Media Mentions

Ellen Gallagher was stunned when she first learned that immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement were sometimes placed in isolation with no human contact for 22 hours a day. It was February 2014, only a few months into her stint as a policy adviser at the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, where she thought she’d be empowered to ensure that the department did not violate the rights of those who came into its crosshairs. ... One of the facilities covered in that report was the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility, which the inspector general visited in conjunction with the Buffalo Field Office, according to August 2016 emails obtained by Harvard Law School’s Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program and shared with The Intercept. A partially redacted write-up of the meeting at the detention center, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, shows that someone from the inspector general’s office asked whether field office staffers “had any safety concerns about the fact that detention officers aren’t told which detainees have mental health conditions and may act erratically.”

The legal battle for reproductive rights is heating up in the wake of harsh new anti-abortion laws, and several states are already preparing for the potential end of Roe v. Wade. In seven states, so-called “trigger laws” would ban abortion immediately if the Supreme Court overturns the landmark 1973 court decision that established access to a safe abortion as a constitutional right. ... Laurence Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, questions the laws’ effectiveness. “I suppose they might achieve their symbolic purpose. But if their purpose is actually to protect the lives of fetuses, they make no real sense,” he told HuffPost in an email. “It would be easy for the Supreme Court to empty Roe v. Wade of just about all significance without explicitly overruling that landmark decision and thereby triggering such laws.”

Federal courts 2, President Trump 0. That’s the scoreboard this week in cases in which Trump has tried for specious, frivolous reasons to prevent the House from obtaining his financial records. On Monday, Judge Amit J. Mehta ruled that Trump could not block documents from the accounting firm Mazars USA. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos in the Southern District of New York slapped down Trump’s attempt to block the House from obtaining records from Deutsche Bank and Capital One. ... Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe tells me: “Like the ruling by Judge Mehta, the ruling by Judge Ramos was clearly right under fully settled law and in my view is quite certain to be upheld on appeal. The extreme rapidity of today’s decision reflects the simple fact that the arguments by Trump’s lawyers in both cases were, to be blunt, entirely insubstantial.” Tribe adds that had Ramos ruled as Trump wanted, Ramos would have been forced to “toss out over a century and a third of Supreme Court precedent requiring federal judges to take Congress’s explanations of its need for information at face value when those explanations are facially plausible, as they certainly were in the Deutsche Bank case as well as in the Mazars case.”

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: The English language needs a word for what happens when a group of people, outraged by some real or imagined transgression, responds in a way that is disproportionate to the occasion, thus ruining the transgressor’s day, month, year or life. We might repurpose an old word: lapidation. Technically, the word is a synonym for stoning, but it sounds much less violent. It is also obscure, which makes it easier to enlist for contemporary purposes. For a recent example of lapidation, consider the case of Ronald Sullivan, a Harvard law professor who joined the team of lawyers defending Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein against charges of rape and sexual abuse.

A post by Dr. Ashley Nunes, an academic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University [Labor & Worklife Program], previously he lead research projects sponsored by the Department of Defense and the Department of Transportation. In this article, he argues that ride-sharing companies shouldn't be surprised when its self-employed workers game the system. A storm is brewing in Washington, D.C, and this one doesn’t involve President Trump’s tweets. Uber and Lyft drivers are protesting working conditions. Drivers say after enduring years of pay cuts, action is needed. However, rather than striking, drivers are using a different tactic. As reported by WJLA, drivers band together nightly at the local airport and simultaneously turn off their ride sharing apps. This causes rider fares to surge. When the price peaks, drivers re-power up their app and lock in the higher fare.

Some House Democrats are convinced that they'd have better luck getting testimony and documents if they launch an impeachment inquiry against President Trump — which is why they've been pushing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi so hard. ... 2) Legislative purpose: It would be harder for the Trump administration to win a court fight by arguing that Congress doesn't have a "legitimate legislative purpose," the reason Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin cited in his decision not to release Trump's tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee. No one questions the congressional power to impeach, so launching an impeachment inquiry "removes whatever doubt a court might otherwise have about the existence of a legitimate Article I purpose for demanding information of limited facial relevance to possible congressional legislation," Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe wrote in an email.

A group met on Wednesday to make sure healthy food is available to everyone in western Massachusetts. The Franklin County Food Council brought together groups from across the state on Wednesday to talk about expanding access to food services. Among those in attendance was the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation of Harvard Law School, who spearheaded the Food is Medicine State Plan along with Community Servings, a Boston-based nonprofit that provides food services to people with critical and chronic illnesses. "We want to make sure that we bring those resources to western Mass as well. And so the Food is Medicine State Plan is an attempt to do that, right, to figure out where the resources are across our state and where the need is," said Sarah Downer from the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation of Harvard Law School.

After years of advocating for Vermont prisoners to have access to life-saving medication for Hepatitis C Virus (HCV), the ACLU of Vermont and the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School, with cooperating counsel James Valente, yesterday filed a class action lawsuit challenging the state’s refusal to treat hundreds of inmates diagnosed with chronic Hepatitis C. The case was filed in the federal district court in Burlington on behalf of two Vermont prisoners, Richard West and Joseph Bruyette, who seek to represent a class of inmates who have been or will be denied treatment without medical justification. ... Kevin Costello is the Director of Litigation for the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation of Harvard Law School: “Hepatitis C is responsible for more deaths in the United States than any other infectious disease by a mile. There is no medical reason to actively prevent hundreds of incarcerated people from receiving curative medications for Hepatitis C. In fact, the refusal to treat prisoners needlessly prolongs suffering and heightens the risk of serious health problems for a group of people who are completely at the mercy of the State of Vermont to provide their health care.”

People from the Harvard community share their favorite spots on campus. ... Samantha Power, Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School, Professor of Practice, Harvard Law School: There is no more peaceful place for me around campus than sitting at the bar at Charlie’s, drinking a pint and eating grilled cheese as I watch the Red Sox game. ... Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Dean, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study; Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law; faculty director, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice; co-director of Harvard Law School’s Program in Law and History; and professor of history, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University: I love the sunken garden in Radcliffe Yard. It’s so beautiful and peaceful and brings to mind happy times.

Laurence Tribe talks with Lawrence O'Donnell about the Trump subpoena war with Congress on The Last Word.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: You practically need a scorecard to keep up with all the conflicts between Congress and President Donald Trump over executive…

The Gazette sat down recently for an in-depth interview with four Harvard deans, Tomiko Brown-Nagin, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Claudine Gay, Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Bridget Terry Long, dean of the Graduate School of Education, who were all named to their posts in 2018, and Michelle Williams, who became dean of the T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2016. The wide-ranging discussion focused on topics that included their personal inspirations, their thoughts on leadership, and their efforts to support one another.

In 1971, Guido Goldman, founding director of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES), walked into a meeting with West Germany’s then-finance minister, Alex Möller, hoping for a gift to help support the center. He left with a sweeping offer that he couldn’t have imagined. “I was kind of blown away,” said Goldman, recalling that meeting. He had envisioned a $2 million gift to the center, then known as the Western European Studies program, as a way for Germany to say thanks for the aid that the U.S. had given it in the years following the world wars. ... Through high-profile programs such as these, Harvard and its experts remained steady players in German and U.S. relations. They are often called when new initiatives arise across the Atlantic. Take, for example Urs Gasser, executive director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and a professor of the practice at the Law School. Last year he was tapped to become a member of Merkel’s German Digital Council, which advises her government on topics like the role of data and digitizing systems and works on projects such as streamlining applications. “If Angela Merkel calls you and says, ‘Look, I need your advice,’ you’re likely to say yes,” Gasser said.

The anti-abortion movement is hitting an aggressive new stride in the United States. Whether it breaks into a sprint toward the Supreme Court is worrying reproductive rights activists amid a renewed push to reverse the long-standing precedent that legalized abortions. ... It would take four votes from justices to agree the case deserves review, explained Glenn Cohen, a bioethicist and lawyer with Harvard Law School. "It's the kind of case where they're unlikely to take the case unless they have five votes to get rid of Roe v. Wade," he said, as well as enough votes to overturn Casey vs. Planned Parenthood, the 1992 ruling that partially reaffirmed the abortion law. Cohen said he can't foresee both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh facially overruling Roe. And Chief Justice John Roberts, who is also a conservative, has shown himself to be an "institutionalist" keen to protect the court's reputation, he added.

The Interior Department is defending how an oil and gas industry standard became part of revised federal offshore drilling rules. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement adopted an American Petroleum Institute standard for drilling margin in the final rule on offshore well control systems. Drilling margin is the pressure range that must be maintained inside a well to avoid a repeat of the deadly 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout that spewed 3.2 million barrels' worth of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. ... "I would not expect them to incorporate something as technical as this without providing an opportunity to comment on this specific standard," said Hana Vizcarra, a staff attorney at Harvard Law School's Environmental & Energy Law Program.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: Something unusual happened Monday at the U.S. Supreme Court: A Native American tribe won a case. The 5-4 decision preserved the rights of the Crow Tribe to hunt according to the promise of an 1868 treaty. It was written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor and joined by the court’s three other liberals — and somewhat surprisingly, by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch. The other conservatives dissented. The case is important primarily for its moral meaning. In essence, the 1868 treaty, like many others, was written to mislead or even deceive the Indians who signed it. The court’s decision Monday didn’t repudiate the deceptive language. It’s hard for courts to do anything other than read legal documents the way they’re written.

President Trump’s lawyers now generate a nonstop stream of frivolous defenses in his all-out assault on Congress. On Monday, they made the ludicrous claim that former White House counsel Donald McGahn, who provided evidence to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III that wound up in the redacted Mueller report, cannot come tell Congress and the American people what he told Mueller. ... Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe tells me, "[The White House’s] efforts are totally groundless, as the Harriet Miers case made clear. There simply is no textual, structural, or historical basis for a sitting president to gag his former White House Counsel in response to a House subpoena seeking testimony about possible criminal and potentially impeachable conduct by that president. " He adds, “The place of Congress as a coequal branch would be obliterated if the efforts to silence McGahn could succeed. And all power to hold the president accountable would be destroyed unless those efforts were swiftly repudiated.”

President Trump’s escalating demands for investigations into his political opponents have intensified debate over whether his often-transparent calls for action by the Justice Department amount to abusing his power to bolster his re-election prospects. ... “It’s a terrible breach of norms for the president to publicly advocate prosecutions of his opponents,” said Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School who was an assistant attorney general during President George W. Bush’s first term. Mr. Goldsmith pointed out that this was not the first time Mr. Trump has intimated he might intervene in the functions of the criminal justice system. But Mr. Goldsmith said that, to date, “his White House and Justice Department subordinates have basically ignored him. Trump has violated norms, but his executive branch officials thus far have not.”

With states from Alabama to Missouri passing laws that would restrict or nearly ban a women’s right to abortion, is a women’s right to choose at risk of being overturned on the federal level? ... Laurence Tribe, professor of law at Harvard University, explains that a law such as that in Alabama is “clearly in conflict with Supreme Court precedent.” As such, it is likely that it would be struck down by the lower courts, because they are “bound by Supreme Court precedent even if they predict that precedent might be overturned by the Court.”

Instead of going outside for recess on a recent Friday, fifth-grader Thomas Stevenson walked down a hallway in Ridgeview Elementary School and entered a dimly lit room. Inside, lavender aromatherapy filled the air, spa-like music played and a projector broadcast clouds onto a screen. Passing by bean bag chairs on the floor and chess sets on tables, Thomas picked up some Legos and began building an elaborate structure. ... “It’s not like the teacher is going to become the mother that the child lost, or whatever happened,” said Susan Cole, director of the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative, a joint program of Harvard Law School and Massachusetts Advocates for Children, a children’s rights organization. “But they're going to show them that you can have a good relationship with an adult, that an adult will help you to be successful and you’ll go on to form more caring relationships."

The phone call that ruined Mohammed Hoque’s life came in April 2014 as he began another long day driving a New York City taxi, a job he had held since emigrating from Bangladesh nine years earlier. The call came from a prominent businessman who was selling a medallion, the coveted city permit that allows a driver to own a yellow cab instead of working for someone else. If Mr. Hoque gave him $50,000 that day, he promised to arrange a loan for the purchase. ... “I don’t think I could concoct a more predatory scheme if I tried,” said Roger Bertling, the senior instructor at Harvard Law School’s clinic on predatory lending and consumer protection. “This was modern-day indentured servitude.”