Media Mentions

Kent Whitaker lost his wife and son to a criminal act. Now he's about to lose his last remaining child. We call on Gov. Greg Abbott to end this chain of death and grant clemency to Thomas "Bart" Whitaker. In 2007, Bart was convicted of a murder-for-hire plot to kill his mother and brother. His execution is scheduled for Thursday. There is no questioning the sickness - the evil - that must course through a man's veins if he is driven to such a horrific act. But compounding violence upon violence will not bring a family back to life, nor will it further the cause of justice or bring peace to the victims...Leading legal minds of our state, such as former Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Tom Price and current Judge Elsa Alcala, have peered into the inner workings of our capital punishment system and recognized its fatal flaws. A study by Harvard Law School's Fair Punishment Project called it "too broken to fix."

An op-ed by Jack Goldsmith. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia indictment represents “a remarkable rebuke of the president’s claims” that the Russia investigation was a “phony Democrat excuse for losing the election,” the Lawfare team concluded. The indictment also educates the American public about the reality and scale of the Russian threat to the American political process more credibly than last year’s intelligence community report on the matter. Perhaps it will help the United States build resilience against future attacks.

Has indicted former Trump campaign adviser Rick Gates been playing “Queen for a Day”? According to media reports, Gates is finalizing a plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller and has had a “queen for a day” interview. A “queen for a day” interview happens in a federal case when someone involved in a case offers to tell prosecutors what they know, with prosecutors promising not to use that interview directly against them...Typically, such interviews are held when prosecutors already have the person “dead to rights,” and they want to know what else the person can offer in terms of information that will merit them a plea deal, said Alex Whiting, a Harvard Law School professor whose career includes stints as a federal prosecutor in Boston and Washington as well as at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

Students, faculty, and administrators at the Law School say they are pleased Harvard’s 29th president will be one of their own. University President-elect Lawrence S. Bacow, who will take office after President Drew G. Faust steps down in June, graduated from the Law School with a J.D. in 1976. He also holds two degrees from the Kennedy School...John F. Manning ’82, dean of the Law School, wrote in an emailed statement that he is “delighted” with Bacow’s appointment and “look[s] forward to working with him.”...Manning’s predecessor as dean, Martha L. Minow, wrote in an email that she thinks Bacow’s legal training has equipped him well to lead universities like Tufts, and now, Harvard. “Larry Bacow is not only a proven, effective leader in higher education who passionately cares about access, inclusion, and excellence; he is also genuinely perceptive and wise,” she wrote...“Larry Bacow wasn’t my student, but I wish he had been,” [Laurence] Tribe wrote in an email. “He’s a wonderful choice as Harvard’s next President and I look forward to getting to know him. Just listening to one of his long-form interviews is a source of inspiration and comfort. His background and vision seem ideal for this difficult time of turmoil and transition.”...Jyoti Jasrasaria ’12 [`18], a third-year law student who chaired the student committee that advised the presidential search, said the committee reached out to students across the University, including law students, to solicit input about the search. “Personally, I think, based on the outreach that I did to students along with the rest of the committee over the course of the past few months, that what we have seen and heard from Larry Bacow so far it seems like he is going to be a really good president,” Jasrasaria said...Historically, the Law School has shown a tendency to strike out on its own and occasionally depart from University-wide policy. Jacob R. Steiner [`18], a third-year Law student who served as a Law School representative on the student advisory committee, said he thinks Bacow’s experience at HLS will translate into a deeper understanding of the school’s specific needs and a stronger relationship between the Law School and the University.

Bringing the first indictment directly related to Russian election meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged 13 Russian individuals and three organizations with illegally plotting to sow political discord and sway the election for then-candidate Donald Trump. The 37-page indictment says the named individuals began conspiring in 2014 to interfere in the American political system, and used false identities to spread divisive political material on social media...Weighing in via email, Harvard law professor Alex Whiting said that the new indictments are important because, up until now, the details about Russian interference in the presidential election were limited to intelligence reports. “Now Mueller is providing specific information about how this was done,” said Whiting, who served as the prosecutions coordinator at the International Criminal Court at the Hague.

No public or private university in Oregon can claim membership to academia’s most exclusive club, those giants of scientific research that spin off entire industries and propel their local economies. No school here regularly cracks the top 50 institutions for federal research dollars. But seeds now in place in Eugene, Newport and Portland hold the potential for a collective breakthrough. New scientific research centers -- backed by hundreds of millions in public and private dollars -- are moving forward or nearing completion, a chain reaction that could transform the state...That’s not an unreasonable concern, said Michael Teitelbaum, a senior research associate at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School who has authored a book on boom-and-bust cycles in scientific research. Schools are “sometimes too enthusiastic about the value of expanding basic research facilities,” he said. But Oregon is well positioned because it has one of the nation’s wealthiest people – Knight is worth an estimated $26.6 billion -- bankrolling two major projects.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russian individuals and three organizations for allegedly interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election sets the stage for the prosecution of Americans who may have helped the Russian effort, some legal experts said...If an American helped direct the Russian acts, that could lead to charges as well, said Harvard Law School Professor Alex Whiting. “If there were meetings between the Trump campaign and the Russians, and the Trump campaign officials encouraged the Russians or guided them to particular types of work, or provided them assistance so that they could focus their interference, that would be collusion,” said Whiting, a former federal prosecutor.

One of the most ubiquitous features of the internet is the ability to link to content elsewhere. Everything is connected via billions of links and embeds to blogs, articles, and social media. But a federal judge’s ruling threatens that ecosystem. Katherine Forrest, a Southern District of New York judge, ruled Thursday that embedding a tweet containing an image in a webpage could be considered copyright infringement. The decision can be appealed, but if it stands and is adopted by other courts, it could change the way online publishing functions... "The ruling is disappointing and may result in an increase in similar litigation, but all hope is not lost. The news organizations still have a number of potential defenses, including fair use," says Kendra Albert, a technology lawyer and fellow at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic.

A speech by Lawrence Lessig. None of us want to be here. I don’t mean literally. This is New Orleans, and I’m sharing a stage with Jennifer Lawrence, and my hero, Buddy Roemer, so don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty happy to be here. But none of us want to have to be here. None of us want to be living in a democracy where our first fight has got to be about that democracy. Because all of us believe that there are real things, important things, substantive things that this democracy must do. But can’t do now.

What happens when you become president of the world’s most prestigious university? Suddenly everyone has advice for you. Lawrence S. Bacow, the former president of Tufts University, was named Harvard University’s next leader last week, and already the lobbying has begun. Here’s a taste of what students, alumni, professors, and others say they want him to focus on, when he takes over from president Drew Faust after her retirement in June...Jeannie Suk Gersen: “I hope President Bacow will focus on strengthening traditions of free speech, academic freedom, and respect for intellectual diversity that make possible the uncomfortable exploration of ideas that push us to discovery.”

...Where does the outrage come from, and why does it seem to emerge so suddenly? Media reporting is often a trigger, but for every hard-hitting investigation that unleashes a sustained storm, a dozen squalls blow over swiftly. One clue comes from a large research study of jury-style deliberations, conducted by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and David Schkade, along with Cass Sunstein, who has recently been exploring the dynamics of outrage. (Mr Sunstein was a senior official in the Obama administration, co-author with Richard Thaler of Nudge and is a legal scholar at Harvard Law School.) This study looked at debates over punitive damage awards against corporations. When individual jurors felt a corporate crime was outrageous, the group displayed a “severity shift”.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The state of North Carolina is paying $300,000 to a magistrate who quit rather than marry gay couples as ordered by the courts. Something is seriously wrong here. The magistrate was entitled to resign as a matter of conscience. But the religious accommodation that federal law requires of ordinary employers shouldn’t apply to state officials who say that their religion means they can’t obey their oath to the U.S. Constitution.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. The use of the Second Amendment to block consideration of sensible gun control measures is a national disgrace. And conservatives themselves have explained why this is true. For decades, conservatives have objected to the use of constitutional provisions as a political weapon, insisting that controversies should be resolved in democratic arenas instead. They have made this argument to oppose judicial recognition of the right to choose abortion; protection of same-sex marriage; creation of a rigid “wall” between church and state; and creation of new rights in the criminal justice system. Going even further, they have argued against the left’s efforts to use the Constitution to block reasonable political debates — about religion, about privacy, about equality — that the justices have never settled.

Two years after the FBI unsuccessfully sought Apple's help to hack into a phone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists, law enforcement and companies are no closer to resolving the dispute over digital-message privacy...The EastWest Institute, a New York-based security think tank, has produced a report offering nine points that encourage governments to allow the use of strong encryption while creating a legal framework for authorized law enforcement to access the plain text of encrypted data in limited cases...What is decided will have influence far beyond our borders because the U.S. has long served as a role model to Europe in encryption policy, said David O’Brien, a senior researcher at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. It’s official: Syria has become a war of all against all. The latest proof is the report that U.S. planes killed somewhere between four and 200 Russian “mercenaries” last week. A few days before that news broke, Israel shot down an Iranian drone that came from Syria and then attacked Iranian targets, losing an F-16 in the process. And just a few days before that, Turkey mounted an extensive war against U.S.-backed Syrian Kurds -- probably the same people who called in the airstrikes against the Russians.

Campaign attorneys and legal scholars are divided on whether Michael Cohen’s $130,000 payment to an adult film star weeks before the presidential election is a violation of campaign-finance law. Mr. Cohen, a longtime personal attorney for President Donald Trump, said Tuesday night that the payment to Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, was a “private transaction” using his personal funds. “The payment to Ms. Clifford was lawful and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone,” Mr. Cohen said in the statement...Thomas Frampton, a lecturer at Harvard Law School, said one of the critical issues in Mr. Edwards’ case was whether the payments were for the purpose of “influencing an election,” as opposed to merely concealing an affair. Prosecutors had difficulty proving the former in part because some of the payments happened as Mr. Edwards was dropping out of the race, Mr. Frampton said.

Heidi Gardner knows how to get law firms to pay attention when she tells them collaboration – not exorbitant rewards to rainmakers and an eat-what-you-kill environment – is the key to long-term success and profitability: by using hard data..."We've got millions of data records from lots of different firms, sometimes spanning up to 10 years," she told The Australian Financial Review during a recent visit to Sydney. "We can measure collaboration and we can measure the outcomes, sometimes years down the road, and show strategically there are very strong benefits of collaboration."

Jennifer Ann Drobac, a [visiting scholar] at Harvard University Law School, discusses a new lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein that was brought by New York attorney general Eric Schniederman over the sale of his company, Weinstein Co. She speaks with Bloomberg’s June Grasso on Bloomberg Radio’s "Politics, Policy, Power and Law."

Donald Trump has turned the political world upside down, again and again, like a kid flipping a coin. Every day we wake up to either a new scandal or several lingering ones. It is astounding. It is maddening. It is numbing...As the Harvard professor of constitutional law Laurence H. Tribe wrote on Twitter: “F.B.I. director Wray just testified in the Senate that — despite Russia’s ongoing intrusions into our electoral systems — Potus has never charged the F.B.I. with protecting U.S. elections from Russia! Let that sink in. That’d be like F.D.R. doing nothing in response to Pearl Harbor.” Let me be clear: Any president who refuses to protect Americans from a foreign threat is himself a domestic threat.

Politico reports: Jared Kushner, a White House aide and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, appears to have drawn more money out of three separate lines of credit in the months after he joined the White House last year, a newly released document shows...In sum, Kushner has huge and growing debt, many suspicious Russian contacts and a close relationship (perhaps second only to Ivanka’s) with Trump. “The more money Kushner owes, especially to lenders or guarantors who do not have America’s best interests at heart, the more he and his father-in-law the President are subject to compromising pressures at best and outright blackmail at worst,” constitutional lawyer Larry Tribe tells me.

An interview with Nancy Gertner. By January 6, the Powerball lottery jackpot hit a new high at $560 million - one of the largest in U.S. history. The winner was a woman from Southern New Hampshire, who is arguing in court for her right to remain anonymous. A team of lawyers went to court this week to fight for her anonymity.