Media Mentions

...Even though the actions occurred before the election, Trump may find himself in a legal fix. Constitutional scholar and co-author of a new book “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment” Laurence Tribe says, “Under the U.S. criminal code, soliciting a bribe is an independent offense even if the bribe doesn’t come through. And under the federal election code, soliciting prohibited foreign assistance in a U.S. election is an offense even if the assistance isn’t provided. The Trump family’s problems don’t end there, since ‘acts of solicitation’ can become overt acts that form part of a conspiracy to commit another crime.”

Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman offers two ways to predict whether the North Korean leader will ultimately commit to a peace process. The first in The Method, a new video series.

It’s no secret that the proposed reunion of CBS and Viacom hasn’t been a Hollywood romance. But simmering tensions erupted into open warfare this week, with far more at stake than control of two legendary entertainment companies...The Harvard Law School professor Lucian A. Bebchuk used the Redstone example in an argument that dual-share class structures typically outlive their utility, and should be phased out by a company at some point. “Concerns about the emergence of inferior leadership over time are further aggravated when the dual-class structure enables a transfer of the founder’s lock on control to an heir who might be unfit to lead the company,” he wrote last year in an article titled “The Untenable Case for Perpetual Dual-Class Stock” in Virginia Law Review. He cited a “wide range of distorted choices” that are “aimed at increasing private benefits of control at the expense of the value received by other shareholders.”

An op-ed by Alex Whiting. On April 9, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensouda, asked the Pre-Trial Chamber for an advisory opinion declaring that the Court has jurisdiction over the alleged deportation of some 670,000 Rohingya people from Myanmar to Bangladesh. The issue arises because Myanmar is not a State Party to the Rome Statute, and therefore the ICC would not ordinarily have jurisdiction over crimes committed on the territory of Myanmar by Myanmar nationals absent the specific consent of the state or a referral from the U.N. Security Council, neither of which is likely to happen anytime soon.

The critics of short-termism have it wrong. The evidence doesn’t support the idea that the economy is suffering because shareholders focused on quarterly reports leads to myopic management...We can go beyond anecdotes. Harvard Law School professor Mark Roe points out in a forthcoming paper that there should be three effects, if short-termism really has spread from Wall Street to management. R&D should be lower, since it has costs today for uncertain benefits in the future; business investment should fall faster in the U.S. than countries less reliant on stock exchanges; and corporate cash should be lower as shareholders demand it back via buybacks and dividends.

The country’s top 14 law schools—including Harvard Law School—will now require firms that recruit on campus to reveal whether they require summer associates to sign mandatory arbitration agreements or non-disclosure agreements that may bar associates from going public with allegations of workplace misconduct...Sejal Singh [`20], a first-year Law School student and one of the organizers of the open letter, said she is “confident” that this survey will lead firms to remove the agreements in question rather than disclose them to the participating schools...Molly M. E. Coleman [`20], another Law student and organizer of the letter, said she and other organizers met regularly with Assistant Dean for Career Services Mark A. Weber over the course of the semester, and she praised his attention to the issue...“I have really enjoyed working with the student leaders at Harvard, who have been thoughtful, committed and effective; and it has been a real pleasure collaborating with my T14 colleagues on this important project,” Weber wrote. “It has truly been a team effort.”

As early as law school orientation, budding attorneys get their first taste of working in siloes. Don’t share notes, keep your outlines to yourself – sound familiar? However, research from Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession suggests there’s a better way to achieve success in the legal field. In her book entitled Smart Collaboration, Heidi Gardner, Harvard Law School lecturer and distinguished fellow at the Center, argues that lawyers should check that lone-wolf mentality at the law firm door for maximum benefit to the firm, clients and the attorneys themselves. Gardner lays out data showing that cross-collaboration in law firms yields a level of benefit far greater than anything achieved in a silo. Specifically, the data suggests that, among other benefits, smart collaboration is associated with better financial outcomes and client loyalty and retention.

A Chinese government-owned company has signed on to build a theme park in a vast development in Indonesia that also features a Trump hotel and condos, a deal that stands to benefit President Donald Trump's company just as top Chinese envoys head to Washington for trade talks..."This clearly benefits the Trump Organization, and therefore its owner Donald Trump," said Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, who is advising on several lawsuits against the president. He added that it is irrelevant if the benefit came "indirectly" from China through the Indonesian company.

An op-ed by Samantha Power. When I met Ibraheem in 2014, he had already endured more as a 12-year-old than most of us could ever imagine: the terror of Assad’s barrel bombs, the loss of his mother and four siblings, and the trauma of being carried in his father’s arms on a desperate, eight-month search for medical help, which brought him to the refugee center in Jordan where we sat together one afternoon. Four years later, after the filmmakers of this short documentary shared it with me, I am struck not just by the confident young man he has become — walking the halls of his new high school, calling out answers in class — but also by the clarity and determination in his heart: “We went out against our will, and we shall return with our hope.”

...From the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law to Harvard Law School to the Georgetown University Law Center, students have penned letters calling on law school administrators to bar firms with these agreements from using campus facilities to recruit new summer associates...“At law schools, we don’t talk about what people’s individual contracts look like,” said Molly Coleman [`20], a first-year Harvard Law School student who played a role in organizing the campaign. “There’s the culture of secrecy [and] you’re told you’re not allowed to share your contract with anybody.” However, that so-called wall of silence was torn down following a tweet by former Jones Day associate and current HLS lecturer Ian Samuel that Munger Tolles required its summer associates to sign mandatory arbitration and nondisclosure agreements in their employment contracts.

A tax whistleblower's appeal missed a 30-day filing deadline, but that should not stop the U.S. Tax Court from hearing the appeal, said an amicus brief filed in the D.C. Circuit by Harvard Law School's Federal Tax Center.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz. Many Americans now believe that President Trump should be removed from office. Increasingly, calls for impeachment have merged with allegations that Trump is a criminal. Only a thorough investigation can reveal whether Trump has actually broken the law. But regardless, it is wrong and dangerous to suggest that proof of criminal offenses is essential when deciding whether to impeach. It’s easy to understand the recent focus on criminality. It would be a very big deal if the president committed a crime. Further, the Constitution is frustratingly vague in defining grounds for removal: “Treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Given that ambiguity, tying impeachment to the criminal code feels comfortingly objective. It also neatly distinguishes impeachability from cruelty, incompetence and stupidity — none of which justifies removing a president.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. In an important states’-rights decision announced Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed New Jersey to permit sports gambling, both by private casinos and through state-run lotteries. The case, Murphy v. NCAA, has important constitutional consequences – and could have a major economic impact as well. The law at issue is the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which Congress enacted in 1992. It prohibited states from either operating sports gambling or authorizing private actors like casinos to run sports gambling. Importantly, the law didn’t make sports gambling a federal crime. Instead, to save money on federal law enforcement, it relied on states’ existing prohibitions plus the ban on authorization.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. In the last half-century, the most innovative work in antitrust law came from the University of Chicago. According to the Chicago School, led by the legendary economist Aaron Director and promoted by law professor Robert Bork, the goal of antitrust law should be to increase consumer welfare, not to combat bigness as such. Chicago School proponents often argued in favor of government restraint. In their view, uses of the antitrust law to prevent mergers, or to break up large companies, often do more harm than good. Their arguments have had a major influence on both regulators and courts, frequently promoting a “hands off” attitude in the face of growing concentrations of economic power.

Part two of an interview with Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz. Is there a danger in normalizing impeachment talk? This is a major theme of our book. The normalization of impeachment talk has created a massive boy-who-cries-wolf dilemma, diluting impeachment’s potency as a weapon of last resort in cases of genuine national peril. To many Americans, impeachment threats are little more than a standard rhetorical weapon in our partisan civil war. Recognizing this development, presidents and political entrepreneurs have aimed to benefit from impeachment talk by using it to rally their base, raise money, distract attention, and condemn opponents.

An interview with Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz. Why did you think a book on impeachment of this type was necessary now? Everyone with a pulse and an Internet connection knows that impeachment haunts Trumpland. Starting a year before the election and continuing through the present, discussion of [President] Trump’s disgraced ouster has been unavoidable. Amid all this impeachment talk, we found it distressing that many voters deeply misunderstand what’s involved in ending a presidency. Lots of people, for example, believe impeachment is justified based only on dislike of a president’s policies or personality.

Yale Law School and other top legal education programs on Monday asked law firms recruiting on their campuses to disclose their workplace harassment policies for summer associates. Those positions can be a key step toward a professional career for law students. But recent reports showed that some big firms have required summer associates to sign mandatory arbitration or nondisclosure agreements. Organizers have pushed for the disclosure of those policies, arguing they allow law firms to limit reports of workplace misconduct, including sexual harassment, to secretive forums that favor employers...“Contractually surrendering rights contributes to workplace cultures in which discrimination and harassment are facts of life for too many women who work for law firms," said Molly Coleman [`20], a Harvard law student who helped organize the campaign for the disclosures.

An op-ed by Vivek Wadhwa. Walmart's acquisition of Flipkart demonstrates both Indian e-commerce’s coming of age and a repetition of history. US giants will spend billions in India because they see huge opportunities, and this will produce a short-term boon for Indian consumers. When the dust settles, though, prices will rise and consumer choices will become more limited than they had been. Foreign companies will mine data and manipulate consumer preferences. They will have once again colonised India’s retail industry.

For Blessing Jee, one of the best things about her Harvard education was putting it on hold. Jee knew when she arrived that she would take time off from her studies. What she didn’t expect was that it would make her “fall back in love with Harvard” — and set her, newly energized, on her future path. When she graduates in May, Jee will take another break before returning to pursue public interest law at Harvard Law School...For the past several months, Jee has been working with former Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow, who is writing a book about forgiveness in the law. Jee said Minow, whose work includes research into amnesty and pardons, debt relief, and child soldiers, helped her see that “forgiveness has a real place in the law and it shouldn’t be discarded just because the law should just be principled and objective.”...Minow, the Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence, called working with Jee “joyous because of her wide-ranging interests, precise reasoning, and boundless energy and generosity. … It is unusual to find someone so powerfully able to combine deep focus and wide vision. She will bring tremendous talents to the Harvard Law School.”

The National Labor Relations Board’s surprise decision to tackle joint employer liability via regulation is raising questions about whether the board’s Republican majority already knows how it will resolve one of the biggest labor policy debates in recent years. But that’s not likely to stop the board from using the rulemaking process to limit legal responsibility for businesses in franchise, staffing, and other contractual arrangements...Supporters of the Obama board’s approach to joint employment say the indirect control standard gives workers a seat at the table, with everyone involved in setting the terms and conditions of their jobs. They’re concerned that the board Republicans will simply turn the scrapped Hy-Brand opinion into a regulation. “We know where they want to get to now because of the decision in Hy-Brand,” former NLRB Member Sharon Block (D) told Bloomberg Law. “They appear to be using the rulemaking process to do an end run around conflict-of-interest problems.”

An op-ed by Terri Gerstein. I was Eric Schneiderman’s Labor Bureau chief for almost six years. Our team did great work: We filed civil lawsuits against scofflaw employers and criminally prosecuted others who grossly abused their workers. We proposed laws to expand people’s rights; we issued reports to shed light on violations; we were tireless in our commitment to ensuring justice for vulnerable New Yorkers. I left the office more than a year ago. Now that Schneiderman has resigned over allegations he abused former romantic partners, though, all anyone asks is, “Did you know?”