Media Mentions

Menaka Guruswamy LL.M. ’01 got the news when she turned on her phone after landing in Hyderabad: The Indian Supreme Court had reached a decision on a years-long case she’d been arguing challenging Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, a colonial-era law criminalizing gay sex as “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” A judgment would be issued the next day. Guruswamy and her partner, Arundhati Katju—a criminal lawyer and co-counsel on her five-person team—found themselves running for the last flight back to New Delhi. The gate was already closed, but after Guruswamy explained the situation, a sympathetic agent escorted them through security and onto the plane. “Everything about the case was dramatic,” she says. “None of it was sane and even-keeled.” The 495-page ruling the next day, Sept. 6, 2018, striking down the law, was hailed in the international press for going beyond the decriminalization of gay sex to acknowledge the individual rights of LGBTQ people and apologize for past mistreatment.

Harvard Law School Library’s Nuremberg Trials Project reached a new milestone this summer when Judith Haran, one of two document analysts with the project, was invited to speak at the international conference “Holocaust Studies in the Digital Age: What’s New?” The conference, held at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in July, explored how digital technology influences contemporary Holocaust research. In her presentation, Haran shared the current and future work of the Nuremberg Trials Project. Haran and Michael Haley Goldman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum were the only two U.S. presenters among the twelve invited speakers.

After so much waiting—a hundred and twenty-four days, to be precise, since Robert Mueller’s report was delivered—perhaps it was bound to be a disappointment.   ... On Tuesday night, Laurence Tribe, the Harvard law professor who had been one of the President’s toughest critics and an outspoken proponent of impeachment, tweeted that he expected Mueller’s testimony to “shatter” the “mirage” of no collusion, no obstruction that has been Trump’s mantra since the report was released. By early Wednesday afternoon, Tribe recognized that it hadn’t happened. “Much as I hate to say it, this morning’s hearing was a disaster,” he wrote. “Far from breathing life into his damning report, the tired Robert Mueller sucked the life out of it. The effort to save democracy and the rule of law from this lawless president has been set back, not advanced.” Tribe felt better by the late afternoon, arguing that Mueller was issuing a “loud wakeup call” on Russian interference. But the damage was done.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe: Don’t let anybody fool you: We are engaged in an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s “high crimes and misdemeanors,” to quote the Constitution. The inquiry began on Friday, July 26. No fireworks, no fanfare — omitted for fear of frightening the natives. But the message was loud and clear in the House Judiciary Committee’s court petition for access to redacted material in the Mueller report, and its intention to compel testimony from relevant witnesses. Articles of impeachment have been formally referred to the Judiciary Committee for its consideration, House counsel Douglas Letter said in the Friday filing to U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. That consideration, the committee has now informed the court, is underway, as is consideration of whether to recommend its own articles of impeachment.

Some people believe so fervently in the dogmas of free-market capitalism that they would rather rip hungry children away from their families than re-evaluate the tenets of their secular religion. ...For what it's worth, Laurence Tribe — the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard Law School — argued that policies like the one initially threatened by Wyoming Valley West are almost certainly illegal. "This public school policy is outrageous and almost certainly unconstitutional," Tribe told Salon by email. "Threatening to take children away from their parents because their parents fail to pay for particular items supplied by the school violates both due process and the substantive rights of parents to bring up their own children. It also deprives people of the equal protection of the laws in violation of the 14th Amendment. I cannot imagine such a policy surviving judicial attack."

Coal executive Bob Murray is raising money for President Trump's reelection — and he may want a few things in return. Murray, an unabashed promoter of coal, said during an interview he again offered the president a list of policy suggestions and talking points to revive the dying coal industry at a private fundraiser Wednesday evening. Among his demands, Murray repeatedly called on the president to fix the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission...Told of Murray's comments, Ari Peskoe, director of Harvard Law School's Electricity Law Initiative, said, "If this is all Bob Murray's got, then he's got nothing." The 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says that "the federal government can't commandeer state officials," Peskoe said. "So Congress could not outright demand that PUCs conduct proceedings that will result in payments to coal plants," nor could FERC as he reads the Federal Power Act.

The Trump administration’s disregard for the Environmental Protection Agency’s mission has riled many agency veterans, particularly when it comes to sustainability and climate change. But a new crackdown on working from home is pushing the already beleaguered workforce in Boston to the brink...The clampdown at the EPA is part of an “unmistakable pattern” of hostility toward public servants, said Sharon Block, a former labor adviser to former president Barack Obama who runs the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.

Imagine an internet connection so fast and clear that all the musicians in an orchestra can play their instruments from their own homes in perfect time with colleagues scattered across the country. Imagine students in a tiny rural school taking high-level science classes taught by expert teachers 2,000 miles away, with such visual clarity that they can participate in real-time scientific experiments. That level of internet connectivity is standard in South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sweden and China. But internet service in most parts of the U.S. continues to be slow, unreliable and expensive. Because of a series of telecom policy decisions, the U.S. is falling further and further behind other nations, with a host of serious implications that affect not only the economy, education, health, and well-being but also the fabric of democracy, says Susan Crawford, clinical professor at Harvard Law School. On the national level, almost no one is paying attention, says Crawford. And she is out to change that.

Two US law professors have challenged one of the key narratives deployed by the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and others in favour of ESG investing. According to Max Schanzenbach, of the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, and Robert Sitkoff, at Harvard Law School, the argument that ESG investing by pension trustees is mandated under fiduciary principles was usually based on a “syllogism” riddled with errors. Writing in an article destined for the Stanford Law Review next year, the professors argued that the reasoning behind this position typically followed three steps: “(1) ESG factors are related to a firm’s long-term financial performance; (2) the duty of prudence requires a trustee to consider material information; and (3) therefore a trustee must consider ESG factors”.

I. Glenn Cohen explains why we should scrutinize what is and then ponder what should be

Jimmy Hoffa disappeared July 30, 1975...During the coming months, watch for more excellent reporting on the Hoffa case...And get ready for the upcoming, highly anticipated book—In Hoffa's Shadow: A Stepfather, a Disappearance in Detroit, and My Search for the Truth—by Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor, which will be released in September.  Goldsmith is the stepson of Charles “Chuckie” O’Brien, whom many believe had driven the car that took Hoffa to the scene of his murder.

After Eugene Scalia was picked by President Trump last week to head the Labor Department, former Senator Barbara Boxer went on TV to suggest that there is another assignment for which someone with Scalia’s background as a business lawyer would be far better suited. “Let them go . . . be the secretary of commerce, for God’s sake,” the California Democrat said...Time and again in the current administration, “the impact of proposed rules on business is what shapes the agenda—not the benefit to workers,” says Sharon Block, who served as a senior aide in the Obama Labor Department and is now executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. She fears that having Scalia as labor secretary is likely to accelerate the trend. And that, in turn, would mark a sharp reversal of history.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Edward J. Markey announced they will reconvene a bipartisan advisory committee, that will include Worcester County Sheriff Lew Evangelidis, to review and provide recommendations on federal District Court candidates across Massachusetts...The Advisory Committee comprises distinguished members of the state's legal community, including prominent academics and litigators, and is chaired by former District Court Judge Nancy Gertner..Applications for Boston vacancies are reviewed by...Judge Gertner and... Professor Andrew Kaufman of Harvard Law School..

After years working in “dead-end” jobs, Morgan Marler decided to pursue a degree that would help her start a career working with computers...Marler is one of the nearly 900 student-loan borrowers who say they were scammed by their schools and are awaiting an answer from the Department of Education as to whether they’ll have their federal student-loan debt wiped away. These borrowers have been waiting an average of 958 days for a response...Perhaps most “alarming,” according to Eileen Connor, the director of litigation at the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard Law School, which is representing the borrowers: 96% of these borrowers say they’re lives are worse off now than before they attended a for-profit college. “It’s a wake up call for everyone about how we are managing the federal student-loan program,” Connor said. “It’s not what we like to think and what we tell people about how higher education will make your life better.”

To impeach or not to impeach. That has been the question vexing congressional Democrats since they took control of the House of Representatives last November. The push to begin proceedings became more urgent in April after then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller detailed several instances in which President Trump potentially obstructed justice, and over 90 House Democrats have now publicly expressed support for impeachment. The number is likely to increase this week as Mueller testifies about his findings before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees. But as “Impeach!” has become a mainstream rallying cry for Trump’s opposition, the intention of the constitutional provision that allows Congress to remove the president from office has been largely misconstrued, says Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor, constitutional scholar, and Obama administration veteran. Sunstein’s 2017 book Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide has taken on new relevance since the release of the Mueller report — so much so that an updated version was released last month to break down how the special counsel’s findings factor into the debate over whether to impeach President Trump.

It looks like Northern Pass is really dead this time: The New Hampshire Supreme Court on Friday upheld the project’s rejection last year by the state Site Evaluation Committee. “We have reviewed the record and conclude that the Subcommittee’s findings are supported by competent evidence and are not erroneous as a matter of law,” Associate Justice Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi wrote in the unanimous decision. The ruling leaves no obvious way forward for the 192-mile transmission line carrying almost a Seabrook Station’s worth of electricity down from Quebec hydropower plants, ending almost a decade of often-contentious debate. “Really hard to beat the state in court on a siting denial,” wrote Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School, in response to the ruling.

Four Harvard Law students were targeted with racist and sexist messages earlier this year, and one students group is blasting the school’s handling of the probe into the offensive communications, saying it “failed to act and protect students.” The law school’s dean of students, Marcia Sells, said in a statement that each of the four first-year students “received an anonymous, derogatory e-mail or text message.” “We have repeatedly expressed to our students how deeply we regret the hurt these messages caused, and we condemned and continue to condemn in the strongest terms any communication or action that is intended to demean people,” said Sells.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman:  You can take the letter that the Department of Justice has sent to former special counsel Robert Mueller offering “guidance” on his testimony to Congress as evidence of several interesting things. For one, Mueller seems to have wanted an official document from the Justice Department to help him avoid answering questions. For another, the Trump administration seems worried about questions concerning unindicted persons, such as President Donald Trump and his family.  But whatever you do, don’t take the Justice Department letter as the law. The only legal bars to Congress’s demanding answers from Mueller on Wednesday are the Constitution and federal statutes. Those are invoked in the letter, but without much bite. The core of the guidance focuses on departmental policy.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman:  Questions to former special counsel Robert Mueller from both sides of the aisle in his House Judiciary Committee testimony made one thing clear: The path Mueller took in the section of his report on President Donald Trump’s obstruction of justice was indefensible — from both sides. The most important issue in Wednesday’s hearing was the way Mueller refused to address Trump’s possible guilt based on the legal theory that because the Department of Justice couldn’t indict a sitting president, it would be unfair to conclude that the president had committed a crime. Yet Mueller couldn’t manage a coherent response to either Democratic or Republican criticisms arising from that prosecutorial decision.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman:  There’s been plenty of finger-pointing over the past few days, after Robert Mueller’s testimony before two House committees failed to animate his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election in the way the president’s critics had hoped. But the problem didn’t start with Mueller’s performance, or the lack of attention paid to the report itself, or the efforts made by the attorney general to mischaracterize it. It’s become clear to me that the problems go back even further: The regulations governing the appointment of a special counsel doomed Mueller’s investigation from the start.

As part of a series called Focal Point, in which the Harvard Gazette asks a range of Harvard faculty members to answer the same question, I. Glenn Cohen explains why we should scrutinize what is and then ponder what should be.