Media Mentions

The Harvard Kennedy School received $7.5 million for a student fellowship program for U.S. veterans and active duty military members Thursday, according to a press release from the school. The donation, which came from the Debra and Leon Black Family Foundation, will cover attendance costs for up to 25 graduate students annually—starting with those matriculating in fall 2019—across the Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, and Harvard Law School.

...Most advocates of election reform are similarly positive about ranked-choice voting. But they don’t agree on the best way forward. “I’m a big supporter of ranked-choice voting,” says Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School. “But I think one of the mistakes they’ve made is that they pursued it from the bottom up when a much better strategy is to do it from the top down.” In other words, start with the presidential race.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. This column is really good. Actually it’s amazing. In less than 650 words, it will explain the success of President Donald Trump -- and also show how to beat him...One of the least well-known rules of thumb is called the “confidence heuristic,” which was initially explored in 1995. The central idea is simple. When people express beliefs to one another, their level of confidence usually reflects how certain they are. It tells us how much information they have. When we are listening to others, we are more likely to be persuaded by people who seem really confident.

...This month, The Intercept published an article about the history of this Israeli legal effort. In the story, Harvard law professor Gabriella Blum explained how, when she was a young lawyer working for the Israel Defense Forces, she and her team sought to give a legal justification for Israel’s burgeoning assassination program.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s view on affirmative action and employee rights to band together could see a dramatic shift under the court’s newly reconstituted conservative majority, legal scholars told Bloomberg Law...But the Trump administration filed a brief in Epic Systems suggesting that the NLRA’s safeguards for collective worker action only covers group conduct related to self-organization or collective bargaining. “That to me is the most serious and real area to think about an even more conservative Supreme Court changing the law,” Sharon Block, executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, told Bloomberg Law. “In a world where 94 percent of the private sector isn’t engaged in activities related to collective bargaining, that would be a devastating development.”

Donald Trump is back in the place he loves best: the campaign trail. The president is logging thousands of miles on Air Force One with the midterm elections approaching Nov. 6. He is fighting to prevent a Democratic takeover of Congress, which would derail much of his legislative agenda and open the door to multiple investigations of his presidency...Democrats say Trump and the Kavanaugh issue are also motivating anti-Trump voters. Many Democratic voters were frustrated to see Kavanaugh confirmed to the Supreme Court, despite allegations from Christine Blasey Ford that he sexually assaulted her when they were both in high school. Kavanaugh has vehemently denied the allegations. "I think it's more likely to be a plus for the Democrats," said Lawrence Lessig, professor at Harvard Law School, former Democratic presidential candidate, and founder of the organization EqualCitizens.US. "Their anger is more visceral."

An op-ed by Richard Sun `20. Millennials are on the cusp of being the largest generation by population size. Our strength in numbers will give us meaningful influence on the 2018 midterm elections as a voting bloc. However, that influence only works if we do and we show up to vote. But the reality is, is that we don't have a great track record on that front. According to the Census Bureau, only 23 percent of millennials voted in the 2014 midterm elections compared to 39 percent of the population as a whole. That means other people in other age groups are about twice as likely to vote as we are. We are punching well below our weight. There are serious and meaningful consequences to low millennial voter turnout.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Not for the first time, the First Amendment has saved Donald Trump. A federal district court in California was correct Monday to dismiss Stormy Daniels’s libel suit against the president for using the phrase “total con job” to describe her allegation of being threatened by an unknown man in a parking lot. Not only that, the judge was probably right to make Daniels (or her supporters on CrowdJustice) pay Trump’s legal fees. The president’s style of discourse, with its constant insistence that everyone else is a liar, is path-breaking in its coarseness. But it’s now legitimately part of public rhetoric. Denying Daniels’s claim (with ridicule thrown in) doesn’t come close to the kind of libelous speech that is exempt from First Amendment protection.

A couple of liberal Harvard law professors are lending their name to a new campaign to build support for expanding the Supreme Court by four justices in 2021. The campaign, calling itself the 1.20.21 Project and being launched Wednesday, also wants to increase the size of the lower federal courts to counteract what it terms "Republican obstruction, theft and procedural abuse" of the federal judiciary...Harvard professors Mark Tushnet and Laurence Tribe are joining an effort being led by political scientist Aaron Belkin. He was a prominent advocate for repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that prohibited LGBT people from serving openly in the military..."The time is overdue for a seriously considered plan of action by those of us who believe that McConnell Republicans, abetted by and abetting the Trump Movement, have prioritized the expansion of their own power over the safeguarding of American democracy and the protection of the most vulnerable among us," Tribe said.

A long-delayed federal rule intended to protect student loan borrowers who were defrauded by their schools went into effect on Tuesday, after a judge rejected an industry challenge and the Education Department ended efforts to stall it any longer...“We’re really gratified,” said Eileen Connor, the director of litigation at Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, which represented several student borrowers who challenged the department’s delay. “These regulations have a lot of critical protections in them for student borrowers and taxpayers.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. In theory, taking a DNA test to reveal your ancestry is optional. But it’s on its way to becoming obligatory. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren announced Monday that she had submitted her DNA to ascertain that she does in fact have Native American ancestry — after President Donald Trump had taunted her by saying he would throw a testing kit at her. For those of us not in national politics, a study in the journal Science last week claimed that within a few years, it will be possible to identify some 90 percent of white Americans by using genetic databases that include their cousins. Even if you don’t take the test yourself, someone has taken it for you.

Months after the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a hefty blow to teachers’ unions, a rash of new lawsuits has emerged that could further damage these labor groups...“Everybody knows where the end of this litigation road is, which is the Supreme Court,” said Sharon Block, the executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. “Janus is sadly not the end of the road. This road just got a lot harder.”

More than 100,000 students defrauded by Corinthian Colleges can team up to sue Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for rolling back Obama-era rules that provided full debt forgiveness, a federal judge ruled Monday. U.S. District Judge Sallie Kim certified a nationwide class of approximately 110,000 students who claim the Education Department improperly used their private data to create a new Average Earnings rule that forces students to pay off at least some loan debt. “It’s a recognition by the court that in fact this whole group of people was affected in the same way,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Toby Merrill, with the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

When the Trudeau government agreed to a revised North American free trade deal, the Americans said Canada also agreed to something else: joining Donald Trump's trade war on China...."Although free trade agreements regularly require consultations on a variety of issues, they are typically on more narrow regulatory matters," said Mark Wu, an international trade professor at Harvard Law School who specializes in Chinese trade issues. "Article 32.10 of the USMCA represents a novel and unprecedented approach," he said. And reiterating the six-month notice language in this part of the text is "particularly extraordinary."

An op-ed by Samuel Garcia `19. Julia* is a dreamer under DACA, which means that she is in the United States under DACA protection and is allowed to enroll in college despite her immigration status. She attended high school in McAllen, Texas and is now a student at the University of Texas at Austin. However, her older brother, who was once also in the United States under the protection of DACA, made much different choices than she did...After a few encounters with the police and ensuing arrests, Julia’s family tried to engage him in serious conversations about stopping his drug use, but those proved to be ineffective...their search for help revealed a legal system that is not flexible enough to allow immigrants who are impacted by the disease of addiction to seek help without fear of being removed from the United States.

An op-ed by Michael Klarman. Despite Democrats’ having won the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections, the Supreme Court has not had a liberal majority since 1969. Because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell straight-out stole the seat vacated by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia early in 2016, a seat that should have been filled by President Barack Obama’s nominee (Merrick Garland), liberals are unlikely to control the Court for at least another couple of decades. As has been frequently noted, recently appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh were nominated to the Court by a president who lost the popular vote by nearly three million votes, and were then confirmed by a majority of senators who represented minorities of the American population.

...Even his critics say Mr. Frank has played a valuable role. “Although I often disagree with his objections, I think it is valuable to have a devil’s advocate challenging class action settlements and fee awards because there is otherwise often no meaningful pushback on what class counsel and the defendants put before the court,” said Brian T. Fitzpatrick, a law professor at Vanderbilt Law School and the author of “The Conservative Case for Class Actions,” which will be published next year. “Some people complain that his ultimate goal is to destroy, rather than improve, class actions,” said Professor Fitzpatrick, who is visiting this semester at Harvard Law School. “I am not sure if that is true — he says it isn’t — but it doesn’t really matter. A devil’s advocate’s job is to push back on everything, good and bad alike.”

N’West Iowa residents who are worried about the future of their respective post offices will have a chance to voice their viewpoints to a group of Ivy League scholars this weekend. A three-member team from Harvard Law School in Cambridge, MA, that is working to protect U.S. post offices will be in the region Saturday-Monday, Oct. 13-15, to visit with residents, especially during community meetings in Calumet and Hartley. Team members — such as 24-year-old Madelyn “Maddy” Petersen, a third-year law student who has ties to Hartley and Spirit Lake — are holding community meetings to conduct research for Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic. “Our project and our clinic believe in the universal service of the post office,” Petersen said. “We know that some towns in northwest Iowa have seen closures and then also there have been a bunch of towns that have experienced reductions in services, reductions in hours or kind of a shift in how the mail is delivered.”

Harvard Law School students, faculty, and administrators convened behind closed doors at an off-the-record forum Thursday for two hours to reflect on the recent, and contentious, confirmation of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the partial release of a report that that a federal grand jury sent in 1974 to the House Judiciary Committee that was a key part of the Watergate scandal that drove President Nixon from office. ...The request for the release was made by Stephen Bates, a University of Nevada journalism professor and former Whitewater investigation prosecutor; Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and Lawfare editor Benjamin Wittes.

...“We lose what’s fascinating about a place by not having this bigger picture,” said Susan Crawford, a professor at Harvard Law School whose work involves cities and technology, who looked at the images at our request. “They make you think big thoughts. Everybody becomes Robert Moses looking at these maps.”