Media Mentions

A book review by Ken Mack: In early 1946, many white Americans were jolted out of their complacency about race relations by a horrific instance of police violence against a demobilized black soldier. In February, just hours after his discharge, Sgt. Isaac Woodard Jr. broke Southern racial etiquette aboard a Greyhound bus in South Carolina by getting into a dispute with the driver and then failing to address the local police chief, whom the driver had summoned, as “sir.” The chief, Lynwood Shull, beat the decorated war veteran unconscious with a blackjack, driving the butt end of it into each of Woodard’s eye sockets and permanently blinding him. Woodard was fined $50, ostensibly for drunk and disorderly conduct, but managed to make it to New York City, where the NAACP publicized his story. Orson Welles featured Woodard’s heart-rending plight on his national radio program. Woody Guthrie composed a song titled “The Blinding of Isaac Woodard.” Civil rights activists used Woodard’s blinding to push President Harry Truman to embark on his unprecedentedly frank speeches and actions in favor of black equality. Nearly seven decades later, civil rights leader Julian Bond would still be moved to tears by his childhood recollections of Woodard’s blinding. In “Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring,” federal judge Richard Gergel presents a deeply researched account of Woodard’s tragic story and weaves it into a larger narrative.

House Democrats want to begin requiring presidential contenders to release their tax returns, which has some wondering: Can they do that? Some watching the debate unfold question whether the plan to require candidates to release a decade’s worth of tax returns would be constitutional. The Constitution lays out the qualifications for becoming president (being a natural born citizen; being at least 35 years old; being a resident for 14 years) and Congress cannot amend that list merely by passing a bill. But Laurence Tribe, a prominent constitutional scholar at Harvard Law School, says he doesn’t see a problem with Democrats’ plan. “If Congress were to add a substantive requirement that only some presidential candidates could possibly meet, such as a requirement of a particular level of education or prior officeholding, that would be unconstitutional,” he said in an email. “But a rule mandating financial disclosure of each candidate's tax returns would facilitate the operation of the electoral process without filtering out any political candidate.”

In May 2014, then-Attorney General Eric Holder announced charges against five members of the Chinese military. They'd allegedly hacked the computer networks of American companies and stolen everything from intellectual property and trade secrets to the firms' litigation strategies. ..."They embarrass the people that they name and they show that the United States has the ability to find people who are hacking into our country," said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and former DOJ official in the George W. Bush administration. "But by themselves, that's a very, very small cost compared to the billions of dollars in secrets that our government says the Chinese are stealing." Goldsmith says the indictments not only have failed to deter China from further hacking, they may even send a signal of weakness because so few of those who have been charged actually are prosecuted.

Joe Kennedy started his push for “moral capitalism” by urging local business leaders to help address the country’s worsening income inequality. Now, the congressman is spelling out his ideas for how the federal government should tackle the problem.The Massachusetts Democrat spoke to a packed room at Harvard Law School on Monday, making his plea for a government unafraid to set new rules for a fair and just economy. ...Kennedy has clearly touched a nerve. Organizers had to move the Harvard event to a much larger room, due to crushing demand from students and the public, and a big waiting list remained. Sharon Block, a former Obama administration official who now runs Harvard Law’s Labor and Worklife Program, points to one reason the message resonates: The vast majority of people in the United States still feel like they’re struggling just to keep up with their bills, even after a nearly decadelong economic recovery.

Ever since the historical musical “Hamilton” began its march to near-universal infatuation, one group has noticeable withheld its applause — historians. Many academics argue the portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the star of our $10 bills, is a counterfeit. Now they’re escalating their fight. Ishmael Reed, who has been nominated twice for a National Book Award, has chosen to fight fire with fire — collecting his critique of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s acclaimed show into a play. ... Harvard Law professor and historian Annette Gordon-Reed, who has criticized the show in the past and is offering her historical consultation for the exhibit. She attended a reading of Reed’s play and sounded a hopeful note that both sides can come together. “There’s room for my earlier commentary, Mr. Reed’s take, the grand musical itself, and now a good faith effort to consider the musical’s subject in his real-world historical context— which is what the exhibit Is designed to do,” she said.

Hosted by June Grasso. Guests: Toby Harshaw, National Security writer for Bloomberg Opinion: "North Korea’s Nukes and the ‘Forgotten War.’" Noah Feldman, Professor at Harvard Law and Bloomberg Opinion columnist: "Roger Stone Indictment Draws Circle of Collusion." Noah Smith, Bloomberg Opinion columnist: "Too Many Americans Will Never Be Able to Retire." Stephen Gandel, Bloomberg Opinion columnist: "Don’t Bet on Buybacks to Bail Out Stock Market." Jonathan Bernstein, Bloomberg Opinion columnist: "Early Returns: Trump Could Face a Serious Primary Challenge."

President Trump hinted Friday that there’s “a good chance” he’ll declare a national emergency if Congress refuses to bankroll his long-promised border wall with Mexico, marking the strongest indication yet that he’s willing to make the legally dubious maneuver. ... Legal experts disagreed vehemently and questioned whether Trump foresees a court loss as a way to dodge blame from his right-wing base. “There’s no case for an emergency. Period,” tweeted Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard University. “If Trump pretends there’s a ‘national emergency’ and provokes the courts just so he can blame judges for his failure to build his stupid vanity wall, that’ll be one more abuse of power for Congress to consider.”

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: Would you be better off without Facebook? Would society benefit, too? A team of economists, led by Hunt Allcott of New York University, has just produced the most impressive research to date on these questions. In general, the researchers’ findings are not good news for Facebook 1 and its users. Getting off the platform appears to increase people’s well-being — and significantly decrease political polarization.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman:  The U.S. Senate on Thursday passed a nonbinding amendment, drafted by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, that contradicts President Donald Trump’s foreign policy on Syria and Afghanistan. It asserts that too fast a withdrawal from either country “would put at risk hard-won gains and United States national security.” Whether you agree or not, the amendment is well within the Senate’s power: It’s basically a message to the president, not a law that would require anyone to do anything. In contrast, Representatives Tom Malinowski, Democrat of New Jersey, and Mike Gallagher, Republican of Wisconsin, have introduced bills in the House that actually attempt to use Congress’s power of the purse to block the Trump administration from withdrawing troops from Syria and South Korea.

A group of Harvard law students pushing to end mandatory arbitration in Big Law have set their sights on a new target—Venable. The Pipeline Parity Project, as the student organization is called, on Monday called for classmates and law students across the country to boycott interviewing for summer associate positions at Venable in an effort to pressure the firm to stop using mandatory arbitration for any of its employees. ...“It’s unacceptable for any business to make its employees or customers sign away their legal rights,” said Beth Feldstein, a first-year law student at Harvard. “Venable publicly claimed to be doing the right thing, then turned around and deprived its workers of their day in court. We’re not going to let them off the hook.”

Ann Coulter, an infamously estranged backer of President Donald Trump, is continuing to hammer the president over his inability to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. ...Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Tribe, however, immediately shot down Coulter’s claims that the president could order the wall built without congressional authorization. “Inherent presidential power as commander-in-chief doesn’t give Trump the power of the purse,” he wrote on Twitter. “We fought a revolution to end such power.”

An article by Jeannie Suk Gersen: ... From the start, the Trump Administration seized on Title IX as an area in which to reverse the Obama Administration’s positions. Under Betsy DeVos, the Department of Education has rescinded more than twenty Obama-era policy guidelines on anti-discrimination laws, including ones that protected transgender students from discrimination and allowed them to use gender-segregated facilities of their choice. It has also cancelled policies that supported schools’ use of affirmative action, outlined disabled students’ rights, and attempted to curb racial disparities in elementary and secondary schools, based on research showing that minority students are punished for misconduct at higher rates than their behavior warrants. These revocations have rightly provoked concern that DeVos is turning her back on vulnerable students.

... In 43 states and the District of Columbia, driver’s licenses can be suspended because of unpaid court debt. In most locales, once a driver’s license is suspended, it can retain that designation indefinitely. Only four states currently require an “ability-to-repay” or a “willfulness” determination.  Otherwise, nonpayment of driver-related charges can lead to the loss of a driver’s license for years. ... “Excessive fees and fines pose a fundamental challenge to a fair and effective criminal justice system,” said Larry Schwartztol, executive director of Harvard Law’s Criminal Justice Policy Program. “At their worst, these practices can lead to a two-tiered system of criminal justice, exposing indigent defendants to especially harsh outcomes.”

Harvard affiliates and community leaders gathered Thursday evening for an event called “Beloved Streets: Race & Justice in America,” which marked the culmination of a winter-term course at Harvard Graduate School of Education of the same name. ... David J. Harris, managing director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice and one of the course leaders, said the course attempted to create some spaces and places in a curriculum, fostering transparent conversations about important societal issues. ... “When I think about going into communities, what I think about is how can I operate from a place of listening,” said Emanuel Powell III, a Harvard Law School student and course participant.

Talks between the Trump administration and California over rules requiring automakers to steadily decrease car emissions are no closer to reaching a deal than when they began months ago, setting the stage for a protracted legal battle. ... “I’ve seen a lot of going through the motions,” said Jody Freeman, a Harvard environmental law professor who is not involved in the current talks but worked on the first set of national vehicle emissions standards under President Obama. During those negotiations, Freeman said she required agency staff with technical expertise to be deeply involved.

Harvard Law School professor Susan Crawford explains how America’s internet connectivity issues and corrosive infrastructure are holding the country back and how we can rally to fix it. She and Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel also discuss the Huawei scandal, politicians’ roles in improving broadband internet, and her new book Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution—and Why America Might Miss It.

Harvard law professor Larry Lessig has been in New Hampshire often enough for political advocacy that he knows what will get lawmakers’ attention here, and he got right to the point Tuesday: He thinks our presidential primary is in danger. Lessig was testifying in favor of a bill to change the 2020 primary to ranked-choice voting, which would allow people to vote not just for a single candidate for each office, but mark the ballot to rank all the hopefuls from their top choice to their bottom choice.

Alumni discuss pathways to public service work in advance of Public Interested Conference. ... For [David] Harris, Ph.D. ’92, that path was long and meandering. It began with his grandfather, a Unitarian minister who preached the imperative to demonstrate faith by improving society. Harris struggled, however, with how to go about that. He ultimately chose to follow his mother’s example and study sociology, but it would take him nine years and stints at three schools to finish his undergraduate degree. ... After 10 years there, he met with Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree about the possibility of joining a new institute at Harvard that Ogletree had created to work on race and justice issues. “It was clear to both of us that it was just a perfect fit. And it has been,” said Harris, who has been the managing director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice since 2006.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: If I were on the U.S. Supreme Court, I would probably vote to find Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposed wealth tax constitutional. But given the current composition of the court, that might well put me in the minority. Warren, who is exploring a run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, has suggested that the top 75,000 U.S. households pay an annual tax of 2 percent on each dollar of their net worth above $50 million. Billionaires would be taxed an additional 1 percent.

The expanded use of fiber-optic connections has opened up new possibilities to health care, education, retail and other fields. Harvard Law professor Susan Crawford joins host Krys Boyd to explain why we need to approach fiber with an increased urgency or risk falling behind other developed nations.

The Department of Education has been inundated with approximately 100,000 public comments on its proposed new rules for how campuses handle cases of sexual assault. ... Fighting these issues through agency regulations — once the domain of wonky lawyers — is something of a newer frontier in political activism. Harvard Law School Professor Jacob Gersen says most regulations still get just a smattering of comments — certainly not a hashtag campaign on social media. But it’s increasingly a part of political strategy.