Media Mentions

Harvard may be required to change its current Title IX policy to comply with new federal dictates if the U.S. Department of Education publishes a new set of guidelines under consideration, experts say...Harvard Law School Professor Diane L. Rosenfeld, who teaches a course on Title IX, speculated that the leaked draft guidelines “could likely change” from their current iteration, after the required notice-and-comment period. That portion of the regulatory process allows the public to provide feedback on changes to rules executive agencies propose. “Many of the things that are in the policy are legally very problematic,” Rosenfeld said. “They seek to import private law standards and criminal justice standards into a civil rights context for school adjudication under Title IX. And they’re just simply not the same legal and regulatory system, so the same rules don’t apply.”

Tim Berners-Lee has launched a global campaign to save the web from the destructive effects of abuse and discrimination, political manipulation, and other threats that plague the online world. In a talk at the opening of the Web Summit in Lisbon on Monday, the inventor of the web called on governments, companies and individuals to back a new “Contract for the Web” that aims to protect people’s rights and freedoms on the internet...Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Harvard University and author of The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It said: “To me, the most important function of the contract is to remind people that the web we have isn’t the only one possible. That’s both a warning – including about how aspects of the web have become – and an opportunity. The contract seeks to get those wielding the most power online to commit to some boundaries in how they treat their users.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. When the smoke from the midterm election clears, one thing is certain: You will be seeing the name of Robert Mueller a lot more than you have for the past two months, no matter whether the Democrats manage to take the U.S. House or not.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. You may find it a little eerie to discover that you are being rated by the companies you buy things from, and that the quality of customer service you receive can be determined by your “customer lifetime value” score. Maybe it reminds you too much of China’s new social credit system, which is intended to allow the government to keep tabs on citizens’ anti-social behaviors — and punish them by cutting off privileges like intercity train travel if they’re noncompliant. Better get used to it. We are no longer rated by only the credit reporting agencies, which are subject to extensive federal regulation...My Harvard Law colleague Jonathan Zittrain and my onetime teacher Jack Balkin have been arguing for some time now that tech companies should be treated by the law as fiduciaries of our data, essentially holding users’ information in trust on their behalf.

According to Harvard Law School lecturer Jonathan Lovvorn, saving the planet and its inhabitants from climate catastrophe begins with the world’s most vulnerable population: animals...“What we are trying to do with the program is multifold,” said [Kristen] Stilt, an expert in Islamic law and society who is writing a book on animal welfare and the halal industry. “We want to encourage and facilitate excellent academic writing and research in animal law, we want to train young lawyers passionate about the topic, and we want to engage with the broader community about these issues. We believe that ideas matter, and that ideas can spark change.”...One of his current students, Kate Barnekow, arrived at the Law School planning to focus on gender and sexual violence, until a student group introduced her to the animal law program and “the opportunities available through the law to help animals.” “I see my interest in animal law as a continuation of my interest in a spectrum of marginalized voices whose interests are not always represented in the legal world, which includes women and survivors and people with nonbinary identities,” said Barnekow, who plans to work in animal law after she graduates in May. “I came to Harvard to raise up those voices.”

Whatever success Republicans have amassed in taking control of all three branches of U.S. government, and whatever fate awaits them as midterm elections near, some on the right are working to cement change by amending the Constitution. And to the mounting alarm of others on all parts of the spectrum, they want to bypass the usual process...But convention opponents have always feared that once one has been launched, it could tear up the Constitutions in all sorts of ways. What's to stop a convention from passing an abhorrent affront to the Founders, like an outright ban on Muslims, asks constitutional law professor Michael Klarman of Harvard University. He points to a 2009 Swiss referendum that resulted in outlawing the construction of minarets, the towers found beside mosques.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The global walkout by Google workers, a response to Alphabet Inc.’s reported protection of executives accused of sexual misconduct, may be a harbinger of something new in employer-employee relations: empowered workers’ moral-political protest directed as much against the general culture as against management. Although the walkout is connected in a broad sense to workplace conditions, this isn’t the trade union strike of old. Google’s workers are mainly professionals: engineers, not laborers. They have well-paid, high-prestige jobs at a company known for recruiting top employees. Not all of the thousands of workers who walked out were personal victims of workplace sexual harassment.

Legal funders routinely give significant “haircuts” on repayments from clients who take advances on expected recoveries from their cases, according to new research on an industry getting increasing regulatory scrutiny...Maya Steinitz of the University of Iowa College of Law, who has written extensively about litigation finance, called the discount data “very surprising.” She also said the “haircut” dynamic is not likely in play in the commercial realm and its highly negotiated, “a la cart” funding deals. “We simply don’t know if the findings from the funder who participated can be applied to the industry at large,” she said.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe. In ordinary times, a presidential proposal that stands no chance of surviving review, even by the judges and justices the president has appointed, wouldn’t matter much. But these aren’t ordinary times, and this president’s trial balloons are anything but harmless, even when we can confidently predict they won’t float. A perfect case in point is President Donald J. Trump’s threat to end birthright citizenship, a threat that sends chills down the spines of millions of lawful residents who understandably fear that they, or their children or grandchildren, may be cast into a stateless limbo, and become citizens of nowhere.

...Impeachment is so obviously the Democrats’ one overriding aim that the book industry has tried to anticipate its fulfillment. On my desk sits an impressive stack of books, all published in just the past few months, all on the subject of impeaching a U.S. president...As Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz rightly contend in “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment” (Basic, 281 pages, $28), the fact that Congress has the power to impeach doesn’t mean it has the duty to impeach.

A review by Kenneth Mack. One of the most visible faces to emerge from the protests in Ferguson, Mo., and the Black Lives Matter movement they sparked is DeRay Mckesson. Days after the protests began in August 2014, Mckesson, then a 29-year-old school administrator in Minneapolis, began driving to Ferguson to join in. He live-tweeted his journey to Missouri and posted it on Facebook, at one point asking for a couch to sleep on when he arrived. Once there, he and other participants took to Twitter as an organizing tool and an alternative to the mainstream media, which, they thought, misrepresented the protests as violent...His book “On the Other Side of Freedom” is, in part, Mckesson’s response to the charge that he has grabbed too much of the limelight and is unrepresentative of the dispersed networks of organizers, online activists and street protesters who compose this difficult-to-define movement. It is a combination of memoir, self-justification and inspirational guide to imagining a different world of racial politics and criminal justice.

This year, online advertising platforms including Facebook, Google, and Twitter are reviewing millions of ads to protect American elections from unlawful influence and to disclose legitimate campaign activity. These platforms are also making mistakes. This election, Facebook has been accused of wrongly blocking ads for community centers, news articles, veterans pages, and food advertising...Issue ads are harder to define. “The Federal Election Act doesn’t recognize issue ads as a category,” according to Vivek Krishnamurthy, Counsel at Foley Hoag LLP and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. “The distinction between ads that discuss public issues from ads that advocate for or against candidates is a line that comes from the First Amendment.” Because the First Amendment applies to government restrictions on speech, companies are free to create more restrictive practices.

...But somewhere along the way, Title IX became about much more than just ensuring access to higher education and sports for women. Indeed, more than four decades later, the 37 words that comprise the statute are now used to regulate everything from campus sexual assault and harassment to bathroom rights of transgender students...."Most laws have openness to them and words that are not clearly defined, and it is understood that agencies under the president or under a particular administration will interpret those congressional laws, and that policymaking is what happens when those laws are interpreted," says Jeannie Suk Gersen, professor of law at Harvard Law School. "But you don't want those agencies to go crazy and do something that's totally outside of what Congress could have intended," she says. "But you also want there to be some leeway for the agencies to make policy within the limits of what Congress has provided."

A handful of incarcerated youth traveled around Harvard's campus Thursday to learn about possible professional and educational paths they could pursue after their release from prison...The group also visited the Law School, where they spoke with David J. Harris, the managing director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice. Harris spoke to the group about about issues ranging from community engagement to the justice system. Harris said he wanted to show the two students that there is a role for them in society after they are released. “We care about what happens to them, that we believe in them, and that we believe there’s a place for them and a contribution to make,” he said.

President Trump said Thursday he intends to take executive action next week to end the “abuse” of the U.S. asylum system, a plan that could include “massive tent cities” at the southern border aimed at holding migrants indefinitely and making it more difficult for them to remain in the country...“He can’t by executive fiat repeal an act of Congress or a constitutional amendment,” said Deborah Anker, a Harvard Law School professor. “He has to ask for new legislation.”

“I’ve already gathered over 150 pounds of acorns this season alone,” says Myles C. Green, a Teaching Fellow for the Program of Negotiation at Harvard Law School and an active member of the New England Acorn Cooperative. He’s squatting under a massive oak tree in the Harvard Museum of Natural History courtyard. He picks up another acorn and examines it before dropping it into a woven basket.

The grid operator for the mid-Atlantic region released a long-anticipated study about whether coal and nuclear plant retirements present a threat to its electric supply. The study found there's no immediate threat over the next five years. But it found that under some scenarios -- a perfect storm of plant retirements, pipeline failures, and extreme weather -- there could be problems in the future...Ari Peskoe, Director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard University, said the study provided little support for those in favor of the plan to bail out FirstEnergy's coal and nuclear plants. "Had they found an immediate need, then that would have supported FirstEnergy's case," Peskoe said.

Students called on Harvard to divest from the prison industry during the first public event held by the newly formed Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign Thursday evening...This October, Drake — along with Anneke F. Dunbar-Gronke, a third-year student at Harvard Law School, and Paul T. Clarke, a graduate student in African and African American Studies — penned a Crimson op-ed criticizing Harvard’s investments in companies associated with the prison industry...In an interview during the event, Dunbar-Gronke said she believed the University’s investments in prisons are intrinsically political. “We would like for a depoliticized endowment, and that would mean divesting from a system that is inherently politicized by the fact that it disproportionately affects black, brown, and poor people, and undocumented people, and we as students are in a unique position to hold the University accountable.” Dunbar-Gronke also said she thinks Harvard's investments run contrary to the University’s efforts to address its ties to slavery.

Judges’ citations tell a lot about their dispositions. We can glean relationships between cases, judges’ perspectives on these cases and judges’ relationships with other judges based on case citations. For this reason, empirical scholars have spent much time and energy analyzing judges’ citation patterns. A slew of Supreme Court researchers have written fascinating pieces about the justices’ case citation...Professors at the University of Virginia were cited in the most observations with 13. Most of these cites were driven by UVA professors Caleb Nelson and Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash, who was cited in four observations (twice by Thomas and twice by Alito). The justices cited an assortment of Harvard Law professors, who accumulated 12 opinion-cites, with only one professor, Adrian Vermeule, cited in more than one observation. Following Harvard Law, University of Chicago Law’s faculty tallied 11 opinion cites, while faculty from Georgetown Law, Stanford Law and Yale Law each accumulated nine opinion-cites.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. If President Donald Trump carries through on his promise to end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens, he will probably lose in court. But don’t be surprised if the ultimate ruling is narrow: To do what he wants, the president needs unambiguous authorization from Congress — and he hasn’t got it. The governing principle is called the “canon of constitutional avoidance” — for short, the Avoidance Canon. It’s a technical idea, but it has immense importance. It links individual rights with the safeguards of checks and balances. It puts the genius of the U.S. constitutional system on fine display.

House Democrats can't wait to call President Trump's EPA chief to the witness stand. The agency — long a source of controversy no matter which administration runs it — could soon be up against Democratic committee heads eager to hold hearings and subpoena documents. Trump's plans for EPA, including reshaping the workforce, overhauling the use of science and rolling back Obama-era regulations, will all get heavy scrutiny if the House flips to Democratic control next year...Joe Goffman, then a top air adviser at EPA when Republicans gained power after the 2010 elections, remembered the scrutiny from the Oversight panel under then-Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). "You had a committee using its investigatory powers to interject itself in a rulemaking. They were not looking at management or practices. They were treating a rulemaking as a form of malfeasance or misfeasance," said Goffman, now executive director of the Harvard Law School's Environmental & Energy Law Program. "They were treating the rulemaking process as if the agency was engaging in some sort of misconduct."