Media Mentions

It took three years of fighting for access to confidential drug information, but a Quebec bioethicist has punched a tiny hole in the iron wall of secrecy surrounding patented drug prices. Two weeks ago, Jean-Christophe Bé​lisle Pipon won a long battle to force the Quebec Health Ministry to tell him how much it paid for a new meningitis vaccine. The answer — $90 for the first 8,500 doses and $78 for the next 110,000 — was more than twice as much as the U.K apparently paid, and much higher than the price that Quebec officials deemed to be cost effective..."If we want to work toward a more responsible world then we need to continue to force governments and especially industry to release such information," Bé​lisle Pipon told CBC News...He finally received the information on April 20. Those documents revealed that the province managed to negotiate a deal that was significantly less than the list price for the vaccine, around $130 per dose. "It's lower than the listed price but it's still higher than what would make it cost effective," said Bé​lisle Pipon, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School.

Three Planned Parenthood affiliates sued Wednesday to demand taxpayer money keep flowing to the country’s largest abortion network, saying a new Trump administration policy appears designed to cut them out of family planning money. Affiliates in Wisconsin, Ohio and Utah said changes announced by Health and Human Services would boost clinics that focus on abstinence rather than providing contraceptives. They said HHS didn’t follow the law last year when it issued the new funding priorities for doling out money under Title X, which is the government’s main family planning fund...In 1991, the Supreme Court upheld HHS rules prohibiting clinics that receive Title X funds from advising or referring patients for abortion services. Glenn Cohen, a law professor at Harvard, said that kind of precedent suggests the government has latitude to set conditions on the funding. “Challenging an administration’s decision on what funding priorities to set, a litigant faces an uphill battle,” he said. Mr. Cohen said if the court were to decide HHS didn’t follow the proper steps when issuing its new policy, the government could go back and do it accordingly.

The Trump administration's plan to scrap vehicle fuel economy rules would lead to a surge of oil consumption that independent researchers warn threatens to paralyze the ability of the United States to make crucial progress in confronting climate change...The Trump administration plan aims to revoke California's authority to stick to stricter emissions. Legal scholars are dubious that it would succeed. "They are doing a retread of arguments that were made during the Geroge W. Bush administration," said Jody Freeman, who was President Obama's advisor on climate change and now directs the environmental law program at Harvard. Two federal district courts rejected the arguments at that time, she said.

After 30 years of pivotal decisions on the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy is about to make his biggest one yet. For the second straight year, Kennedy, 81, is the focus of retirement speculation as the court approaches the late-June end of its term. A retirement by the court’s swing justice would give President Donald Trump his second Supreme Court vacancy to fill before Republicans’ Senate majority goes on the November election ballot..."Justice Kennedy is the most influential justice in the history of the Supreme Court, and it’s probably not even close," said Michael Klarman, who teaches constitutional history at Harvard Law School. "It’s almost hard to think of areas where the court divides 5-4 and Justice Kennedy is not the deciding vote."

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. People do not, of course, have to pay to use Facebook. It’s free. The company’s revenues come mostly from advertising. But in light of recent controversies, there have been discussions, at least outside of Facebook, about changing the business model. What if people had to pay to use it? How much would they be willing to spend? Any answers would tell us something important about the value of social media in general. I recently conducted a pilot experiment to obtain some preliminary answers. Using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, I tried to find out, from 400 Facebook users, exactly how much the platform is worth.

...In many ways, the Trump International D.C. is a proxy for the president himself. And every once in a while, as was becoming apparent tonight, it’s his stage as well...So far, four groups have filed lawsuits against Trump regarding the hotel, asking the courts to shutter the property, compel Trump to sell it, or require Trump to resign the presidency...No president has been formally accused of breaching the Constitution’s Emoluments Clauses before, which means there’s little case law on the subject. Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, who advised President Barack Obama and serves as an attorney for CREW in its lawsuit against Trump, explained to me in an email how he believes the Trump Hotel D.C. violates these clauses: “When the Trump Hotel receives payments from foreign governments, their agents, or entities controlled by them—to pay for things like national day events at the hotel or for diplomats to stay there, for instance—President Trump is enriched by receiving an ‘Emolument’ from a ‘King, Prince, or foreign State,’ in violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause of Article I, Sec. 9."

The release this week of a list of 48 questions the special counsel Robert Mueller wants to ask President Donald Trump leaves very little wiggle room for the president. If Trump allows himself to be questioned, "he is walking into a classic 'perjury trap' that will likely end his presidency," wrote Andrew Stoltmann, an attorney and CNBC contributor...Alex Whiting, a former federal prosecutor who is now a professor at Harvard Law School, echoed that point, adding that the questions about obstruction pose a high risk for Trump because they relate directly to his conduct. Moreover, "they are about very specific acts and statements by Trump, and in many cases he has already spoken about them," Whiting said. "So either he reaffirms statements or conduct that indicates obstruction, or he contradicts other witnesses and in some cases himself."

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Libel law is evolving before our eyes. Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels, has sued Donald Trump for libel on the ground that the president tweeted that her allegations that she was threatened over their sexual liaison are “a total con job.” The legal theory of the suit, filed Monday in New York, is in line with Summer Zervos’s libel suit against Trump for repeatedly denying her allegations that he kissed and touched her inappropriately. Both lawsuits are creative attempts to push libel law in a direction that fits the #MeToo moment.

An op-ed by Ryan Goodman and Alex Whiting. What do special counsel Robert Mueller’s 49 questions for President Donald Trump tell us about the state of the investigations into possible obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and Russian “collusion”? 1. Big picture: What do Mueller’s questions indicate about the state of the special counsel’s investigations? First, Mueller’s questions about collusion show that it is likely that Mueller has already identified crimes involving collusion–such as a conspiracy to defraud the United States through an evasion of the Federal Election Commission–and Mueller is asking here only about Trump’s possible knowledge and personal involvement. In other words, the questions indicate that there is a “there, there.” That said, we want to be cautious here.

A coalition led by California sued the Trump administration over car emissions rules on Tuesday, escalating a revolt against a proposed rollback of fuel economy standards that threatens to split the country’s auto market. In a lawsuit filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, California and its coalition — 16 other states and the District of Columbia — called the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to weaken auto emissions rules unlawful and accused the agency of failing to follow its own regulations, and of violating the Clean Air Act...It is not yet clear if the E.P.A. will take those steps, but Tuesday’s lawsuit could strengthen California’s legal hand if that were to happen. “This is a preliminary challenge. It’s a shot across the bow,” said Jody Freeman, a professor of environmental law at Harvard University who advised the Obama administration. “It sets the table to challenge the agency’s reasons for rolling back the rule, if they go ahead and do it.”

A letter by Samuel Garcia `19. As Mickey Edwards clearly states in “Trump’s travel ban isn’t just about executive authority — it’s also about congressional responsibility” (Opinion, April 26), Congress has created a list of “dos and don’ts” that dictate how the president should implement immigration policy. That list includes that you cannot discriminate based on nationality, but even if the travel ban was repealed on those grounds, would it stop officials who feel empowered by the president from discriminating anyway? It seems that the president’s sentiment toward immigration has seeped through to the nation’s agencies, and it is unclear whether any strict legal guidance can stop them.

Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard University professor of law and former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, received the Evangelium Vitae Medal from the University of Notre Dame's Center for Ethics and Culture...Glendon said the award serves to honor the many individuals involved in the pro-life movement. "You are paying tribute to the rank-and-file of the broadest-based grass-roots movement in America -- men and women who have made time in their lives to respond in whatever ways they can to the call to help build the culture of life and love," Glendon said. "It is no small achievement that Americans have become steadily more pro-life over the years."

Over more than two decades, Jean-Noel Frydman built France.com into a thriving business, selling tours online to Paris, Burgundy, the Riviera and other popular French destinations. But on March 12, his business vanished. That was the day the French government prevailed in a yearslong effort to seize the coveted domain name, persuading the company that had long managed it, Web.com, to hand it over...Now, Mr. Frydman, who says he stands to lose millions of dollars in profit without the site, is fighting back — by taking France to court in America. The battle, which began in French court in 2015, is more than just a curiosity: It could have greater consequences for the internet at large, said Vivek Krishnamurthy, a lawyer and instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, which is assisting Mr. Frydman. “The reason why we got involved is that there seemed to be a chance of a significant injustice being done here and one that has really important implications for how the internet works,” Mr. Krishnamurthy said.

An interview with Nancy Gertner. Yesterday, The New York Times published a list of dozens of questions that Special Counsel Robert Mueller hopes to ask President Trump as part of his investigation. The questions cover a wide range of topics, and provide the most in-depth look at what the Special Counsel's investigation is focusing on to date.

A lawsuit that California filed Tuesday challenging the Trump administration's plan to roll back vehicle emissions standards has more at stake than pollution limits: It might also affect whether the state can retain its unique power to chart its own course in regulating tailpipe emissions. Since 1970, California has enjoyed authority from Congress to implement its own, tighter vehicle emissions standards, which more than a dozen other states also follow. Vehicle emissions last year ranked the greatest source of heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S...The EPA, meanwhile, "could basically ignore [California's] waiver and argue that California is pre-empted from setting standards" under the law that gives federal authorities the power to set fuel efficiency standards," or "EPA could decide to revoke it," says Jody Freeman, who served as the White House's counselor for energy and climate change from 2009-2010, and is a professor and director of the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School.

...Since the 1970s and 1980s, U.S. air quality has unquestionably improved. However, new research, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that gains made in a critical component of smog, pollutants called nitrogen oxides, have slowed dramatically between 2011 and 2015. The exact cause of the slowdown is still uncertain, but finding the sources could prove more difficult under the current EPA, which has challenged independent scientific research — including the new proposal that would exclude certain public health and air pollution studies when considering changes to federal air standards. "In a historically normal administration, this would be a conversation about putting resources into investigating the question of where these nitrogen oxide emissions are coming from," Joseph Goffman, executive director of Harvard University's environmental and energy law program, said in an interview. Goffman was not involved in the new study. "Now, we're dealing with an EPA that is crippling its access to scientific resources," he said.

An op-ed by Jack Goldsmith. “I am reluctant to write a memoir and would rather write about leadership,” my friend Jim Comey told me in an email on June 16, 2017, about five weeks after Donald Trump fired him as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation...Comey did end up writing a memoir in the sense that his book is nominally about the story of his eventful life, from his childhood in Yonkers to his June 8, 2017 testimony before the Senate intelligence committee about his interactions with President Trump. But his book—which I saw for the first time after publication—is really about what he really wanted to write about: ethical leadership. It is the best book on leadership I have ever read.

University President Drew G. Faust has formed a “review committee” to determine the exact “sequence of events” leading to the forcible arrest of a black undergraduate April 13 and to undertake a “systematic examination” of a wide variety of Harvard policies. “The committee will start by determining the sequence of events leading to the student’s events,” Faust wrote in an email to students Monday. The results of that determination will then "inform a more systematic examination of opportunities for improvement across a range of institutional activities," Faust wrote...Harvard Law School and History professor Annette Gordon-Reed will chair the committee, according to Faust’s email. The group will include six other individuals including professors at the Business School, Kennedy School, Graduate School of Education, and Medical School, as well as a House faculty dean...BLSA has called the incident an instance of police brutality, and Cambridge Mayor Marc C. McGovern and Faust later called the incident “disturbing.” Harvard Law professors Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. and Dehlia Umunna, who lead the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute, are now legally representing the student.

Women speakers at the Milken Institute Global Conference on Monday called for a new push for change in the corporate world and investing now that the #MeToo movement has spread to industries outside of Hollywood...Harvard Law School professor Catharine MacKinnon, a long-time researcher on gender equality, said that male leaders at companies can make a difference by not tolerating any sexual harassment and making it clear to all employees. "I've seen heads of companies get everyone together and actually say, 'We don't do this here. You don't come here to graze on the women'," she said. She added that in her early days of work on sexual harassment research, the issue would be dismissed.

...Landing a Supreme Court clerkship after graduation is not easy. Excellent grades and prior clerking experience are often prerequisites—and Ivy League pedigrees and law journal experience help. The year-long position entails assisting a justice and researching cases, and those who aspire to be among the chosen few begin jockeying early for positions and accolades that will one day lead them to the nation’s highest court...The Law School has two full-time clerkship advisers, according to Kirsten Solberg, associate director of career services and director of judicial clerkships at the Law School’s Office of Career Services. Harvard’s centuries-long relationship to the country’s top courts has entrenched an extensive network of individuals that students tap into as they go through the application process. “We have a vast network of alumni judges, former clerks, and current clerks, not to mention faculty and staff, who actively support our applicants,” Solberg wrote...Making the cut isn’t the final hurdle on the path to clerking at the Supreme Court; for those with hefty loan burdens, finances can pose an additional challenge...The Law School’s Low Income Protection Plan aims to assist students who choose to pursue careers in public interest and other low-paying legal jobs...Clerkships, however, comprise a special case. While students are clerking, their LIPP experiences are similar to any other LIPP-eligible job. After their clerkships have concluded, though, LIPP participants must work in another LIPP-eligible jobs or they are required to pay back the assistance they received from LIPP during their clerkship. “If you take a position that’s not LIPP-eligible immediately after your clerkship, then you’re obligated to repay the clerkship you got,” Kenneth Lafler, assistant dean for student financial services at the Law School, said.

Ashley Judd sued Harvey Weinstein on Monday, opening a new legal battlefront for the disgraced film producer by claiming that her career withered because he spread lies about her in Hollywood after she rejected his sexual requests. It is rare for people to recover damages for smear campaigns — for instance, quietly labeling actresses as “difficult” when they don’t acquiesce to powerful men — because of how complicated it can be to prove the action took place, let alone directly harmed someone’s career. But Ms. Judd has an A-list director on her side: Peter Jackson, who came forward in December to say that he removed her from a casting list “as a direct result” of what he now thought was “false information” provided by Mr. Weinstein...Jeannie Suk Gersen, a professor at Harvard Law School who specializes in gender and sexual harassment issues, said Ms. Judd’s complaint is notable because it “speaks to the fact that this is not just a sexual issue — that, beyond physical and emotional harm, it also involves economic harm.” She added, “If successful, the legal arguments that are being marshaled here are a big deal for lots of people, not just in show business but in all sorts of hiring contexts.”