Media Mentions

President Donald Trump is suing both Capital One and Deutsche Bank to prevent them from complying with congressional subpoenas into his financial records. ..."It appears that Donald Trump made a practice of wildly exaggerating his wealth and the supposed business acumen that enabled him to amass it," Laurence H. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard, told Salon last month. He added, "Although there are no legal and especially criminal consequences to that kind of exaggeration on reality television or in talking to journalists at places like Forbes in order to cheat one’s way onto various lists of the wealthiest people around, there are very serious criminal consequences indeed when such lies, in the form of fraudulent financial statements, are used either to extract loans from banks or to obtain insurance on favorable terms from various insurance companies."

Last Thursday, the NAACP suspended its Saint Louis County chapter president, a man by the name of John Gaskin. He was accused of two offenses. The second was a conflict-of-interest allegation that doesn’t concern us, but the first offense should. The NAACP actually suspended a chapter president in part for supporting greater due process for black men accused of sexual misconduct on campus. They suspended him for supporting civil liberties. ...Harvard Law professor Jeannie Suk Gerson, one of the nation’s foremost experts on Title IX adjudications, has reported that the administrators and faculty members who work on campus sexual-assault cases say that “most of the complaints are against minorities.” Moreover, the modern attack on campus due process means that black men are facing an old problem. Yoffe quotes another Harvard professor, Janet Halley, who accurately notes that “American racial history is laced with vendetta-like scandals in which black men are accused of sexually assaulting white women,” followed eventually by the revelation “that the accused men were not wrongdoers at all.”

Stop & Shop’s stores were ghost towns during the recent strike. With workers standing outside in picket lines, customers stayed away , leading to one of the most effective strikes in recent memory. The grocery clerks and bakers and meat cutters holding signs were protesting proposed cuts to their benefits, but their plight also resonated with the public because they represented something bigger: working Americans across the country whose wages are barely budging while the cost of living skyrockets in such places as Boston and corporations rake in record profits. ...“What we’re seeing is an increasing resistance to the fundamental unfairness of a system that’s so skewed both economically and politically to the wealthy,” said Benjamin Sachs, a Harvard Law School labor professor, noting that when Uber goes public, former CEO Travis Kalanick’s stock is expected to be worth upward of $6 billion — an amount that would take a full-time Uber driver 150,000 years to make.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: The brewing conflict between the House Judiciary Committee and Attorney General William Barr — over whether he will testify this week as scheduled, and under what ground rules — is a symptom of a much bigger emerging clash between Congress and the president. The most probable outcome is a stalemate: because the framers designed the Constitution that way. We have entered a new phase of the constitutional stress test that began with President Donald Trump’s election and shows no signs of winding down. In the first phases, Trump pushed the limits of executive power on immigration, and went after the criminal justice system in the hopes of delegitimizing it. This time, the initiative comes not from the president, but from a different branch of government.

Hours after Joe Biden made his presidential run official last Thursday, Anita Hill’s name was back in the news. Earlier this month, with an eye toward getting into the race, Biden called Hill to “express his regret” for her treatment during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings, the New York Times reported. ... Lastly, Biden’s critics say that his own questioning of Hill was unfair, blaming him for “setting an accusing, skeptical tone and losing control,” the Washington Post reports. Charles Ogletree, a Harvard law professor and Hill’s attorney at the time, told Politico he still blames Biden for mishandling the hearing: “I was shocked and dismayed that Joe Biden was asking questions that didn’t seem appropriate and was not in her corner as a Democrat,” Ogletree said. “The point is that he’s supposed to be neutral, but his questions to Anita Hill were as piercing as anyone’s.” Ogletree said he’s brought up the hearings with Biden in the years since, but hasn’t been satisfied with the response. “He’s said that this job was to control the hearing, that he was surprised by the result as well,” Ogletree said.

The Labor Department weighed in Monday on a question whose answer could be worth billions of dollars to gig-economy companies as they begin selling shares to the public: Are their workers employees or contractors? ... Sharon Block, a former top official in the Obama Labor Department who is executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, said it was hard to tell from the facts the Labor Department chose to include in its letter whether the workers using the platform in question were truly independent contractors. But she said there seemed to be a stronger case to make for contractor status in that case than for Uber. Still, she speculated that the finding could be procedurally useful for the department if it later sought to deem Uber drivers to be independent contractors. “This as a strategy makes sense,” Ms. Block said. “They set the standard in a way that makes it really clear this company gets past it, and in a way that’s going to help them in the harder cases.”

The International Criminal Court’s recent rejection of its chief prosecutor’s request to investigate alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan has laid bare the limitations of its working. The statement of the Court that the current situation in Afghanistan “made the prospects for a successful investigation and prosecution extremely limited” has shocked civil society. ... The judges of the pre-trial chamber seem to have considered not only the interest of justice, but also the prospects of success as equally important in deciding the prosecutor’s request. Alex Whiting in his analytical article on the ICC decision in www.justsecurity.org, said the judges found strong evidence to indicate that for the moment at least, an investigation in Afghanistan simply could not succeed.

Problems with the U.S. health care system—including the rising costs of prescription drugs, the current opioid abuse crisis, and continued gaps in access to care—have moved front and center in national policy debates. But despite the urgency of these problems, politicians have not reached any consensus on how to solve them. The Trump Administration has sought to empower states to craft solutions to health care problems that affect their own populations, while Democrats like Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Representative Premila Jayapal (D-Wash.) have advocated for a national health insurance system they call “Medicare for All.” ... Against this backdrop, The Regulatory Review has invited numerous experts to analyze pressing concerns with the current U.S. health care system and offer their ideas for the future. "Defining and Establishing Goals for Medicare for All" by Carmel Shachar, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics: "It is increasingly difficult to find a Democratic presidential hopeful who has not paid at least some lip service to “Medicare for all.” Medicare for all, however, means many things to many people. As the fight to become the Democratic presidential candidate unfolds, it will be important to see how this term gets defined."

A bill before the Texas Senate seeks to prevent social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter from censoring users based on their viewpoints. Supporters say it would protect the free exchange of ideas, but critics say the bill contradicts a federal law that allows social media platforms to regulate their own content. ...Opponents to the bill raised concerns about the conflict with a federal law that protects social media platforms. In the federal law, social media platforms are protected under a “good Samaritan” policy that allows them to moderate content on the platform however they want, or on a subjective basis. Kendra Albert, a lecturer at Harvard Law School, said the federal law would likely preempt SB 2373 because the bill is more restrictive. “The federal law contains what we would call a ‘subjective standard,’” said Albert, who specializes in technology law. “It's based on whether the provider thinks that this causes problems, whereas the Texas bill attempts to move it to an objective standard.”

A week before the public opening of "Hamilton: The Exhibition" -- the brainchild of "Hamilton" composer/lyricist/writer Lin-Manuel Miranda and his team -- exhibition creative director David Korins insisted everything was on schedule. A 360-degree, immersive, football field-sized homage to Alexander Hamilton, the exhibition opened Saturday on Chicago's Northerly Island. It represents a "deeper dive" into the life and times of the Founding Father and first treasury secretary depicted in Miranda's blockbuster musical. ...More than two years in the making, the exhibition is a collaboration between Miranda, Korins, director Thomas Kail, producer Jeffrey Seller and orchestrator Alex Lacamoire with assistance from Yale University historian Joanne Freeman and Harvard Law professor and historian Annette Gordon-Reed.

At the heart of all politics and activism is the concept of change. People agitate, organize and vote because they believe that they can affect change in the world — or, in some cases, reverse changes that have already happened. But the process of change can be a bit mysterious. How does it happen? How can people make it happen? In his new book, "How Change Happens," Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein tackles these larger issues, looking at a history of social change and analyzing it for lessons that could be useful for those who seek to make changes to the status quo. He sat down with me recently on "Salon Talks" to discuss the way social movements get started and why what used to be considered common sense or can sometimes transform with surprising speed.

From greenhouse gas emissions controls to offshore drilling, the Trump administration has yet to complete a number of high-profile regulatory changes the president has promised. Regulatory experts are closely tracking forthcoming final and draft rules and guidance documents in the second half of the presidential term. "There are a lot of the things we expect to see relatively soon," said Hana Vizcarra, a staff attorney at Harvard Law School who works on Harvard's Regulatory Rollback Tracker. She and Caitlin McCoy, a climate, clean air and energy fellow at Harvard Law School, and other regulatory experts flagged half a dozen actions to keep an eye on as agencies push to complete regulatory rollbacks. These actions could be made public in the coming weeks and months, based on deadlines projected by agencies, and the dates the rules have gone to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for review, a key step toward completing the regulatory process.

... After reading the Mueller report, they say, Congress has no option but to fulfill its obligation and impeach Trump. ...  But this view misunderstands impeachment entirely. ... Harvard Law School’s Noah Feldman points out that neither history nor the framers’ intent yields clear lessons on the topic. “It’s quite possible that many founders would have supported impeachment for serious substantive matters like the usurpation of power by the president. By that standard, would [Abraham] Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, FDR’s internment of the Japanese Americans or [Lyndon] Johnson’s massive expansion of the Vietnam War all have been impeachable offenses? Possibly.”

US President Donald Trump is refusing to cooperate with several committees in the House of Representatives that have launched investigations of his presidency and business dealings, setting the stage for a legal confrontation that is likely to land in the US Supreme Court. ... "Certainly, with respect to the most important of the witnesses that the House Judiciary Committee is trying to bring before the public, and that is Don McGahn, executive privilege was obviously waived and executive privilege has no application in most of the other instances," said Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School who has been a vocal critic of Trump.

With its unique blend of music, dance and history lesson, the musical “Hamilton” proved to be something new and innovative for the stage. Now the team behind that mega-hit has created “Hamilton: The Exhibition,” touted as something else new and innovative. ... But does the general public want more Hamilton? That’s the question that will be answered as the exhibit makes its debut in Chicago. ... To bring more depth and an academic accuracy to the museum-quality exhibit, Yale University historian Joanne Freeman and Harvard law professor and historian Annette Gordon-Reed served as consultants.

A small but important trail of refugees fleeing the Nazis took an unusual detour through China. A new exhibit in Brooklyn marks the journey. ... Laurence H. Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor, a leading constitutional expert and an official in President Barack Obama’s Justice Department, also credited his direction in life partly to his years in Shanghai. These were very early years — he was born there in 1941 and left at age 6. His father, who as a young man had become an American citizen, was interned, he said, and young Larry recognized the injustice. “I thought, My father didn’t do anything wrong — why should he be in this place?”

Attorney General Maura Healey on Thursday blasted the federal indictment of a state district court judge on obstruction charges for allegedly helping an undocumented immigrant defendant evade a federal immigration officer last year in Newton District Court. ... Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge who now teaches at Harvard Law School and who last year published a Globe op-ed defending Joseph after the story broke, was firmly in Healey’s camp Thursday. In a telephone interview, Gertner called Lelling’s decision to seek criminal charges against a state court judge an act of “grandstanding.” “The notion of hauling a state court judge into federal court under these circumstances is outrageous,” Gertner said. “It has implications beyond Judge Joseph. Are they going to go into a church and arrest the reverend for permitting sanctuary to immigrants? There are so many levels to this incredibly excessive, overreaching, grandstanding prosecution.”

U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling is charging a trial court judge and a former court officer with obstruction of justice. The charges stem from an incident that occurred last April, when the pair allegedly helped a man slip out the back door of a Newton courthouse to avoid detention by federal immigration authorities. Middlesex County Judge Shelley M. Richmond and now-retired court officer Wesley MacGregor are facing three obstruction charges, including conspiracy, aiding and abetting and obstruction of a federal proceeding. ... Guests: Nancy Gertner, retired federal judge, senior lecturer at Harvard Law School, WBUR legal analyst.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: Some of President Donald Trump’s critics are saying that, despite special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, Trump could still be prosecuted for obstruction of justice after he leaves office. Don’t believe it. It’s conceivable that Trump could face charges post-presidency by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York for campaign-finance felonies he may have committed while paying off Stormy Daniels through Michael Cohen. And who knows what financial shenanigans from before his presidency might be investigated and prosecuted by New York prosecutors.

Constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe calls Trump's contempt of Congress an "astonishing exercise in arrogant obstruction of justice" and an impeachable offense. Tribe explains to Lawrence why Trump cannot fight impeachment in the Supreme Court as he claimed.

Constitutional experts say that President Donald Trump got a fundamental fact about impeachment wrong in his latest complaint about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. ... Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard who has co-authored a book on impeachment, called Trump’s argument “idiocy,” saying the Supreme Court would want nothing to do with a legal challenge like that. “The court is very good at slapping down attempts to drag things out by bringing it into a dispute where it has no jurisdiction,” he told TIME.