Media Mentions

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.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe. As fears mount over President Trump’s mental stability, more lawmakers and public-spirited citizens are turning in desperation to the 25th Amendment as a quick exit. But they should resist the temptation to pull that trigger. Because of the amendment’s complexity and many ambiguities, activating it to sideline Trump could unleash a dangerously destabilizing power struggle over the presidency rather than decisively ousting Trump. Early in Trump’s term, scholars (including me) explained that the amendment was designed for presidents who unexpectedly become mentally or physically incapacitated while in office, not those temperamentally unfit from the very outset. We believed that Trump fell only in the latter category. Yet now we must ask: Should that verdict be changed by the frightening episodes recounted in tell-all books, an anonymous op-ed, and a flood of disturbing press clippings?

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. Last month, Reuters reported that T-Mobile was asking the small operators that resell T-Mobile's excess network capacity to write letters and opinion pieces in support of the company's proposed $36 billion merger with Sprint. T-Mobile's request wasn't unusual. Trumping up support for deals that aren't actually in the public interest is common practice in the swamp we know as U.S. telecom policy. When Comcast was working on its merger with NBCU at the beginning of this decade, supportive comments poured into the FCC from companies across the country who had an interest in keeping Comcast happy. By helpfully suggesting talking points to resellers—or MVNOs, for Mobile Virtual Network Operators—including Mint Mobile, Republic Wireless, and Ting, all of which lease access from the Big Four network operators (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile) in order to sell phone and data services to customers, T-Mobile is following the usual "air of inevitability" merger playbook.

An op-ed by Daniel Levine-Spound `19. On July 30th, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul announced his support for Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Although he had initially voiced concerns regarding Kavanaugh’s “record on warrantless bulk collection of data and how that might apply to very important privacy cases,” Paul ultimately backed President Trump’s choice. Whatever one makes of Rand Paul’s waffling on privacy issues, his support for Kavanaugh speaks to an arguably deeper betrayal of his principles: opposition to the United States’ ever-expanding and seemingly interminable “War on Terror.” For few judges have shown themselves less willing to impose limits on American war-making, or more flexible in deferring to the Executive Branch on issues related to armed conflict, than Kavanaugh.

Half a century after Americans began fighting hunger with monthly food stamps, the nation’s physicians and policymakers are focusing more than ever on what’s on each person’s plate. In the 21st century, food is seen as medicine — and a tool to cut health care costs...“Food is medicine is an idea whose day has arrived,” said Robert Greenwald, faculty director of the Harvard Law School’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, one of the experts who testified in January at the launch of the congressional Food is Medicine Working Group, part of the House Hunger Caucus.

National security adviser John Bolton has put the International Criminal Court (ICC) in his crosshairs. In a speech to the conservative Federalist Society on Monday, Bolton pledged the United States would never cooperate with what he called an “illegitimate” court...“There’s almost no doubt that the judges will authorize an investigation of the Taliban, the Afghan government and the U.S. for torture,” said Alex Whiting, a Harvard Law School professor and former ICC prosecutor. “The threshold for getting permission to investigate is quite low.”