Media Mentions

...Laurence H. Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University Professor and a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, told Newsweek: "If one defines 'war' to include cyberwar—e.g. by deliberately hacking into a nation’s computer-based election infrastructure—then what we witnessed in Helsinki was President Trump openly aiding and abetting the Russian military’s ongoing war against America rather than protecting against that Putin-led cyber-invasion. "That in turn could reasonably be defined as 'treason' within the meaning of 18 USC 2381 and Art. III of the US Constitution.

An op-ed by Carmel Shachar, executive director of The Petrie-Flom Center. Thanks to Brett Kavanaugh’s 12 years as a judge on the D.C. Court of Appeals, we have a well-developed record of the Supreme Court nominee’s positions on key issues, including his views on American health care policy. In two high profile cases in 2011 and 2015, Kavanaugh upheld key parts of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). But these cases, taken out of context, are misleading. They should not distract anyone evaluating his long record, nor overly inform how he might decide in future cases when it comes to health care.

An op-ed by Jack Goldsmith. “A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make the law,” said Judge Brett Kavanaugh during his speech accepting the nomination to replace his former boss Anthony Kennedy as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court. This may sound like a rhetorical pose, but you should take it literally, not just seriously: Kavanaugh, whom I know primarily through his teaching at Harvard, is one of the most principled jurists I have ever studied.

...Rhode Island has taken an important step here,” said Kevin Costello, head of litigation at the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation of Harvard Law School. “This change is not only the right thing to do from a public health and legal point of view, but it also been proven that this policy will be cost-effective for the state in the long run.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Some Democrats and advocacy groups are saying President Donald Trump picked Judge Brett Kavanaugh as his second nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court because of Kavanaugh’s view that a president shouldn’t be indicted while in office. It’s important that not become the narrative of the Democrats’ opposition, because it can easily be refuted.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman.I don’t claim to know who President Donald Trump will pick Monday night to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy on the U.S. Supreme Court. But I do claim to know what we’ll be saying about it. Here, in alphabetical order, is what will soon be the conventional wisdom. Plus, what you should really think, where it differs.

...American legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon argues that the difference “between prostituted people and those who buy and sell them are that one is served, the other serves; one is bought, the other buys and sells them; one is stigmatised, the other retains respectability; one is a criminal, the others either are not, or the law against them is virtually never enforced. And the one is mostly women, the others overwhelmingly men.”

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. So it’s Judge Brett Kavanaugh. There will be time enough to explore the nominee’s views and record. Let’s step back a bit and get some perspective on the national debate that we are about to have.

...Richard Fallon Jr., a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School and former staffer to Collins’ first boss, then-U.S. Rep. William Cohen, says justices must balance two competing legal principles in considering a case: respect for precedent and fidelity to the Constitution. Sometimes these can be in tension, as in a case such as Brown v. Board of Education, where justices overturned a century of cases defending racial segregation in public schools because they violated the Constitution.

...Ahead of the summit, Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic has prepared new publications showing that existing security agreements for NATO and other US allies do not prevent these states from joining the nuclear ban. The obstacles are not legal, they are only political—and as European populations are once again raising their voices to demand disarmament, it’s in NATO states’ best interest to join the treaty as soon as possible.

...“It’s just a new stand for the department to be taking, that the states aren’t its partner — that the states are its enemy,” said Eileen Connor, director of litigation at Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending.

...Of the judges who made Trump's shortlist, Kavanaugh was viewed as the most troublesome for environmentalists, said Jody Freeman, the founding director of Harvard's Environmental and Energy Law Program. That reputation might be overblown, she said. "You can't say that you always know the outcome with Brett Kavanaugh," Freeman said. "He's a very serious and very diligent judge, and he's shown himself to be persuadable."

...“It’s a neutral principle, although the effect isn’t always neutral,” Richard J. Lazarus, a law professor at Harvard, said. “Congress stopped making clean air laws after 1990, so the E.P.A. has to work with increasingly tenuous statutory language. In effect, his approach to environmental law would make it harder to address current problems so long as Congress remains out of the lawmaking business.”

...Although Kavanaugh clerked for retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, famous for drawing extratextual distinctions and inventing special models of interpretation, the younger judge relies far more consistently on the simple text of the law. See for instance his recent review in the Harvard Law Review in which he urges judges to eschew interpretive canons purporting to deem laws either clear or ambiguous—an “ambiguous” law is often one the judge simply doesn’t like—and instead “seek the best reading of the statute by interpreting the words of the statute.”

Trump’s pick, Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, is a graduate of Yale Law School, has taught at Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown, and served in President George W. Bush’s administration before being named to the Court of Appeals. Like Trump’s prior nominee, Neil Gorsuch, Kavanaugh has a gold-plated resume and Federalist Society credentials. And, also like Gorsuch, he’s a former law clerk to Justice Kennedy. (And he was hired to teach at Harvard Law School by then-Dean, now Justice, Elena Kagan).

Colleagues and a former student of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, the newly minted Supreme Court nominee who’s taught courses at Harvard Law School since 2008, are praising his legal acumen and dedication to his students.

An essay by Jeannie Suk Gersen…In the coming months you’ll have to run the gantlet toward Senate confirmation. While Democrats will sound every alarm about your qualifications and temperament, which by all indications are excellent, we all know there’s little chance of your not being confirmed, given the composition of the Senate. Your nomination represents, for many, the fruition of a conservative dream to install a Justice who will overturn Roe v. Wade and wrest the Court back from where Justice Kennedy surprisingly enabled it to go. But you are a judge. You’ll tell the senators that you don’t have predetermined votes on the matters you may hear.

...In all, the Trump administration has targeted at least 45 environmental rules, including 25 at EPA, according to a rollback tracker by Harvard Law School’s energy and environment program. The EPA rule changes would affect regulation of air, water and climate change, and transform how the EPA makes its regulatory decisions.

...“It’s taken awhile for the concept to catch on that medically tailored meals are more than just food or a meal but high-tech specialty health care service for people living with complex medical needs,” said Robert Greenwald, faculty director of Harvard Law School’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation.

...As for why members of the Jewish faith have been elevated (and all by Democratic presidents), Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman said it’s partially explained by the fact that there’s a strong pipeline of Jewish judges and professors. “The reason for that is also a little hard to pin down,” Feldman said, “except to say that academia was an area which, like many other areas of American life, was originally closed to Jews in the late 19th Century.”

...“It is outrageous that the executives get to walk away with a sweetheart deal from the SEC while ITT students will be lucky to get a sliver of justice in ITT’s bankruptcy and the Department of Education refuses to cancel students’ fraudulent debt,” said Toby Merrill, director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard Law School and an attorney representing the students in the bankruptcy case.