Media Mentions

With the rise of the internet, national and local news organizations alike are struggling. Budget cuts and shrinking staffs are all too common. Martha Minow, a human rights expert and Harvard Law School professor, took on these and other changes in the media landscape at a public lecture at Smith College, Monday, “Freedom of the Press and the Changing Ecosystem of News.” The talk marked Constitution Day, the anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787.

Can institutional investing have anticompetitive effects?...Disagreeing was panelist Einer Elhauge, a Harvard Law School professor who supports the idea that common ownership, sometimes referred to as...

It's not every presidential administration in which news that the former campaign chairman has agreed to cooperate with the special counsel, gets knocked off the front page in a matter of hours. But the Trump team is ever the exception. And today, all anyone nationally can talk about is his Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, and the woman who has publicly accused him of sexual assault. Jim Braude was joined by Nancy Gertner, retired federal judge and senior lecturer at Harvard Law, Martha Coakley, former state Attorney General and now a partner at Foley Hoag, and Jim Rappaport, former chair of the Mass. GOP.

The US is imposing new tariffs on $200bn worth of Chinese goods as it escalates its trade war with Beijing. We hear from Mark Wu, professor of international trade law at Harvard Law School.

...Here’s what our panel of legal scholars thinks should happen next...‘‘The question isn’t only whether Brett Kavanaugh can still be a Supreme Court Justice; it’s whether he can still be a federal judge." Catharine A. MacKinnon...‘This accusation cannot responsibly be ignored’ Laurence H. Tribe

Local politics blogger Kevin Vericker is better known for putting an occasional toe — OK, foot — over the line than for pulling punches. Wielding hyperbole in the rabid manner endemic to the blogosphere, the retired software analyst relentlessly details the palace intrigue of tiny North Bay Village for his 1,000 local readers...The suit is part of a growing trend of public officials taking bloggers to court for posts they see as harmful to their personal or professional image, according to Kendra Albert of Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic. Melania Trump filed a high-profile libel suit against a Maryland blogger that settled last year in her favor, with a full retraction and significant reparations. While some cases are legitimate, Albert said, the increase in lawsuits against journalists (think Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker) has publications thinking twice before publishing. These days, even facts can be expensive to defend.

An op-ed by Samuel Garcia `19. “Why do you think that you can win as a Democrat in Texas?” This is the biggest question hanging over Justin Nelson, Democratic candidate for Texas Attorney General. His response: “I will withdraw Texas from the DACA suit on my first day in office.” Figures from the Department of Homeland Security show that there are approximately 690,000 children in the United States under the protection of DACA (Deferred Action for Children Arrivals). Although altering immigration policy is usually the responsibility of the federal government, children under the protection of DACA may have their status in this country impacted by the results of the Texas Attorney General race. This is because Texas is the lead plaintiff in a multi-state lawsuit to end DACA...According to Phil Torrey, Managing Attorney of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, the outcome of the Texas Attorney General race may have fatal consequences to the DACA suit since other states may not be willing to put forth the resources necessary to litigate.

A tug-of-war between student borrowers hoping to get tens of thousands of dollars in loans they took out for their education discharged and the government may be a step closer to resolution. A federal judge ruled this week that repeated delays by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos of an Obama administration plan to provide debt relief to defrauded borrowers was unlawful..."We think this is an incredibly important ruling both for cheated student loan borrowers and anyone who cares about the government under the rule of law instead of under the thumb of a predatory, for-profit college industry," said Toby Merrill, director of the Harvard Law School's Project on Predatory Student Lending.

...Echoing a move by the Watergate prosecutor in March 1974, the grand jury with which Mr. Mueller has been working could try to send a report about the evidence it has gathered directly to the House Judiciary Committee. And on Friday, seeking to draw more attention to that option, three prominent legal analysts asked a court to lift a veil of secrecy that has long kept that Watergate-era report hidden...The petition was filed by Benjamin Wittes, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and the editor in chief of Lawfare, an online publication that specializes in national security legal policy issues; Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and senior Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration; and Stephen Bates, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas, law professor who, as a federal prosecutor working for Ken Starr, the independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton, co-wrote the report to Congress recommending that Mr. Clinton be impeached. The three are represented by Protect Democracy, a government watchdog group...In another declaration, Mr. Goldsmith noted the incongruity that the Watergate-era document has a better historical reputation than the Starr report and yet is unavailable for public scrutiny. He argued that making it public would help inform discussion of any effort by Mr. Mueller to send information to Congress, a task that could require navigating “difficult and sensitive issues of executive power, separation of powers and individual rights.”

John Coates has a thoughtful paper on the legal and economic challenges of “the problem of twelve,” the prospect of a majority of shares in public companies being managed by just twelve entities, in effect twelve people. "[T]he rise of indexing presents a sharp, general, political challenge to corporate law. The prospect of twelve people even potentially controlling most of the economy poses a legitimacy and accountability issue of the first order – one might even call it a small “c” constitutional challenge."

...Here is a recent paper by John Coates of Harvard Law School with the imposing title “The Future of Corporate Governance Part I: The Problem of Twelve.” The “problem of twelve” is his name for “the likelihood that in the near future roughly twelve individuals will have practical power over the majority of U.S. public companies”: We are rapidly moving into a world in which the bulk of equity capital of large companies with dispersed ownership will be owned by a small number of institutions.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ move to delay Obama-era protections for students defrauded by for-profit colleges was dealt a setback when a federal judge found her actions to be “arbitrary and capricious.”...Toby Merrill, a litigator at Harvard University’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, which represents defrauded students, hailed the decision as “a huge a rebuke to the department. It’s a really big deal, it’s an incredibly important win for student borrowers and really for anyone who cares about having a government that operates under the rule of law as opposed to as a pawn of industry,” Merrill said.

The efforts by Betsy DeVos’s Department of Education to stymie an Obama-era rule surrounding for-profit colleges just hit a major roadblock. A district court judge ruled Wednesday evening that the multiple attempts by the Department to delay the regulation, known as the borrower defense rule, don’t have basis in law. The decision came as part of litigation brought on behalf of borrowers by Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy organization and Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending. The ruling also addresses similar litigation brought by 19 states attorneys general challenging the Department’s efforts to slow implementation of the rule. “This is not the first time, but it’s a really, really important time that we’ve gotten the Department’s illegal attempts to deny people their rights struck down,” said Toby Merrill, the director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending.

Harvard is still awaiting federal guidance on how to file taxes under a law passed in Dec. 2017 that levied an “unprecedented” excise tax on some universities’ endowment returns...Howard E. Abrams, a visiting professor at the Law School, said it’s common, especially after such a large tax overhaul, to see delays in guidance on each provision. An absence of official guidance does not, however, exempt taxpayers from filing. “Even if there’s no guidance, the statute is enacted and taxpayers have to comply even if the Treasury doesn’t tell them how to handle all the details,” Abrams said. Abrams said that without instructions, it might not be clear to universities what exactly is being taxed and how schools should consider each of their entities when filing.

A letter by Charles Fried. Let’s stipulate that Dr. José Baselga is a brilliant and innovative cancer doctor; that his work has helped thousands; and that in his research, clinical work and advice to others in the field he has been motivated only by the desire to advance knowledge and to cure millions...But I would ask another question: Why isn’t $1.5 million enough?

A federal judge has ruled that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' delay of a key student borrower protection rule was improper and unlawful. "This is such an important win for student borrowers and anyone who cares about a government that operates under the rule of law," says Toby Merrill, of Harvard Law School's Project On Predatory Student Lending.

American gun violence is “a human rights crisis” and the US government’s refusal to pass gun control laws represents a violation of its citizens’ right to life, according to a new report by Amnesty International...While framing America’s gun violence in human rights terms is a symbolic move, “I don’t think it’s symbolic in the empty sense,” said Gerald Neuman, the co-director of the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School. “For some people who are already concerned about the number of deaths that are occurring, having it framed as a human rights issue may help them understand the issue differently – that there are rights on both sides to be considered.”

An essay by Jeannie Suk Gersen. When Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court was announced, on July 9th, his alma mater, Yale Law School, released a statement quoting several liberal faculty members’ praise of his intellect, accomplishments, and character. This move was excoriated in an open letter, signed by hundreds of the school’s students, alumni, and teachers, which asked, “Is there nothing more important to Yale Law School than its proximity to power and prestige?” The letter called Kavanaugh’s nomination “an emergency—for democratic life, for our safety and freedom, for the future of our country” and exhorted the school to have “moral courage” and withhold its support. “Perhaps Judge Kavanaugh will be less likely to hire your favorite students,” the letter said. “But people will die if he is confirmed.”...But the conflict over Kavanaugh is not just between liberals and conservatives but also between those emphasizing norms of professional excellence and nonpartisanship and those stressing policy outcomes.

If you want to get into Harvard Law School, you should probably spend some time working in the real world before you apply to hit the books in Cambridge. Law School Assistant Dean for Admissions and Chief Admissions Officer Kristi L. Jobson ’06 said in an interview that the school is placing a greater emphasis on applicants' work history than it did in the past. In recent years, the vast majority of successful Law School applicants have boasted at least one year of work experience. Eighty-two percent of this year's incoming first-year class worked for at least 12 months prior to starting school, Jobson said. “One thing that we continue to be interested in, for your reference, is work experience,” said Jobson, who graduated from the Law School in 2012. “When I was a 1L, my class was almost 60 percent straight from college. It's almost a flip of what it used to be."

On this edition of Your Call, we’ll talk with law professor Lawrence Lessig, who has spent much of his career trying to fix our broken political system. His new book, America, Compromised, is based on a series of lectures he has given about how US institutions no longer serve the purposes for which they were designed. They now serve the wealthy and corporations, which work to help the rich get richer. What's happening isn't illegal. It's systemic. He writes, "There is not a single American awake to the world who is comfortable with the way things are." What can we do to change the system?

Hal Scott, director of the program on International Financial Systems at Harvard Law School, and Sebastian Mallaby, the Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, discuss what triggered the financial crisis in 2008 and if we are safe from another.