Media Mentions

We will never know if consolidated shareholder litigation to block Fujifilm’s $6.1 billion acquisition of Xerox Corp would have turned out differently had it taken place in Delaware Chancery Court instead of New York State Supreme Court. But a dramatic decision in the Xerox case has spurred lawyers and academics to ask whether Delaware has become too deferential to corporate boards... The state justices essentially said that when independent boards exercise their business judgment to approve strategic mergers – and give shareholders a right to vote on the deals – Chancery Court should not stand in the way, particularly if there’s no competing bid for the company. Since then, said Harvard law school professor Guhan Subramanian, the trajectory in Delaware Chancery Court has been away from scrutiny of deal processes. Subramanian, who was an expert witness for shareholders in the Xerox case, said he was impressed that, in contrast to Delaware courts in recent years, Justice Ostrager was willing “to engage in a meaningful way” with details of the deal.

Receiving on Saturday what is arguably the most prestigious pro-life prize in the U.S., Harvard Law professor and former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon used the occasion to honor the legacy of other women who have shared in championing the cause of human life. Glendon was awarded the Evangelium Vitae medal by the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture, an annual prize “honoring individuals whose outstanding efforts have served to proclaim the Gospel of Life by steadfastly affirming and defending the sanctity of human life from its earliest stages.”...In accepting the award, Glendon recalled the late Revered Richard John Neuhaus’s description of the pro-life movement as the “most broad-based, the most diverse, the most sustained expression of citizen participation America has ever seen.” “Yet, despite that great diversity, the pro-life cause has often been portrayed as indifferent to women’s concerns,” said Glendon.

A book review by Randall Kennedy. ‘Thanks to their common goals and trajectories and calendars,” David Margolick observes, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy are linked in the popular mind “as no other black man and white man in the history of civil rights have ever been.” King was the most important leader of the black protest movement that, between 1954 and 1968, uprooted de jure racial segregation and put many forms of racial discrimination on the defensive. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Open Housing Act of 1968 all derive, directly and indirectly, from King’s inspired rhetoric and much-publicized sacrifice.

An op-ed by Lawrence Lessig. Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director and acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told lobbyists last week what they already knew: Legislators are dependent upon their funders, and their funders are not the people. Speaking to 1,300 attendees of the American Bankers Association conference, Mulvaney reported that as a congressman, he never spoke to lobbyists who hadn’t given him money, sometimes spoke to lobbyists who had, but always spoke to constituents who “came from back home and sat in my lobby.”

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have become so closely linked that their names have been joined to form a talisman for left-wing Democrats who embrace membership in the party's "Sanders-Warren wing." There are, however, differences to be considered as each ponders a run for the presidency in 2020. Sanders is an avowed socialist. Warren isn't. She's a capitalist, albeit one who believes in a strong government role if markets aren't protecting people..."She remains a legendary teacher, mentor and model of scholar-law-reformer," said Martha Minow, former dean of the Harvard Law School, where Warren taught before joining the Senate.

Mayoral candidate Adrian Perkins [`18] talks with 101.7 / 710 KEEL's Robert J Wright and Erin McCarty about what he sees are the major issues in the upcoming race for Shreveport's top political office. Perkins, a graduate of the United States Military Academy, tells KEEL listeners that he sees lowering crime, improving streets and bringing jobs to the area as his priorities. Perkins, who also attended Harvard Law School, says he has moved back to his hometown because, "I am a Shreveport boy. Everything that is on my resume is because I am from Shreveport." An in explaining the reason for his run: "I don't think Shreveport has another four or eight years to go down the road that its on. My platform is simple. I want to generate jobs and I want to decrease crime."

An essay by Jeannie Suk Gersen....The Cosby case is, in the end, an emblem of #MeToo, not just because it ended in a guilty verdict but because of the exceptional if controversial evidentiary procedure that enabled a chorus of witnesses—witnesses who would generally be excluded—to back up the main complaining witness and could well have made the difference between a juror having a reasonable doubt and not having it. It remains to be seen how broadly the legal workarounds for uncharged prior misconduct will be construed by trial courts in future sexual-assault cases, ones in which defendants are not alleged to have such a distinctive signature in the commission of their crimes—or so many victims.

Today, Democrat Adrian Perkins [`18] officially announced his candidacy. Perkins is 32-years old and was raised in Shreveport. He went to Harvard Law School and West Point. He believes his military experience makes him unique, compared to other candidates. Perkins wants to improve our airport, city streets, and work to provide high speed internet to everyone. He also wants lower crime saying, the way to do that is to get a new chief of police. "I want to pursue getting new leadership within the police department so we can make cultural changes. Right now, I speak to policemen all the time, I have multiple listening sessions with policemen and they want changes as well. I think new leadership can usher in those changes," said Perkins.

Two weeks after the verdict in a landmark human rights case in Fort Lauderdale, Thomas Becker was still excited. “This is a historic victory,” the attorney said. “This case shows that you can be a poor person and stand up for human rights, justice and social change. And you can win.”... The case was brought by a consortium of US human rights lawyers, including the Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic, where Becker was a student. He met one of the victims’ lawyers, Rogelio Mayta, at a La Paz dinner in 2005. “It was like combining water with thirst in a providential moment,” recalled Mayta whose team was already exploring whether bringing a civil case in the US might bring some measure of justice for the victims, given, in Mayta’s words, “the inefficiency in the Bolivian justice system.”

Last week 34 tech companies signed the Cybersecurity Tech Accord saying they won't help any government, including the U.S., carry out cyber-attacks. That came amid warnings from the U.S. and the U.K. about the Russian government's global attempts to hack routers and other network equipment. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood spoke with Bruce Schneier, a cybersecurity expert at Harvard, about how tech companies will play a role in combating international cyber threats.

A book review by Samantha Power. When avid fans describe their love of baseball — and here I include myself, as well as Susan Jacoby, the author of “Why Baseball Matters” — we do so with a kind of reverence that, while wholly sincere, can often sound ridiculous. I associate my deep attachment with immigrating to the United States from Dublin in 1979 and landing in Pittsburgh on the eve of the Willie Stargell-led Pirates’ glorious playoff run. As I practiced an American accent in the mirror, I quickly understood the currency I would acquire if I could rattle off RBI, ERA and batting average statistics with the speed of the boys who lived on our block. Play ball!

During a campaign rally in Iowa in 2016, Donald Trump criticized former Hillary Clinton staffers who had invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination in the case involving her private email system. By pleading the Fifth, Trump suggested, they were admitting their guilt. “The mob takes the Fifth,” Trump told the crowd. “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” Trump’s assessment has taken on new meaning this week, as his longtime attorney and “fixer” Michael Cohen pleaded the Fifth in the civil case brought against him by adult-film star Stormy Daniels. But contrary to the president’s views, it should not be assumed that Cohen’s move is proof of criminal culpability...“People who assert the Fifth may be innocent, but may fear that the government might still find a way to use their words against them,” explained Alex Whiting, a former federal prosecutor and a law professor at Harvard University.

If every FBI subject were as loose-lipped and oblivious as President Trump, they’d need to build more federal prisons. His latest outburst came on “Fox & Friends” Thursday morning: “And our Justice Department — which I try and stay away from, but at some point I won’t — our Justice Department should be looking at that kind of stuff, not the nonsense of collusion with Russia!” Several aspects of this require scrutiny...Second, Trump’s language betrays his motive to interfere with, to obstruct, the Russia investigation. Ironically, “corrupt intent,” usually difficult to prove, is now being demonstrated to millions of viewers. “Trump’s ominous statement that ‘at some point [he] won’t’ stay ‘away from our Justice Department’ can help weaponize public and hopefully congressional support for measures to protect Mueller and Rosenstein and, in that sense, the remark is helpful to Mueller,” says constitutional scholar Laurence H. Tribe.

President Trump’s interview Thursday on “Fox & Friends,” in which he blasted the Justice Department and admitted for the first time publicly that his personal attorney represented him in a hush-money payout to a porn star, was ill-advised even if it didn’t immediately place him in legal jeopardy, specialists said. “He’s unmoored, is the only way to describe it,” said Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge who now teaches at Harvard Law School. Gertner, who’s emerged as a high-profile critic of Trump among legal scholars, said she was taken aback by comments the president made that “suggest he plans to obstruct justice or is motivated to obstruct justice.”

Mick Mulvaney, acting head of the consumer finance watchdog, told a room full of bankers that the only lobbyists he met with as a congressman were those who made political donations to his office, and he urged them to continue lobbying lawmakers to weaken the regulator he runs..."Mulvaney’s attitude is a thousand times worse for America than even Donald Trump," said Lawrence Lessig, founder of Equal Citizens, a campaign for democratic reform. "It is the perfect picture of all that is wrong with D.C.—and that will remain wrong with D.C., even after this administration is gone."

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. One thing became clear during Wednesday’s oral argument at the U.S. Supreme Court about President Donald Trump’s travel ban: Justice Elena Kagan has a strategy to persuade swing Justice Anthony Kennedy to vote against the ban. Her approach will be to depict the case as a watershed moment in the court’s jurisprudence about bias — thus making it extraordinarily difficult for Kennedy to find himself on the wrong side of history.

Ethics experts say Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director and interim head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, should be investigated for potentially violating federal bribery laws after he admitted that, as a congressman, he only gave meetings to lobbyists who donated to his campaign...Many argue that regardless of whether Mulvaney engaged in any illegal conduct, his Tuesday admission is a fireable offense, and excusing it perpetuates a culture of impunity in Washington. "It is the perfect picture of all that is wrong with DC — and that will remain wrong with DC, even after this administration is gone," Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard professor and former Democratic presidential candidate, told Business Insider in a statement.

...Korematsu v. United States upheld America’s wartime internment of thousands of Japanese Americans, and it’s still cited as legal precedent today. Harvard Law School’s Martha Minow recently wrote about the decision and its relevance in 2018. In the Spiel, president Trump’s approval ratings are highest in West Virginia. Senate candidate (and former convict) Don Blankenship is rolling with it.

An interview between President Donald Trump and the special counsel Robert Mueller may once again be in play. According to The Washington Post, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who is the newest member of Trump's legal team, broached the subject of a presidential interview with Mueller when he met with the special counsel on Tuesday...Mueller is mandated to provide reports of his findings to Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who appointed him as the special counsel in May 2017. But whether those findings are released to the public is Rosenstein's decision. Alex Whiting, a former federal prosecutor who is now a professor at Harvard Law School, said he found it "striking" that "Mueller seems to be preparing the report with an expectation that it will eventually become public."

Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a leading historian on law and society as well as an authority on constitutional and education law and policy, has been named dean of Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard President Drew Faust announced today...“I am honored and excited to have the opportunity to lead the Radcliffe Institute, whose mission to bring scholars together across disciplinary and professional boundaries I enthusiastically embrace,” said Brown-Nagin...“Tomiko Brown-Nagin is a brilliant legal historian who is deeply committed to the project of interdisciplinary work. In her time at Harvard Law School, she has been a wonderful teacher of our students, superb leader of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute, and invaluable institutional contributor,” said John F. Manning, the Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor of Law at HLS.

Big Law should be scared of Ian Samuel. Recently, the Harvard Law School lecturer and co-host of the “First Mondays” podcast created a huge uproar when he tweeted that Munger, Tolles & Olson required that summer associates agree to arbitration in their employment contracts. (He called the requirement “super gross.”) Almost immediately, law faculty and law students jumped on social media to condemn the super elite firm for attempting to silence summer associates.