Media Mentions

Life for undocumented immigrants is full of risks. Any encounter with law-enforcement officials — on the sidewalk, while they are driving, or in their homes in the middle of the night — can lead to arrest and possible deportation. But in all such cases, undocumented immigrants have rights...At a workshop on immigrants’ rights held Monday morning at the Memorial Church, attorneys Jason Corral and Cindy Zapata of the Harvard Immigration & Refugee Clinical Program shared legal advice on how to deal with the more aggressive enforcement of immigration laws under the Trump administration. Corral has provided legal services to at least 60 undocumented students studying at Harvard. “In this new day and age, any evidence you can provide, you can end up in removal proceedings,” said Corral.

An interview with Diane Rosenfeld. College campuses continue to be unsafe for women. Its estimated that one in five female students will be sexually assaulted during her time in college. It’s a disturbingly common problem, yet so few of the accused perpetrators end up facing criminal charges. A former Yale student is currently standing trial for the alleged rape of one of his classmates. It could be one of the few times a campus rape case is decided in court. Why do so few accused perpetrators end up facing criminal charges?

When the movement began in 1992, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines was considered quixotic, its proponents unrealistically idealistic, its efforts doomed to fail. Twenty-five years and one Nobel Peace Prize later, more than 180 countries have signed its 1997 treaty, agreeing not only to avoid using the weapons but to help remove them from areas where they have been abandoned and remain a danger to life, limbs, and livelihoods...“Everybody said it was impossible to do,” said Goose, looking back at the long road to the 1997 landmine treaty. “After we finally did it, people said, ‘Oh, that wasn’t that hard. It was a one-off. Circumstances allowed that to happen.’” They also, he reported, said its success could not be replicated. Monday’s discussion was designed to prove that false. Indeed, this first public event of Humanitarian Disarmament: The Way Ahead (moderated by Bonnie Docherty, associate director of Armed Conflict and Civilian Protection at Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic) started off by outlining the similarities — and the successes — of other recent campaigns.

A new data-driven tool made to determine bail is currently being tested in Dane County courts. The Public Safety Assessment, which was developed in conjunction with Harvard University and The Arnold Foundation, uses solely objective information and takes into account a variety of factors to generate a report for a court to consider when setting bail for defendants. Data collection for the study began in April 2017 and individuals will continue to enter the study until April 2019, Chris Griffin, Harvard law professor and co-director of the study, said...“What the study is attempting to do is very simple: We are trying to evaluate whether this tool from the Arnold Foundation is a useful piece of information for judges to have at their disposal,” Griffin said.

A Harvard Law School professor whose past clients include the family of the 18-year-old fatally shot in 2014 by a policeman in Ferguson, Missouri, has joined the prosecution team in the criminal case against Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Circuit Judge Rex Burlison on Monday approved Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner's motion to have Ronald S. Sullivan join the prosecution. Greitens was indicted in February on felony invasion of privacy. He is accused of taking a compromising photo of a woman with whom he was having an affair without her permission in 2015, before he was elected.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. President Donald Trump says trade wars are easy to win, but that hasn’t always been true in U.S. history. To the contrary, for the first 40 years of the republic, the founders struggled desperately to establish international trade agreements that Americans would find acceptable. The need for trade leverage was the first factor motivating James Madison to call for a new Constitution. And trade wars had a way of turning into shooting wars. The War of 1812, the first declared war in U.S. history, was the result of a trade fight that the Americans seemed unable to win with economic sanctions alone.

An article by Jack Goldsmith. Tuesday is the release date for an extraordinary collection of essays published under the title: Can It Happen Here? Authoritarianism in America...My essay traces the history of the national security Deep State from J. Edgar Hoover's FBI to the present; shows how the Deep State’s reaction to Trump has been norm-defiant and damaging yet at the same time possibly necessary; and concludes pessimistically by explaining how and why the battle of “Trump v. Deep State” has been harmful to our national security institutions. Collections of essays are often dull affairs, but this one isn’t.

An op-ed by Alex Whiting. Is there a fundamental weakness in the potential case of obstruction against President Donald Trump?...The relevant federal criminal provision — 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) — makes it a crime to obstruct “any official proceeding, or attempt[] to do so.” The statute specifies that “an official proceeding need not be pending or about to be instituted at the time of the offense.” However, as Estreicher and Moosman argue, relying on the Supreme Court’s decision in Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States, prosecutors bringing charges under 18 U.S.C. § 1512 must at a minimum show that an official proceeding, such as a grand jury investigation, was foreseen, and that the defendant knew that his actions would likely affect those proceedings.

Robert Adler was a thirtysomething attorney at a small Washington firm in the late 1970s when a woman arrived in his office to discuss her problems at work. The woman, Sandra Bundy, was an employment specialist at DC’s Department of Corrections, where she helped former inmates find jobs after their release. About four years earlier, she explained, her superiors had begun making repeated—and unwanted—sexual advances toward her. After she rebuffed them, things got worse...As Adler listened to her story, however, he felt compelled to act. In 1977, Bundy sued the director of the Corrections Department in federal court. “I had no optimism that we were going to win this thing, because we were really in uncharted waters,” Adler says. “But I didn’t care.” Today, some 40 years after she first walked into Adler’s office, Bundy’s lawsuit is considered a seminal event in the establishment of sexual harassment as a legal concept in America. “What is so incredibly significant about the case was finding that sexual harassment itself—the doing of it—was sex discrimination,” says Catharine MacKinnon, a University of Michigan law professor and a leading scholar on the issue. “That has been world-changing.”

Race-related activism is re-emerging at Harvard Law School after a group of Law students wore pink armbands and hung posters last month to “stand in solidarity with people of color” following incidents of racism at Stanford Law School in the fall...First-year Law student Felipe D. Hernandez [`20], along with 11 other students who chose to remain anonymous, wrote a Feb. 2018 letter published in the Harvard Law Record arguing the Law School also struggles with racism...While the campaign was not officially organized by any formal affinity groups, president of the Harvard Black Law Students Association Jazzmin A. Carr [`18] praised it in an emailed statement, writing her group “stands in solidarity” with its organizers...The Harvard Law Record letter specifically criticized the structure of the financial aid system, the perception that the school is not geared toward public interest, and the first-year curriculum. Law School Dean of Students Marcia L. Sells emphasized the school takes these issues seriously and is working to improve the school’s culture and offerings. “The student financial services office advisory group is looking at the Loan Income Protection Plan. LIPP is something that is always being looked at,” Sells said in an interview last week, addressing criticisms of the school’s financial aid and public interest programs.

Busy penning holiday cards in 1975 at his home in Cambridge, Law School Professor Frank E. A. Sander ’48 started in surprise: He had received a telegram from Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren E. Burger. The Chief Justice had telegramed to say he was impressed with Sander’s newly circulating ideas about alternative dispute resolution. In the coming months, Sander would pioneer this form of dispute resolution as an entirely new method of legal mediation. Sander, the Bussey Professor Emeritus at the Law School, died on Feb. 25. He was 90...Harvard law lecturer David A. Hoffman credited Sander with almost single-handedly creating field of dispute resolution. “It’s surprising now to think about the fact that negotiation was not widely taught in the years that he spent in the Law School,” Hoffman said...Law Professor Martha L. Minow, who played violin and piano with Sander in chamber music events he organized, said Sander’s talents as a musician helped define who he was as a professor. “To play chamber music, you play alongside other people,” Minow said. “You pay close attention to where others are, and when you do, you can actually make something better than what you could do by yourself.”

...Daily Table doesn’t look like a typical supermarket; It is smaller and laid out more like a Trader Joe’s, where Rauch was president for 14 years. In 2013, Rauch went on a national media tour to explain his mission: a store that would stock food that had passed its sell-by date, salvaging still perfectly good food from the landfill and getting it to people who need it. Some hailed the idea as a breakthrough. Others worried that selling expired food to poor people was demeaning. But Rauch argued that he could create a sustainable business model that could to solve food waste and hunger at the same time...Sell-by dates result in over 160 billion pounds of healthy food that’s discarded each year, said Emily Broad Leib, director of Harvard’s Food Law and Policy Clinic, who has worked with Rauch to push for national changes to the regulations.

A significant recent revelation in the Russia investigation has been largely overlooked in the rush of several breaking news stories over the past few days. A nugget of information is contained in the memo written by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee (the so-called Schiff Memo), which was released on Saturday morning...In addition to direct involvement in campaign finance law violations or a conspiracy, Alex Whiting, a professor at Harvard Law School and former federal prosecutor, spelled out in detail the potential case for accomplice liability for Papadopoulos and any other campaign officials who may have given him instructions. The most relevant legal question here turns on whether Papadopoulos intentionally encouraged the Russians once they previewed that they were prepared to disseminate the stolen emails.

A quick way to understand the drastic shift in prospects for shareholders who bring appraisal actions challenging the value of their stake in acquired companies is to read an exchange of briefs this week in a hedge fund appraisal action against Aruba Networks...Wachtell is convinced the appraisal reboot is good for shareholders. Harvard law professor Guhan Subramanian isn’t so sure. In an essay entitled "Appraisal after Dell," which is cited in Grant’s motion for rehearing in the Aruba case, Subramanian posits that the Delaware Supreme Court has made it almost impossible for shareholders to strike back at inadequate or conflicted deal processes, calling the new risk for dissenting shareholders “a step in the wrong direction.”

Frank Sander, who escaped Nazi Germany as an 11-year-old boy in 1938, became a professor at Harvard Law School and by the mid-1970s established himself as an authority on family and tax cases...Mr. Sander died on Feb. 25 in Concord, Mass. He was 90. His 1976 paper “came at a moment when there was a sense that courts were overwhelmed and not doing a very good job” at resolving many disputes, said Robert Bordone, a Harvard law professor. Arbitration was already common in labor disputes then, but mediation and negotiating skills generally weren’t taught in law schools. Now these methods are commonly used in such areas as divorce and consumer complaints, among many others.

...To some, our phones and apps are little more than a distraction; to others, they're nothing short of an existential threat. But the vast majority of critics—and more and more companies—agree: People could use help deciding where to place their attention, to ensure that their time with technology is—to borrow an increasingly fashionable phrase—time well spent. And make no mistake: We users do need help. And that help can take a form that's subtle and effective...But our susceptibilities also make us receptive to something Harvard legal scholar Cass Sunstein calls libertarian paternalism, a term he coined with Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler to describe "nudges" by which institutions help people make better choices (as judged by themselves), while preserving their freedom to make those choices at as low a cost as possible...The question for tech giants, Sunstein says, is not whether they should engage in libertarian paternalism, but the ends to which they do so. "For companies like Facebook and Apple, there is a pressing need for a lot more thought on the goals of choice architecture," he says.

Frank E.A. Sander, a longtime Harvard Law School professor known as a mentor to many and a pioneer in the field of alternative dispute resolution, died Feb. 25. He was 90 years old and lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sander, on the Harvard faculty from 1959 to 2006, authored numerous books on ADR, taught the topic at Harvard and had a profound impact on those who knew him, worked with him and learned from him...His colleagues at Harvard said Sander was an advocate for his profession and ADR and will be missed. “Frank played a preeminent role in shaping that (ADR) important discipline, which has transformed our legal system,” said Harvard Law School Dean John Manning in a press release. “He was a beloved teacher and mentor to our students, a wise and selfless administrator at our school, and a cherished colleague and friend to faculty and staff.”

Potential Mayoral candidate Adrian Perkins [`18] is sounding like he is in the race to be the next Mayor of Shreveport. He recently wrote this for the Harvard Law Record: "I am resigning as Student Government President to prepare to run for local office in my hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana." He adds: "the future in Shreveport is not so promising, which has spurred me to answer to another commitment that I made: to do all that I can for the community that raised me."

An interview with Vivek Krishnamurthy. Can the federal government compel a U.S.-based email provider to turn over its records as part of a criminal investigation when those records are located outside of the country? The United States v. Microsoft case pending before the Supreme Court could have big implications for law enforcement, consumer privacy and the business operations of many companies that do business overseas.

...The movement’s roots and its present and future impact were the focus of a discussion with Harvard scholars on Monday night at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, organized by the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America and moderated by Ann Marie Lipinski, curator of Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism...For Harvard Law School’s Jeannie Suk Gersen, recent statements from U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg point to another divisive debate. Asked about the #MeToo movement in a recent interview, Ginsburg said due process must not be ignored. Gersen, the John H. Watson Jr. Professor of Law, agreed. “One of the salient, and in my mind, very unfortunate aspects of the current moment is how a commitment to due process or fairness has become associated with one side, with men’s rights, with Betsy DeVos and her decision to rescind the Obama administration’s policies on Title IX,” which protects people from sex discrimination in education or other programs receiving federal aid, said Gersen.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. ...New York was supposed to be a model for how the modern city could launch high-speed internet for its residents. When the Bloomberg mayoral administration re-signed an agreement with Verizon in 2008, it required that the company wire all residential buildings with its fiber service, FiOS. The agreement was heralded by the press as a way of triggering competition— the presence of Verizon’s fiber product would end the local monopoly of Time Warner Cable, now Spectrum, which provides internet access over a different, lower-capacity wire called hybrid fiber-coaxial. Cable internet access dominates most cities, but it often loses market share to more reasonably priced fiber offerings.