Media Mentions

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: President Donald Trump’s three-tweet sequence on Michael CohenThursday morning was different from the usual presidential stream of consciousness. Compact and carefully reasoned, the tweets sound an awful lot like they were written with a lawyer standing at the writer’s shoulder. Taken together, the tweets signal that Trump and his team are genuinely concerned about the possibility of his being indicted after leaving office — totally separate from any danger of impeachment. That’s significant.

The [Massachusetts] Supreme Judicial Court has announced the appointment of eight new members to the Access to Justice Commission. They are: H. Esme Caramello of Harvard Law School; Northeastern Housing Court First Justice Fairlie A. Dalton; Sandra M. Gant of the Committee for Public Counsel Services; Richard Johnston of the Attorney General’s Office; Jennifer G. Miller, counsel to the state Senate; Susan K. Nagl of South Coastal Counties Legal Services; Anthony Owens, clerk-magistrate of the Dorchester Division of the Boston Municipal Court; and Nutter partner Mary K. Ryan.

Consumers are increasingly entrusting online services with all kinds of personal data — but that trust has been repeatedly abused or taken for granted. If a doctor or a lawyer did that, they’d be kicked to the curb, because they have a legally defined duty to protect privileged data. Why don’t Facebook and Google? They might soon, via the Data Care Act. This bill, proposed today by Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) and co-sponsored by 14 more Democrats in the Senate, would essentially establish a set of consumer protection duties, defined and enforced by the Federal Trade Commission, preventing tech companies from knowingly doing harm to their users. ...The idea has been brought up before, notably by Yale’s Jack Bardin and Harvard’s Jonathan Zittrain, whom Sen. Schatz has previously cited.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: With Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s onetime lawyer and “fixer,” sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison, it’s worth asking: What will be the verdict of history on his crimes? Specifically, the felony campaign-finance violations connected to the payoffs to two women who said they had sexual affairs with the future president? Cohen said the payoffs were directed by then-candidate Trump — and the prosecutors of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York agreed. The answer depends on which of two competing paradigms for presidential wrongdoing the Cohen payoffs ultimately fall into.

After witnessing near-biblical calamities, Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972. The Cuyahoga river in Ohio caught fire in 1969, the same year 26m fish died in Florida’s Lake Thonotosassa, the largest recorded fish kill, because of pollution from food-processing plants. “Dirty Water”, a song from that era about the repellent Charles river, remains an anthem of Boston sports teams to this day. Since the early 1970s the White House has interpreted the statute in different ways. President Donald Trump’s team, who released a draft rule on December 11th, apparently want to take water law back to the 1980s. ...Organizations like the Farm Bureau, another lobby group, whipped up fears of government asserting authority over ditches and ponds. In truth both the regulation and the original law already contain generous carve-outs for farmers, says Caitlin McCoy, a fellow at Harvard Law School.

While the bankruptcy fight over failed for-profit educator ITT Educational Services continues, the biggest group involved in the legal battle has scored a big victory. In late November, a federal bankruptcy judge in Indianapolis gave final approval to a $600 million settlement that will affect about 750,000 former students of ITT Technical Institute. ... The group of students filed their claims against ITT in bankruptcy court in January 2017. They were represented by the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard Law School and the law firm of Jenner & Block LLP. ...“This settlement has done more for the cheated students of predatory for-profit colleges than [Education Secretary] Betsy DeVos has done in her entire administration,” Project on Predatory Student Lending Director Toby Merrill said in a written statement. “At a time when students are being ignored by their government, ITT students stood up to this predatory college themselves and secured the relief they are owed. Now it’s time for Betsy DeVos and the Department of Education to do the right thing and cancel the billions of dollars in remaining fraudulent federal loans.”

An op-ed by James Greiner: It shouldn’t be painfully hard to obtain a divorce that the law says you’re entitled to. And it shouldn’t be that hard only if you’re poor. Ending a marriage requires a lawsuit. To obtain a divorce, one spouse has to sue the other in court. If you’re rich, this isn’t a problem. You just hire a lawyer. But as the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized, divorce is just as fundamental to nonwealthy folks as it is to the Brad Pitts and Angelina Jolies of the world. And if you’re low-income, you probably won’t be able to hire a lawyer because they cost so much. Being trapped in an unwanted marriage can be pretty awful. We define ourselves, and society defines us, by reference to our spouses. Marriage and divorce affect income, property, children, medical care, just about every aspect of life. You can’t marry someone new until you get out of a marriage you’re in.

President Donald Trump’s executive actions aimed at slowing the pace of new regulation and eliminating existing ones (the first part was easier) continued in 2018. ...In effect, this amounted to “an impressive form of self-abnegation” of power, as noted by former Obama OIRA Director Cass Sunstein, since Trump’s own agencies can no longer rely on post-DOJ-memo guidance in court. While some left-of-center observers were dismissive, claiming that it “merely restated well-understood and otherwise uncontroversial black letter law,” the concern has been a longstanding one on an official basis in the eyes of the ACUS, going back decades before its 2017 report. A beneficial effect of the DOJ move is that it could induce other agencies to lean toward notice-and-comment rulemaking instead of exploiting the guidance loophole. Former OIRA Director Sunstein maintained that guidance can be “exceedingly helpful,” but deemed the Associate AG announcement a “welcome move” against guidance inadvertently behaving as a “regulatory cudgel.”

Vanguard’s John Bogle didn’t know it at the time, but when he created the first index fund in 1975 he unleashed a monster. Stock index funds have grown so popular that they now command $4.6 trillion in assets. That might seem like a good thing. After all, index funds have “democratized” investing and simplified the process for the average person. But the truth is that index funds have gotten so big that they now pose a major risk to our economy — and even to capitalism itself. Here are three reasons why. ... Harvard Law School professor John Coates likes to say that index funds create “social benefits” in the form of lower expenses. That’s true, but it is only captures a piece of the picture.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: Suppose that within the next few months, it becomes clear that President Donald Trump has committed impeachable offenses. Does the House of Representatives have discretion to decide whether to impeach him? Or does the Constitution require it to do so? The simplest answer, and the best, is that the Constitution requires the House to do so.

...Kadden, a teacher at Gann Academy, a Jewish high school in the city, is here to explain the work of Alex Green, a fellow at Harvard Law School and local historian, who has for years made it his mission to solve a 60-year-old question: Who is buried in Metfern Cemetery? It's the final resting place of hundreds of people who, like O'Connell, lived in one of two now-defunct institutions in Waltham for people with mental and physical disabilities. Most are buried beneath cinder block-like stones half-sunken into the earth.  Green has collected their names and information in a spreadsheet that gets more and more personal. "It includes who their parents were, what country they came from, if they ever worked jobs, what jobs they had, if they were immigrants, whether they were veterans or not," Green lists off. "It basically tells the story of someone's life in a single row."

An op-ed by Samuel David Garcia ’19 and Victoria Ochoa: Every single morning before the sun rises, Jorge Gonzalez is already hard at work in Mission, Texas, a border town. Gonzalez is a day laborer who focuses on home maintenance. He is also an undocumented immigrant. On the earnest savings that he and his wife have been able to put together, they have been able to afford a modest house in the Rio Grande Valley and assist both of their daughters financially when they went to college. Gonzalez is just one of an estimated 8 million undocumented immigrants who wake up each day and contribute to moving America forward by being a part of our labor force.

Sounding the alarm on index funds. How their runaway success has reshaped power and accountability in boardrooms and on Wall Street. Guests: John Coates, professor of law and economics at Harvard Law School where he teaches corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions and finance. Member of the Investor Advisory Committee of the Securities and Exchanges Commission.

Harvard Law School has appointed Mark C. Jefferson as its next assistant dean for community engagement and equity. Jefferson joined Harvard Law in 2017, working as director of community engagement and equity. Before coming to the school, Jefferson served as assistant director of admissions at the University of Michigan Law School, according to Harvard Law Today. Under his new role, Jefferson will continue to work in the Dean of Students Office on topics such as academic advising and peer mentorship development.

Friday’s filings by federal prosecutors painted President Donald Trump as aiding in and conspiring to commit a federal crime. ... The harsh reality is that any supposed “immunity” a president has from indictment while in office expires when his time is over. For Trump, that could be on January 20, 2021, if the statute of limitations — the deadline by which prosecutors must bring criminal charges — has not yet expired. “People recite the mantra, ‘No one is above the law’ yet fail to acknowledge the tension between the principle and the idea that a president could be immune from indictment until he’s out of office,” said Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard.

Stock index funds have grown so popular that they now command $4.6 trillion in assets. That might seem like a good thing. After all, index funds have “democratized” investing and simplified the process for the average person. But the truth is that index funds have gotten so big that they now pose a major risk to our economy — and even to capitalism itself. ... Harvard Law School professor John Coates likes to say that index funds create “social benefits” in the form of lower expenses. That’s true, but it is only captures a piece of the picture.Because even when active managers underperform as they charge higher fees than index funds, they are still adding lots of value in our economic system.

Pew Research Center asked 979 technology experts, business and policy leaders, scientists and science-minded activists and the like just how they thought artificial intelligence would impact humans by the year 2030 — and while 63 percent waxed positive, another 37 percent warned of the negatives. ... As Judith Donath, faculty fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society said, in her response to the Pew survey: “By 2030, most social situations will be facilitated by bots. … At home, parents will engage skilled bots to help kids with homework and catalyze dinner conversations. At work, bots will run meetings. A bot confidant will be considered essential for psychological well-being, and we’ll increasingly turn to such companions for advice ranging from what to wear to whom to marry.”

After months of negotiations, federal lawmakers have compromised on a new farm bill, putting the legislation on track to be passed by both the House and Senate this week. ... The compromise bill, unveiled Monday night, leaves out controversial work requirements for food stamp recipients that were part of the House version of the bill -- a key sticking point during negotiations. It also maintains conservation programs the House bill proposed eliminating. It seems to generally, with a few exceptions, maintain programs as they have been in the past," said Erika Dunyak, a clinical fellow at the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Justice Clarence Thomas has a message for Justice Brett Kavanaugh: Let’s roll. Kavanaugh, however, isn’t yet taking up the invitation. The newest member of the U.S. Supreme Court may eventually join a conservative majority of five to roll back large swaths of liberal jurisprudence. Yet it’s noteworthy that Thomas is already impatient with Kavanaugh, just a couple of months into the latter’s life tenure. All this is the takeaway from the tea leaves of an otherwise opaque opinion issued Monday with Thomas dissenting from the court’s refusal to hear a case brought by Planned Parenthood.

Partisan rhetoric in Washington is intensifying, as new court filings suggest President Trump may have skirted campaign finance laws. Federal prosecutors are recommending prison time for two former members of Trump's inner circle: former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his personal attorney Michael Cohen. At the same time, the president's current circle continues to break apart with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly planning to leave at the end of the year. Guests...Nancy Gertner, retired federal judge, senior lecturer at Harvard Law School, and WBUR legal analyst.

Trump might think that he has immunity from prosecution, but Laurence Tribe explains there's nothing in the Constitution that prevents the indictment of a sitting president.