Media Mentions

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.

Professor Laurence Tribe speaks with Anderson Cooper.

Dehlia Umunna remembered seeing the fear. “His eyes were dark,” Umunna recalled. “And he was close to tears. And he looked at me and said, ‘Will I be going to jail and will I be going to jail for a very long time?’” “He was shaking,” she said. “I looked over at his mom and his mom was shaking. She was nervous. She was holding the hands of her 13-year-old boy.” Umunna, a clinical professor of law at Harvard Law School and deputy director of the Criminal Justice Institute, subsequently learned that the boy, who suffered from bipolar disorder and ADHD, had been surreptitiously videotaped playing video games in his living room wearing only his underwear. By the time he arrived at school the next day, the video had been posted online, where it had been seen by 300 of his peers, who proceeded to tease him. Frustrated and angry, he was heard to say, “I understand why the Parkland shooter did what he did.” ...“And as I looked over the case, I said to myself, this is exactly what [Prof.] Martha [Minow]’s book talks about,” she recalled. “This is a prime example of where we should nudge the courts and the decision-makers to exercise forgiveness.”...Umunna’s comments came during a panel discussion of “When Should Law Forgive?”, a new book by Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor and former dean of HLS. The book explores the complicated intersection of the law, justice, and forgiveness, asking whether the law should encourage people to forgive, and when courts, public officials, and specific laws should forgive. In addition to Umunna and Minow, panelists included Carol Steiker ’86, the Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law and co-director of the Criminal Justice Policy Program; Toby Merrill ’11, an HLS lecturer on law and director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending; and Homi K. Bhabha

On May 31, Meghan Burmester became a meme. She was featured, along with four other women, on the Harford County Sheriff’s Office “Ladies’ Night” Facebook post for alleged theft under $1,500. “Oh yes! It's Ladies' Night here in Harford County!” the post said. “This month we are running our summer special - turn yourself in, and get a free stay at the Harford County Rock Spring Road Spa (a.k.a, Harford County Detention Center). Sorry, no pedicures, manicures, facials, massages, spa services included (or available).” The Maryland department’s “Ladies’ Night” Facebook posts, which feature a handful of women who have open warrants against them usually for alleged theft or traffic- or drug-related offenses, are a big hit with its 55,000 followers...“If you looked like one of the people being mocked by the police department, what kind of confidence would you have in police?” David Harris, the managing director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School and a civil rights advocate, told BuzzFeed News. He said the Houston Institute is in the process of recruiting more people to review offensive social media posts by law enforcement agencies and to identify potential relations between agencies’ Facebook posts and possible racial disparities in how they use force and conduct arrests or traffic stops.

According to several legal experts, the revised testimony on the Ukraine scandal by Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, is highly damaging to President Trump. In his new statement, Sondland admitted that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky knew he U.S. would withholding military aid until his country granted Trump’s request for an investigation of the company that employed Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden. This is a crucial piece of evidence suggesting that the U.S. president that committed a serious ethical violation, and perhaps a crime. Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe told Salon by email that Sondland's statement “contributes to the overwhelming evidence that President Trump abused his power and engaged in bribery and extortion by illegally conditioning the military aid Congress had voted for Ukraine upon President Zelensky‘s willingness to help him in the 2020 election by announcing an investigation into Hunter Biden."

The Post reports, “Former national security adviser John Bolton is willing to defy the White House and testify in the House impeachment inquiry about his alarm at the Ukraine pressure campaign if a federal court clears the way, according to people familiar with his views.” Nothing prevents Bolton from coming to testify about his knowledge of the Ukraine scandal. Other,current administration officials have been told not to testify based on a bogus absolute immunity theory. Nothing — other than Republican attacks — happens to them as a result of responding to a lawful subpoena. They face no “defiance of a ludicrous executive directive” jail...“It’s particularly ridiculous for Bolton to await some judicial ruling about his obligations to testify under oath to what he knows about a presidential abuse of power so grave that he described it to colleagues as akin to a ‘drug deal’ when other civil servants have risked their careers and endured presidential taunts and threats to speak truth to power in the face of an unprecedented White House order that they all clam up,”says constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe. He observes that Bolton’s "oath to support the U.S. Constitution should matter more to him than his loyalty to the person now occupying the White House and, frankly, his interest in maximizing the royalties from whatever tell-all book he plans to write."

Unexpected dynamics in a Nov. 6 Supreme Court oral argument might add pressure for parties to settle a high-stakes water pollution case, but the mayor of the Hawaii county involved in the dispute says that’s not an option. Several of the court’s conservative-leaning justices asked questions during the argument that indicate they may not see the litigation through a strictly ideological lens. The case, County of Maui v. Hawai’i Wildlife Fund, asks whether Clean Water Act permits are required for pollution that passes through groundwater or another intermediary before reaching a federal waterway...Harvard Law School professor Richard J. Lazarus said “it’s no longer a sure thing” the court will side with the county, a dynamic that might pressure Maui’s mayor to revisit a settlement plan he previously rejected. Referring to the law firm representing the county, he said, “If I were counsel for [Hunton] Andrews Kurth right now, I’d at least owe my client a phone call.”

A paper by Professor Allen Ferrell ’95, “Socially Responsible Firms,” has been ranked number two on the Journal of Financial Economics’ (JEF) list of the most cited articles since 2016. The paper is co-authored with Hao Liang of Le Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University, and Luc Renneboog of Tilburg University. Using data on firms from around the world and by means of an instrumental variable approach, the paper finds that well-governed firms—meaning firms generally run so as to maximize shareholder value and which suffer from fewer agency problems—engage in more corporate social responsibility initiatives. Ferrell is the Greenfield Professor of Securities Law at Harvard Law School.

Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe on Thursday warned that “the United States of America is in real danger” as he broke down the latest developments in the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. “We’ve got a president who is willing to compromise our national security by hurting a country that is a buffer zone between an expanding Russia and the NATO alliance by undermining the Ukraine,” Tribe told CNN’s Anderson Cooper about the ongoing fallout from Trump’s July phone call with Ukraine’s president. During the call, Trump had requested his counterpart to dig up dirt on his  potential Democratic 2020 rival Joe Biden allegedly in exchange for the release of military aid.

An article by Noah Feldman:  It’s no surprise that Ambassador William Taylor is expected to be the first witness to testify when the House of Representatives opens public impeachment hearings against President Donald Trump next week. First, he’s an astoundingly credible witness — straight from central casting, as Trump himself likes to say about some of his appointees. As a matter of prosecutorial strategy, that makes him an ideal first witness for House Democrats to lay out their case for the first time to the public. Second, the content of Taylor’s deposition was extraordinarily damning. That’s because it nailed Trump’s abuse of power, the fundamental element of the “high crimes and misdemeanors” for which Democrats aim to impeach.

An op-ed by Daniel Hemel, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, and Rebecca Kysar, a professor at Fordham University School of Law:  Senator Elizabeth Warren unveiled a new wealth tax proposal last week that she says will raise — along with her previously announced wealth tax plan — $3.75 trillion over the next decade. Senator Bernie Sanders says his wealth tax will yield $4.35 trillion over the same period. We fear these figures are vast overestimates. The likeliest outcome is that a wealth tax will raise exactly zero dollars. The problem, alas, is the Constitution. The Warren and Sanders plans run headlong into more than two centuries of precedent that cast doubt on the constitutionality of wealth taxation. We are tax law professors who identify as liberal Democrats, donate to Democratic candidates, publicly opposed the Trump tax cuts and strongly support higher taxes on the affluent. We are heartened that prominent Democratic presidential candidates are taking the problem of wealth inequality very seriously. We are worried, though, that leading figures in our party are coalescingaround an idea whose constitutionality is doubtful at best.

For years, Massachusetts has had a program that provides financial aid for food, housing, clothing and medical care to veterans and their dependents with limited incomes. There’s only one problem — many veterans have never heard of it. On Tuesday, the Veterans Legal Clinic at Harvard Law School’s Legal Services Center unveiled the Massachusetts Veteran Benefit Calculator, an online tool the clinic created to help veterans easily determine if they’re eligible for financial assistance through the program known as Chapter 115. “We’re proud to be able to launch it statewide this Veterans Day,” said Betsy Gwin, associate director of the Veterans Legal Clinic. “Spreading the word about this tool and increasing awareness about Chapter 115 benefits is something that is tangible; it’s a concrete thing that we can all do together right now to help support low-income veterans and their families in Massachusetts.”

An op-ed by Nancy Gertner and Mark Mauer:  Arnie King has been serving a sentence of life without parole in Massachusetts since 1972 for the murder of John Labanara. King was a high school dropout addicted to drugs and alcohol. He was seeking his next high the night he killed Labanara. Over the last 47 years, King has changed his life. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Boston University, has spoken to at-risk youths about making better choices in their lives, and has received awards for his community leadership, including the anti-racism leadership Award from Simmons College. Still, despite the time he has served and his rehabilitation, he has failed to secure a sentence commutation from the governor that would make him eligible for parole. A recent hearing in the Massachusetts House of Representatives shed light on this little-known aspect of mass incarceration. While there has been a great deal of attention in recent years to the impact of the drug war on growing prison populations, in fact, the main drivers of the prison system now are excessive sentences for violent offenses.

An op-ed by Mark Roe: Back in August, the Business Roundtable, which comprises the chief executive officers of America’s largest companies – with combined annual revenues of more than $7 trillion – updated its long-standing statement regarding corporate purpose. It’s not just about shareholders, the CEOs say; their firms must be committed to all stakeholders, including customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and the environment. In fact, shareholders came in last on the CEOs’ new list. And the statement’s principal author, in his apparent exhilaration, is reported to have said that he felt like Thomas Jefferson drafting the Declaration of Independence. The August announcement generated three main strands of reaction. First, some liberal commentators applauded US business leaders for finally getting the message. They criticized not the goals, but the lack of a proposal for how stakeholders can hold CEOs directly accountable. More skeptical observers said that the statement differed little from previous Business Roundtable pronouncements on corporate purpose: boards and executives need, or at least want, discretion to balance the interests of various stakeholders other than the company’s owners. For these critics, this latest declaration offered nothing new, but was a restated manifesto of CEO and board discretion and power to run their companies as they see fit.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's proposal to collect social media handles from foreign citizens has been met with backlash from civil rights and higher education groups that caution it will chill free speech and discourage international students from studying in the U.S. ... The Harvard Law School Immigration Project and Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program flagged a recent incident that made national news when a Palestinian student at Harvard College was denied entry to the U.S. because of political messages posted by his "friends" on social media, even though he had not posted any political messages on his own account. "This example illustrates the potential dangers of the department's proposed policy," the school's immigration clinic wrote in their comment. "If noncitizens can be denied admission or an immigration benefit based on their friends' social media activity over the past five years, many would likely refrain from engaging in associational activity freely on social media or even from using social media at all — which in turn would seriously and impermissibly burden their First Amendment right of free association."