Media Mentions

Every day, it seems like people are quitting social media for one reason or another — including fatigue and privacy concerns. Recently, one of my coworkers even told me he had stopped using Instagram because he believed it was listening in on his conversations. ... If tech companies were actually listening in on us without our consent, they'd be in for some serious legal pain. "There is also a federal statute called the Wiretap Act, which prevents people from eavesdropping on oral communications, and that could be a cause of action for a potential plaintiff against the company that was eavesdropping on them," said Kendra Albert, clinical instructional fellow at the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard Law School.

It was announced last week that President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was sentenced to less than four years behind bars, a punishment decried by many in Washington and in legal circles as too lenient ... To discuss the political and legal significance of the ruling, Jim Braude was joined by retired federal judge Nancy Gertner, now a lecturer at Harvard Law School, and Bruce Singal, a defense attorney who worked alongside Robert Mueller in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston.

The Chinese telecom giant Huawei is winning the race to build 5G networks worldwide. NPR's Audie Cornish speaks with Harvard Law professor Susan Crawford about why that's a national security threat.

An article by Samuel Garcia '19: A recent study by the Kauffman Foundation reported that immigrants in America have almost double the average rate of entrepreneurship—launching businesses large and small across the country at a high frequency. Dream Across America (DreamxAmerica) is a social enterprise hoping to highlight and grow that entrepreneurial drive by “joining storytelling and impact investing to support immigrant entrepreneurs across America,” in the format of a docuseries. From the team’s home base at the Harvard Innovation Labs, cofounder Andrew Leon Hanna ['19] spoke about DreamxAmerica’s vision ... Currently, the DreamxAmerica team (made up of Harvard Law students, filmmakers, and social entrepreneurs with experience across education, finance, and more) is working closely with its inaugural class of entrepreneurs to launch DreamxNC in 2019.

The biggest tech problem facing the US is that it doesn't have universal access to super-fast fiber-optic internet connections, according to Susan Crawford, a telecommunication expert and professor at Harvard Law School. (Subscription required)

Analysis by Ryan Manucha '19: There exists a little-known dispute resolution venue where the complainant has always won. It doesn’t have a permanent location, nor does it have a standing set of adjudicators. And at this... (Subscription required)

(Transcript) ANA CABRERA (CNN): You have been critical of President Trump. We laid out how unprecedented some of this is. Yet, you say now is not the time for impeachment. What is the threshold for impeachment, in your mind? LAURENCE TRIBE: The threshold has certainly been met in terms of the likely offenses that are emerging from the evidence. But there's no point in impeaching a president when the Senate is really very much in his hip pocket and will not remove him. We really need to investigate thoroughly. So much of what we know, we only know in dribs and drabs. A great deal has been unmasked by Robert Mueller. Much of it will become public, not all of it. Much is being learned in the Southern District of New York. But it's mostly the House of Representatives, the investigations in the Judiciary Committee, the Oversight Committee, the Intelligence Committee, that's going to reveal a great deal. Then we'll see. We'll see whether the time has come to pull the impeachment trigger.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: One of the fiercest political flashpoints today is whether to take down old memorials that offend current sensibilities. The U.S. Supreme Court is now considering what to do about that very problem. The case involves a World War I memorial in the form of a 40-foot cross, not a statue of a Confederate soldier. There’s a constitutional dimension because of the potential for establishment of religion. But the issues are nevertheless very much similar.

An op-ed by Nancy Gertner: I was on the federal bench for 17 years before I retired in 2011 to teach, write and lecture about sentencing. The sentencing of Paul Manafort surprised me. I know how difficult the job of judging is; I am reluctant to second guess another judge’s decision as the public and pundits do. The judge sees the defendant, hears the evidence, evaluates the confidential presentence report. We do not. And since I am a critic of sentencing in U.S. courts for being overly punitive, for disproportionately impacting communities of color, I am loath to challenge any judge for being lenient. Still, I was taken aback Thursday by Manafort’s sentence to 47 months in prison by U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III for cheating on his taxes and for bank fraud.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: A provision of the Affordable Care Act that is strongly supported by Donald Trump’s administration requires calorie labels at U.S. chain restaurants. The basic idea is that if consumers are informed, they will reduce their calorie consumption -- and improve their health. Unfortunately, it isn’t clear that calorie labels are doing much good.

When Mindy Grossman is pressed to define her various career roles in a single word, she lands on “transformer.” That’s how the chief executive officer of WW Inc. — rebranded from Weight Watchers International — described herself Thursday during an appearance at Harvard University. Grossman, who participated in a discussion organized by the Harvard Association for Law and Business as part of its annual Symposium Week, spoke about how the 56-year-old company — under increasing pressure from competitors — has evolved with the times by emphasizing wellness along with weight loss.

Before Donald Trump was even confirmed as the Republican Party’s nominee for the White House in the summer of 2016, he was besieged with threats of impeachment for his rabble-rousing rhetoric on the campaign trail. Then he actually became president. ... But Harvard Law constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe wants people to know that impeachment can be a double-edged sword. ... Tribe spoke to Newsweek about his book, the way Democrats are handling impeachment talk and what might happen next.

Through the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, one of 30 clinics providing legal assistance at Harvard Law School, dozens of HLS students are taking on high-stakes cases for vulnerable clients.

Politicians and legal experts have poured scorn on the lenient treatment of Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort after he was sentenced to 47 months in prison for bank and tax fraud.... Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard, said he had “rarely been more disgusted by a judge’s transparently preferential treatment to a rich white guy who betrayed the law and the nation”.

Several federal judges on Thursday gave advice to white collar attorneys on best practices when it comes to sentencing, urging lawyers to be more specific in their submissions and to take great care when it comes to their clients' final pitches to the bench. ... Judges said attorneys should take extra care at this point with clients who have lost at trial and are maintaining their innocence. Retired U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner of the District of Massachusetts, who now teaches at Harvard Law School, said the client in this situation has to “do the dance.” “The dance is you have to basically say, ‘I’m sorry that it led to this,’ there are ways you can circle around I did it,” Judge Gertner said.

Legal observers were surprised by the relatively light, 47-month sentence received Thursday by President Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was convicted in August on charges of tax and bank fraud. The 69-year-old, who appeared in the court in Virginia in a wheelchair and pleaded for compassion, could have been sentenced to up to 24 years in federal prison. ...Some of the negative reaction was aimed at the judge who set the sentence. Judge T.S. Ellis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia said the possible long sentence for Manafort under federal guidelines was "excessive" and said Manafort "has lived an otherwise blameless life." "Judge Ellis has inexcusably perverted justice and the guidelines," Harvard Law School professor and Trump critic Laurence Tribe tweeted.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: This is the first in a series of opinion pieces on how to fix democracy.  Democracies Depend for their stability on four things. First, well-functioning institutions. Second, the delivery of good or at least decent outcomes for most citizens. Third, norms of reciprocity and forbearance. And fourth, certain character traits among both officials and citizens. While the four are closely connected, the last is the most fundamental.  In particular, democracies require high levels of personal grace. They are gravely endangered by its opposite, which is savagery. James Madison, the principal thinker behind the American Constitution, focused mostly on institutional design. But in the Virginia Ratifying Constitution, he went in a different direction, and offered a kind of cri de coeur: “Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks—no form of government can render us secure.”

Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chief, was sentenced to a mere 47 months for eight white-collar crime convictions. In handing down his sentence, Judge T.S. Ellis added insult to injury by stating Manafort had lived a “blameless” life before getting caught committing a host of crimes. Ellis seems to have been unaware that for a good deal of his adult life, Manafort made money — blood money, his own daughter called it — representing a rouges’ gallery of butchers. Newsweek recounted his non-Russian clientele. ... Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe tweeted, “Judge Ellis’s assessment that Manafort led an ‘otherwise blameless life’ was proof that he’s unfit to serve on the federal bench. I’ve rarely been more disgusted by a judge’s transparently preferential treatment to a rich white guy who betrayed the law and the nation.”

A Letter to the Editor: We the 52 undersigned members of the Harvard Law School faculty support our colleague Ronald S. Sullivan Jr.’s dedication to the professional tradition of providing representation to people accused of crimes and other misconduct, including to those who are reviled. For the past 10 years while serving as faculty dean of Winthrop House, professor Sullivan has represented alleged victims of sexual assault as well as people accused of sexual assault, murder, and terrorism. [Editor’s note: Sullivan is representing Harvey Weinstein in his current criminal case, which has generated protests at Harvard.] We call upon our university’s administration to recognize that such legal advocacy in service of constitutional principles is not only fully consistent with Sullivan’s roles of law professor and dean of an undergraduate house, but also one of the many possible models that resident deans can provide in teaching, mentoring, and advising students. The university owes a robust response to allegations of sexual harassment and other sexual misconduct. We respect students’ right to protest professor Sullivan’s choice of clients. But we view any pressure by Harvard’s administration for him to resign as faculty dean of Winthrop, because of his representation or speaking on behalf of clients, as inconsistent with the university’s commitment to the freedom to defend ideas, however unpopular.

A Q&A with Ronald Sullivan: Ronald S. Sullivan, Jr., a clinical professor at Harvard Law School, is among the most high-profile criminal-defense lawyers in the country. Sullivan represented Aaron Hernandez in his acquittal for a double homicide and helped the family of Michael Brown reach a $1.5-million-wrongful-death settlement with the city of Ferguson, Missouri. Sullivan has also devoted much of his career to representing less-privileged defendants: he is the director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School and previously served as the director of the Washington, D.C., Public Defender Service. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he helped free thousands of Louisianans who had been incarcerated without due process. ...I recently spoke twice by phone with Sullivan to discuss his career and his decision to represent Weinstein. During our conversations, which have been edited for length and clarity, we also discussed the state of campus debate and his belief that racism contributed to Harvard’s decision to conduct the climate survey.

Lawyers in love shouldn’t behave like lawyers, according to advice from one of six married couples from Harvard Law School’s class of 1979. All six couples met while first-year students in Harvard’s Section 3, which is similar to a homeroom period, the New York Times reports. ...The article prompted Harvard Law professor Richard Lazarus to alert the Times to a bigger romantic feat: Six couples from Section 3 of the Class of 1979 had not only married; they remain married to this day. He dubs the section the “love section.”