Media Mentions

Like clockwork, Washington has whipped itself into a frenzy over rumors of a possible retirement on the Supreme Court. All eyes are on Justice Anthony Kennedy, 81, who reportedly considered calling it quits last spring. As the court’s current term winds to a close, speculation about his plans has again swept the capital, with court watchers searching for clues...But Ian Samuel, a Climenko Fellow and lecturer on law at Harvard Law, who clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, said the small number of cases the court has granted could signal Kennedy is throwing in the towel. The court has only agreed to hear 15 cases so far next term. “One possibility is they are not granting cases because they don’t know who their ninth member is going to be. … You could imagine Kennedy telling the chief, ‘I’d like to keep this between us, but I’d like to retire,’ and the chief saying, ‘Let’s see who Kennedy’s replacement is before we grant all these cases,’” Samuel said.

...Costly medicines can give rise to misplaced expectations for patients and doctors navigating America’s Byzantine health care system. And the problem is compounded by well-intentioned regulators trying to help desperate patients whose medical needs are unmet. “The problem is the way the system creates incentives for both drug makers and insurers to act as they do,” said I. Glenn Cohen, a Harvard Law School professor who is an expert in bioethics and health law policy. “When you allow private insurers to make decisions with only a patchwork of state regulations, they will choose not to cover every drug approved by the FDA. And drug companies are for-profit entities that set prices based on market conditions. This is why you have debates over coverage.”

As Congress fights over the latest farm bill, one proposal has animal welfare and food safety advocates ― and even some farm industry groups ― sounding the alarm. They’re opposing the Protect Interstate Commerce Act, an amendment from Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) that they fear could jeopardize thousands of state and local laws regulating food and farming. Also known as the King Amendment, this addition to the draft farm bill would ban states from imposing rules on the sale of out-of-state agricultural products if those rules are more restrictive than federal law ― or the law within a product’s state of origin...While it’s obvious why many animal welfare advocates would be against PICA, the amendment’s ramifications could extend much further. A Harvard Law School analysis found that PICA “has the potential to void thousands of state and local laws concerning public health and safety,” including laws surrounding food safety, packaging and invasive species.

A first-of-its-kind international arbitration workshop at Harvard Law School provided students with an opportunity to not only learn from a diverse group of the leading minds in arbitration but also, in at least one instance, to discuss the topics of the day with them over a beer. The workshop, co-directed by Three Crowns partner Luke Sobota and director of practice and senior associate Hugh Carlson, along with Harvard International Arbitration Law Students Association President Hiroko Yamamoto and HIALSA board member Christian Vandergeest, covered the entire arbitral process, from the initial steps in a dispute to the recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. This week, the Senate voted 52–47 to revive an Obama administration rule ensuring equal treatment for online traffic—the so-called “net neutrality” rule recently erased by the Trump FCC. But the vote wasn't really about "net neutrality." Instead, it was a deeply political, bipartisan call—three Republican senators, including Susan Collins of Maine, signed on—for internet freedom writ large. Here's why: "Net neutrality," these days, is shorthand for "We don't like how much unconstrained power Comcast, Spectrum, AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink have over us."

An op-ed by Lawrence Lessig. Almost exactly 20 years ago, Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which extended the term of existing copyrights by 20 years. The Act was the 11th extension in the prior 40 years, timed perfectly to assure that certain famous works, including Mickey Mouse, would not pass into the public domain...Twenty years later, the fight for term extension has begun anew. Buried in an otherwise harmless act, passed by the House and now being considered in the Senate, this new bill purports to create a new digital performance right—basically the right to control copies of recordings on any digital platform (ever hear of the internet?)—for musical recordings made before 1972.

Laurence Tribe and Fox News fact-check the recent Rudy Giuliani headlines that Mueller told the Trump team he can’t indict a sitting president—and discuss how “to end a presidency” with Lawrence O’Donnell.

The framers of the Constitution debated myriad difficult topics in creating our system of government. Among the most contentious focused on how to remove leaders guilty of serious abuses of their offices. “Benjamin Franklin was pretty clear that without impeachment, the only way of getting rid of a tyrannical ruler would be assassination,” said Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, whose latest book, co-authored with Joshua Matz, is titled “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment.”

Harvard Law professor and “To End a Presidency” author Laurence Tribe on the possibility of an impeachment trial for President Trump.

Over the years, Harvard Law School’s past relating to its troubling ties with slavery in America has been revealed, and the educational institution has faced a backlash for its historical rough patch. Since then, a plaque has been placed on the campus to honor the enslaved people whose labor created wealth and made it possible for the school to open its doors in 1817...On May 6, Jazzmin Carr [`18], a third-year law student, shared a powerful photo on Instagram of nine black women from the Harvard Law School dressed in all black with gold accents and their arms crossed in front of their chests. The caption read, “For Colored Girls [who Conquered Harvard Law/ When Settling for America’s Trash Patriarchy Wasn’t] Enuf.’••••• Ladies of Harvard Black Law Students Association’s Class of 2018.”...“As we honored and reflected on the rich history and trailblazers of our organization, I wanted to bring our current members together for a visual display of where and who we are today,” she tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. In politics, disagreement is good. But our current moment of polarization looks more like a political disaster: People of different beliefs watch different cable news channels, read different news sites, and listen to different radio stations. Is there an antidote? And if so, what would it look like? Here at Bloomberg Opinion, we have an idea for an experiment on a modest scale to begin the process of addressing the challenge. It’s an experiment in video, and it relies on a technique for arguments that we’re calling “The Method,” with apologies to Socrates.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman...Color me genuinely confused by the outcry against Texas televangelist Robert Jeffress, who spoke Monday at the opening of the American Embassy in Jerusalem. Jeffress has previously said that “you can’t be saved being a Jew,” that Mormonism is a “heresy” and that Islam is “wrong.” It seems strange to me, for example, that Mitt Romney, a devout Mormon, is tweeting that Jeffress is “a religious bigot.” Do those statements really make Jeffress, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, a bigot? All he is doing is echoing an almost 1,800-year-old doctrine: Extra ecclesiam nulla salus, there is no salvation outside the church. It can be traced to St. Cyprian of Carthage, who died in the year 258. The basic idea is that Jesus Christ came to save those who believe in him — and not those who don’t.

American law students entering on-campus interviews for Big Law summer associate jobs this summer will be armed with one new piece of information: whether firms require associates to sign mandatory arbitration agreements. Molly Coleman [`20], a rising 2L at Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Mass., will be paying close attention. She’s part of the reason firms will be disclosing this information at all. “This will absolutely be a key factor in determining where I decide to interview,” Coleman told Bloomberg Law...The initiative is the result of grassroots campaigns mounted by students like Coleman at top U.S. law schools, who believe mandatory arbitration agreements effectively force employees to sign away their rights to go to court if they ever experience illegal treatment in the workplace.

...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.