Media Mentions

When New York’s climate change lawsuit against Exxon Mobil went on trial last month in a Manhattan courtroom, the energy giant’s lead lawyer took great pains to emphasize that the state’s allegations weren’t really about climate change. After all, Theodore Wells said, Exxon was accused of hatching a cynical, arguably pedestrian scheme to mislead investors. The alleged securities fraud may have been intended to mask the impact global warming will have on Exxon’s finances, but it wasn’t a grand reckoning of its responsibility for the man-made phenomenon. The reason, of course, was that New York couldn’t find enough evidence to back up its initial contention that Exxon hid its knowledge of global warming...Hana Vizcarra, a staff attorney at Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program, said nuisance lawsuits are difficult to make because plaintiffs must “draw the line” from a company’s actions to the damage done. The continued fight over state jurisdiction will be crucial, she said. “If they survive the fights over venue, there will be a continued appetite to bring these cases,” Vizcarra said.

When a bipartisan bunch of state attorneys general announced this summer they had cut a deal with phone companies to crack down on infuriating robocalls, Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein of North Carolina led the news conference in Washington...Stein, 53, has inserted himself into nearly every high-profile action that state attorneys general have taken since he started the job in North Carolina in 2017. He is emblematic of a new kind of state attorney general more aggressive, often bipartisan rising to prominence nationwide. What used to be a relatively high-profile position within a state's boundaries has become a springboard for publicity across the country. As politics on the national level becomes more polarized, and with Congress stymied by attention on a presidential impeachment investigation, attention has increasingly turned to the states, where legislatures are primed to act, governors have some real power and attorneys general are stepping up, particularly on consumer issues where the federal government has largely stepped away...Former Maine Attorney General James Tierney, a Democrat who now teaches at Harvard Law School, said fraud "doesn't have a partisan hat" when attorneys general are going after bad actors. But, he said, Stein and other AGs are "not going to get elected or reelected based on what they do on robocalls." They may work across party lines on corporate fraud or consumer protections, but when it comes to election time they usually revert to party positions, he said.

Toast Inc. achieved a $2.7 billion valuation this year by making software used by tens of thousands of restaurants. Now, data the Boston company has collected about those restaurants could yield new revenue. The company is launching a program called Toast Capital that will allow select clients to borrow as much as $250,000 for kitchen equipment, renovations or other expenses. In an example of how information can become currency in the digital age, Toast plans to earn interest on the loans without putting up its own money. Instead, a business partner -- Utah-based WebBank -- will provide the financing. The contribution from Toast, whose software powers sales and payroll transactions, will be insight into the famously tough restaurant industry — insight that may help predict which prospective borrowers would succeed enough to pay back their loans and which would default...Mary Zeven, director of the graduate program in banking and financial law at Boston University School of Law, said "partnering with a Utah bank, where Utah has loose restrictions on usury, will allow higher interest rates than a Massachusetts bank." Howell Jackson, a Harvard Law School professor who specializes in financial regulation and consumer protection, added that it is "common practice" for companies running lending programs to partner with Utah banks for this reason.

In late October, three major U.S. government agencies as well as trade associations for the food manufacturing, grocery and restaurant industries announced their new partnership with the Food Waste Reduction Alliance. Their goal? To cut food waste in half by 2030. Partners in the coalition include: the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Department of Agriculture (DOA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the founders of the Food Waste Reduction Alliance—the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the Food Marketing Institute and the National Restaurant Association...One cause of American food waste, Meyer notes, may be the widespread misunderstanding generated by a bewildering array of non-standardized expiration date labels. A report by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic suggested that more than 90 percent of Americans may be prematurely discarding food because they misunderstand the "best by" dates as an indication of food safety.

Figuring out Law School is grueling. Being deafblind doesn’t make it easier…

In a last-minute move, Democrats are shifting their impeachment rhetoric and talking points just days before the first public hearings into President Trump’s handling of foreign policy in Ukraine. The televised hearings mark a crucial phase in an investigation conducted thus far behind closed doors, as Democrats seek to swing public opinion — and by extension, that of Republicans — behind the central inference of their impeachment inquiry: that Trump broke the law and should be removed from office...Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard University, suggested the Democrats’ references to a quid pro quo were a tactical mistake for a party hoping to sway public sentiment. And he welcomed the shift to more clearly defined terms. “It’s easier for the public to understand English-language concepts like ‘bribery’ and ‘extortion’ than it is for most people to plumb the meaning of the Latin phrase ‘quid pro quo,’ ” Tribe said Monday in an email, “and public comprehension is essential to the proper use of the impeachment power.” Tribe, a frequent Trump critic, rattled off a host of additional reasons he thinks the more explicit terms will prove more effective for Democrats taking their impeachment case public.

An article by Noah Feldman: It is plainly immoral to deport Dreamers, people raised in the U.S. as undocumented aliens. President Donald Trump seems to understand that — which is why, when he officially rescinded President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, he said he had no choice because the program was illegal. Now the Supreme Court is being asked to rule on whether Trump’s rescission was itself illegal. That puts the court into a bind. Logically, the court should uphold Trump’s power to shut down the program. If Obama as president had the power to create DACA, Trump should have the power to end it. Morally, however, the court shouldn’t take away Dreamers’ right to remain in the U.S. Direct conflict between law and morality is the stuff of great works of literature, not to mention a host of “Law and Order” episodes. But it is much rarer in real life than you might think.

Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard Law School and one of the nation's top administrative legal scholars, spoke about the constitutional history of impeachment at a Harvard Coop lecture last Thursday...Sunstein's lecture was primarily focused on providing a historical perspective on the impeachment process. He explained how there was a great deal of debate amongst the Founders regarding how impeachment should be defined in the U.S. Constitution. "Virginia's [Constitutional Convention delegate] George Mason was the most eloquent. He said 'No point is of more importance than that the right of impeachment should be continued... Shall any man be above Justice? Above all shall that man be above it, who can commit the most extensive injustice?'"...Sunstein did turn to the question of President Trump's impeachability during the Q and A portion of the event. He said that many of the previous concerns over Trump's presidency — that he's unfit for the office, that he's violating the oath of office — don't meet the threshold for impeachable offenses.

When the Supreme Court considers the plight this week of nearly 700,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, one of them plans to be seated at the defense table. Luis Cortes Romero, who arrived in the country at the tender age of 1 three decades ago, is an immigration lawyer. He's also among the immigrants who could be deported by the Trump administration if it wins its effort to have the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program declared unlawful. Cortes' rapid rise in the legal profession may be unusual, but he's not alone among DACA recipients. Others are prosecutors and defense lawyers, paralegals and law students, even plaintiffs in the three cases being heard Tuesday...And they include students at some of the nation's most prominent law schools, from Harvard – where Mitchell Santos Toledo ('20) was motivated to apply because of the roadblocks in his way – to UCLA, where Lisette Candia Diaz will begin her studies next fall after working for the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrant Rights Project.

To the Republican members of the Securities and Exchange Commission, new rules for the shareholder proposal process and proxy advisers are simply a matter of achieving needed updates and ensuring efficient markets. Institutional investors see it quite differently, as a capitulation to corporate pressure in Washington at the expense of shareholder rights. ... The SEC should expect legal challenges, said John Coates, vice dean for finance and strategic initiatives at Harvard Law School. There is "almost no material evidence of errors (by proxy advisers) … there are differences of opinion. I really do think these rules are vulnerable to legal challenge. It's very likely they will not be sustained."

Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe explained that it has become obvious that President Donald Trump is using the Office of the Presidency for his own purposes. Speaking to MSNBC host Ari Melber on his impeachment special, Tribe explained that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) refused to authorize an impeachment inquiry until it became clear that Trump was using his office for political purposes. “He was taking hundreds of millions of dollars voted by Congress and withholding them from the Ukraine in an act of sheer extortion and soliciting what amounted to a bribe because he wanted Ukraine’s help, help against Joe Biden for 2020 and help in clearing him of colluding with Russia in 2016,” Tribe said.

Mitchell Santos Toledo came to the United States when he was 2. His parents had temporary visas when they brought him and his 5-year-old sister to the country. They never left. This spring, Santos Toledo will graduate from Harvard Law School. He is one of the 700,000 DREAMers whose fate in the U.S. may well be determined by a Supreme Court case to be argued Tuesday. For now, Santos Toledo cannot be deported. In 2012, President Obama put in place the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which deferred deportation for these young people if they met certain specifications and passed a background check. After that, their temporary status made them eligible for a Social Security number so they could work and pay taxes. Their status had to be renewed every two years.

A book review by Annette Gordon-Reed: Thomas Jefferson had a severe case of New England envy. Though that region had formed the most consistent bloc of opposition to him and his political party, almost from the beginning of his time on the national stage, he admired many things about the place. First and foremost, he looked with longing toward New England’s system of town meetings, which gathered citizens together to discuss and make decisions about their local communities. Jefferson considered this form of participatory democracy crucial to building and maintaining a healthy republican society. And then there was the region’s profusion of educational institutions. Jefferson admired those as well—even if he did not always agree with what was being taught there. The hard work of democracy, including well-ordered community decision making, required an educated populace. That is why he waged a campaign for a system of publicly supported education in Virginia for many years.

“What I care above all about is ending the presidency of Donald Trump, not least because two terms of Donald Trump will not be twice the damage.”  Irish-American woman Samantha Power, who served as a UN ambassador, has had a long and storied career. ... I don’t know what the exponent is, but probably five times, 10 times the damage, so it’s weird that four plus four is not eight.”  Power went on to say she “just can’t even conceive of just the erosion of the rule of law and the corruption” under Trump.  She said that it’s “so incredibly important that people rally” during the upcoming campaigns, adding that this election is “going to be all about turnout more than it’s going to be about persuasion”.

What does it mean to complete a sentence of life in prison? One prisoner claims he has done it by serving time until the moment of his death — plus another four years since — and said it is well past time to set him free. ... Ms Primus said that if people were considered legally dead before being resuscitated, it would create a web of problems, not just in criminal cases but also for insurance and inheritance claims. She and I. Glenn Cohen, a professor at Harvard Law School who studies medical ethics and the law, said Schreiber’s argument was clever but never stood a chance. “It equivocates on what life and death means for the purposes of the criminal law,” Mr Cohen said in an email. He added that Schreiber would still be considered alive for purposes including organ donation, making it “hard to think he should be ‘dead’ for the purpose of serving a life sentence”.

... The non-profit Veterans Legal Clinic at Harvard Law School unveiled a new website that features the Massachusetts Veteran Benefit Calculator. It is designed to help Massachusetts residents who have served in the military and their dependents to determine if they might be eligible for financial assistance, of up to an estimated $1,000 under the Chapter 115 Benefits Program that provides one-time or ongoing cash assistance based on need. State Auditor Suzanne Bump’s office conducted a 2017 study that reported that between 2014 and 2016 only 14,390 of the state’s estimated 325,000 veterans received Chapter 115 benefits. It is likely that thousands more veterans are eligible but are not aware of the program. “Our hope by sharing this tool is that by next Veterans Day there will be a much smaller gap,” said Betsy Gwin, associate director of Veterans Legal Clinic.

Former WeWork chief executive and co-founder Adam Neumann walked away with a $1.7 billion payout when he was forced out of the company. Now, ahead of the planned layoffs of thousands of workers, WeWork employees are organizing to make demands of management. ... According to Sharon Block, executive director of the labor and worklife program at Harvard Law School, informal actions like WeWork’s have the potential to address issues more quickly than formal union bargaining. “It’s understandable that workers want a process that’s more agile and can be more responsive to their needs in the moment,” she said. Forming a union to bargain with an employer may be a years-long process but, Block added, union bargaining does have the advantage of making it legally binding for the employer to come to the negotiating table.

White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s last-minute effort to join a lawsuit that could determine whether senior administration officials testify in the impeachment inquiry was an unwelcome surprise to former top national security aides, highlighting internal divisions among President Trump’s advisers in the face of the probe. ... Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law expert at Harvard Law School, said Mulvaney’s last-minute move could be an attempt to give himself legal cover to put off the House demand. By attaching himself to the Kupperman case, Mulvaney could avoid having to testify in the House inquiry for months if the suit is appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. “I think he’s trying to be shielded from having to obey his legal duty to comply with an obviously valid subpoena,” Tribe said.

Mitchell Santos Toledo [’20] was brought to the U.S. from Mexico when he was 2 years old. He's one of the 700,000 DREAMers whose case will be heard Tuesday before the U.S. Supreme Court. ... NINA TOTENBERG: Mitchell Santos came to the U.S. from Mexico when he was 2. His father and mother came with temporary visas and brought Mitch and his older sister. They never left. Soon, Mitch had two more siblings born in the U.S. who were American citizens. Mitch's father managed to support the family doing manual labor under the table. MITCHELL SANTOS: He would tell us time and time again, your priority here is to study. Your priority is to do the best you can academically. TOTENBERG: Mitch doesn't remember an aha moment, a realization that he and his family were undocumented. SANTOS: You start going through these milestones of adolescence, like applying for a driver's license. And then I realized, oh, wait; I can't do that.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: Some observers are wondering whether the Supreme Court will let President Donald Trump keep his tax records secret. With respect to presidential prerogatives, many fundamental issues remain open. Perhaps the current court will resolve this one in his favor? That's unlikely. Whatever one's political convictions, it's hard to object, on strictly legal grounds, to a federal appeals court decision this week rejecting Trump's effort to block a subpoena issued by New York prosecutors demanding the records. In fact, the case is so simple and straightforward that it wouldn't be terribly surprising if the justices decline to consider it at all.

The Justice Department's top antitrust official warned Big Tech companies Friday that the government could pursue them for anticompetitive behavior related to their troves of user data, including for cutting off data access to competitors. "Antitrust enforcers cannot turn a blind eye to the serious competition questions that digital markets have raised," Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim told an antitrust conference at Harvard Law School. Delrahim did not name any specific companies, but his office is investigating companies including Google while the Federal Trade Commission probes Facebook. The House Judiciary Committee is also conducting an inquiry looks at those two companies plus Amazon and Apple.