawyers increasingly use video interviews and computer-generated graphics in hearings and negotiations. Mass media culture informs views of legal decision-makers and everyone’s pictures of courts and law.