Media Mentions

...In a recent draft paper from which I have taken these numbers, John C Coates of Harvard Law School points out that the big three’s share of any contested vote now tends to be pivotal and that on current trends, even if growth starts to taper off, a majority of the 1,000 largest US companies will be controlled, in effect, by a dozen or fewer people over the next 10 to 20 years. This leads to what he calls the Problem of Twelve, his paper’s title, whereby ownership rights, including the critical right to elect directors, will be in the hands of this tiny group. Even if the growth in passive investing fails to follow the trajectory outlined by Mr Coates, it is clear that there is already a striking concentration of power.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. A South Carolina foster-care agency has asked the Trump administration to rule that it has a constitutional right to discriminate against non-Protestant and gay parents under the religious-freedom guarantee of the First Amendment. Some evangelical Christians will be upset if the agency doesn’t get an exemption from anti-discrimination rules so that it can receive federal money. But other religious groups, not to mention the American Civil Liberties Union and gay-rights organizations, will probably sue if it does. The legal issues are complicated, and it isn’t clear who would win.

...This year’s Harvard Law curriculum includes a class covering entertainment and media law, a course on music and digital media, and an entertainment law clinic to complement its many intellectual-property and contracts-focused classes. Students can also moonlight at the legal services clinic, Recording Artists Project, where they gain hands-on experience working with local musicians. The clinic celebrates its 20th year in October with a gala keynoted by entertainment lawyer and alumnus Donald Passman.

The Financial Times and McKinsey have unveiled the shortlist for the 2018 Bracken Bower Prize, awarded to the best business book proposal by an author aged under 35. The prize, first awarded in 2014, has helped a number of young business writers to bring their ideas from proposal to publication...The shortlisted authors for the 2018 Bracken Bower Prize are:...Andrew Leon Hanna [`19]

U.S. President Donald Trump wants to rip up the rulebook for global trade. China is by many accounts abusing it...“What has changed is not the substance but rather the style of U.S. engagement,” said Harvard Law school professor Mark Wu. “The U.S. has made clear that it will continue to block new appointments to the Appellate Body until its long-standing concerns are addressed satisfactorily. I expect the U.S. to stand firm on this pledge, even if it means paralyzing the Appellate Body,” he said.

Lawrence Lessig was once best-known as the special master in the Microsoft Antitrust Case, then he was best known as the co-founder of Creative Commons, then as a fire-breathing corruption fighter: in America, Compromised, a long essay (or short nonfiction book), Lessig proposes as lucid and devastating a theory of corruption as you'll ever find, a theory whose explanatory power makes today's terrifying news cycle make sense -- and a theory that demands action.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. The U.S. has experienced a quiet revolution in the past 40 years. It began under Ronald Reagan but has been embraced by all of his successors, most notably Barack Obama, who doubled down on the basic idea: Before imposing new regulations, federal agencies must perform a cost-benefit analysis and demonstrate that the benefits justify the costs. In areas from highway safety to occupational health and from energy to homeland security, agencies are now required to develop a detailed, quantitative account of the likely effects of their proposals—and to offer that account to the American public.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. With the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices have previously served as law clerks to other justices before them — an unprecedented situation on the court. The remarkable and perhaps unjustified rise of this elite-within-an-elite is worthy of discussion in its own right. But it also gives some context to last week’s revelation that the Heritage Foundation had planned a secretive boot camp for conservative law clerks about to start their jobs in the federal courts. It’s not just that the conservative think tank wanted to provide some counterweight to the comparatively liberal law school curriculum. Heritage was aiming to get a head start in its efforts to influence future judges.

Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein writes a lot of books, but he says his latest, The Cost-Benefit Revolution, is special. It’s the culmination of decades of writing and research Sunstein has done in administrative law, with particular attention to the way that agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency or the Food and Drug Administration translate laws into rules and regulation. Sunstein has been a vocal advocate of having agencies quantitatively compare the benefits of those rules and regulations to their costs, junking rules that don’t pass the bar and speeding through ones that do.

University of Chicago Philosophy Professor Martha C. Nussbaum said that society should grant enhanced legal protections for animals and reconsider the ethical principles governing human-animal interactions at a Friday talk in Boylston Hall...Man Ha Tse, an S.J.D. candidate studying at Harvard Law School, also said he found the talk worthwhile. “I think, probably, a majority of the population doesn’t even think of this as an issue that is worthy of serious scholarly intention,” she said, “So I always think it’s important to have serious scholars like Martha Nussbaum putting forward these ideas.

...In the new book “Tough Cases,” 13 trial judges from criminal, civil, probate, and family courts wrote candid and poignant firsthand accounts of the trials they can’t forget, giving readers a rare glimpse into their chambers. The book was the subject of a lively discussion at a panel sponsored by the Harvard Law School Library...“I don’t think I had ever really heard judges speak or write publicly about their thought processes and their tough cases the way this book captures,” said Andrew Crespo ’05, J.D. ’08, an assistant professor of law at Harvard Law School (HLS) and one of the panelists...Charles Fried, the Beneficial Professor of Law, said trial judges bear a heavy burden, not only because their work is lonely but because they have to steer their way through all facets of the human condition...For retired judge and HLS lecturer Nancy Gertner, “Tough Cases” reveals the challenges judges face and the need for the public to learn about them.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: I’m not proud of it. But I am one of those people who are more viscerally upset by the allegations that journalist Jamal Khashoggi died a brutal death at the hands of Saudi secret police than by the deaths of thousands of people under Saudi bombardment in Yemen. The reason isn’t that Khashoggi was a journalist or that he was a legal U.S. resident or that he may have been dismembered, possibly while still alive. It’s much simpler and much less principled than that: It’s because I knew him.

...Some observers, like Harvard Law’s Jeannie Suk Gersen, argue that Burroughs’s determination on that matter doesn’t necessarily need to include a broader ruling on affirmative action. But because the case is likely to be appealed, the case could have a drastic effect on how elite schools use race in admissions.

...Some legal experts do believe that the judiciary is feeling bolder than it once did, perhaps because of what they see as presidential overreach, perhaps because of Trump’s open hostility to the federal courts, reflected in his comment in 2017 about the “so-called” judge who first ruled against his travel ban and his reference to U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s “Mexican heritage” when he was presiding over a case against Trump University. “Context matters,” as former federal judge and now Harvard Law School’s Nancy Gertner wrote in an article called “Judging in a Time of Trump.”

The C.L.O., a cousin of the mortgage-related product that malfunctioned a decade ago, has become one of the hottest investments on Wall Street. ...“If there turns out to be an issue, this is where the unfinished business of the post-crisis financial reform efforts is going to be revealed,” said Daniel K. Tarullo, a professor at Harvard Law School and a former oversight governor for bank regulation at the Fed.

The Harvard Kennedy School received $7.5 million for a student fellowship program for U.S. veterans and active duty military members Thursday, according to a press release from the school. The donation, which came from the Debra and Leon Black Family Foundation, will cover attendance costs for up to 25 graduate students annually—starting with those matriculating in fall 2019—across the Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, and Harvard Law School.

...Most advocates of election reform are similarly positive about ranked-choice voting. But they don’t agree on the best way forward. “I’m a big supporter of ranked-choice voting,” says Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School. “But I think one of the mistakes they’ve made is that they pursued it from the bottom up when a much better strategy is to do it from the top down.” In other words, start with the presidential race.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. This column is really good. Actually it’s amazing. In less than 650 words, it will explain the success of President Donald Trump -- and also show how to beat him...One of the least well-known rules of thumb is called the “confidence heuristic,” which was initially explored in 1995. The central idea is simple. When people express beliefs to one another, their level of confidence usually reflects how certain they are. It tells us how much information they have. When we are listening to others, we are more likely to be persuaded by people who seem really confident.

...This month, The Intercept published an article about the history of this Israeli legal effort. In the story, Harvard law professor Gabriella Blum explained how, when she was a young lawyer working for the Israel Defense Forces, she and her team sought to give a legal justification for Israel’s burgeoning assassination program.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s view on affirmative action and employee rights to band together could see a dramatic shift under the court’s newly reconstituted conservative majority, legal scholars told Bloomberg Law...But the Trump administration filed a brief in Epic Systems suggesting that the NLRA’s safeguards for collective worker action only covers group conduct related to self-organization or collective bargaining. “That to me is the most serious and real area to think about an even more conservative Supreme Court changing the law,” Sharon Block, executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, told Bloomberg Law. “In a world where 94 percent of the private sector isn’t engaged in activities related to collective bargaining, that would be a devastating development.”

Donald Trump is back in the place he loves best: the campaign trail. The president is logging thousands of miles on Air Force One with the midterm elections approaching Nov. 6. He is fighting to prevent a Democratic takeover of Congress, which would derail much of his legislative agenda and open the door to multiple investigations of his presidency...Democrats say Trump and the Kavanaugh issue are also motivating anti-Trump voters. Many Democratic voters were frustrated to see Kavanaugh confirmed to the Supreme Court, despite allegations from Christine Blasey Ford that he sexually assaulted her when they were both in high school. Kavanaugh has vehemently denied the allegations. "I think it's more likely to be a plus for the Democrats," said Lawrence Lessig, professor at Harvard Law School, former Democratic presidential candidate, and founder of the organization EqualCitizens.US. "Their anger is more visceral."