Media Mentions

Noah Feldman, Harvard Law Professor and Bloomberg Opinion columnist, on the payments that Michael Cohen received from corporations and a Russian oligarch, and the line between lobbying and bribes.

A book review of "To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment" by Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz...In “To End a Presidency,” Mr Tribe and Mr Matz have written a powerful, clear and even-handed guide to the legal and political aspects of impeachment, which, as they point out, is “neither a magic wand nor a doomsday device”. Previous commentators have focused on the definition of an impeachable act, then assumed that justified suspicion of such conduct means a trial in the Senate. Mr Tribe and Mr Matz explain that the definition is but the “tip of the iceberg”. Other steps towards impeachment include public hearings on alleged misconduct; investigations; establishing a committee to consider a president’s removal; debates and votes by the committee and then the House; setting the rules for the Senate trial and conducting it; and voting by the senators on each charge.

The Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC), in partnership with Qatar Foundation (QF), has launched an initiative to promote and share knowledge about behavioural economics in Qatar. Devised by the SC’s Qatar Behavioural Insights Unit (QBIU) and QF, the ‘Community of Practice for Behavioural Economics in Qatar’ hosted a discussion with Professor Cass Sunstein, the founder and director of the Programme on Behavioural Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School, at the SC’s Legacy Pavilion in Al Bidda Tower...Sunstein said he is impressed with Qatar’s commitment to behavioural economics and praised the work of the QBIU. “What I’ve noticed is that the World Cup is being seen by many as an opportunity to do something great in connection with football, and also things in relation to the type of challenges faced by many of the world’s nations, such as health issues and the promotion of entrepreneurship,” said Sunstein.

Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York attorney general who resigned this week after four women accused him of assault, was one of the most active state-level opponents of the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back environmental regulations. He was also the first attorney general to open an investigation into Exxon Mobil’s climate policies and statements. Most of Mr. Schneiderman’s environmental initiatives will almost certainly continue without him, in New York and other states. But a prominent figure in the legal fight against climate change has left the arena, and his eventual replacement could set different priorities...James E. Tierney, a former Maine attorney general who teaches a course on the role of state attorneys general at Harvard Law School, said that unless the transition from one attorney general to another involves a change of political party, lawsuits tend to continue and similar ones tend to be filed...In the wake of scandal, the shock to staff members is keenly felt, but “after a day, the assistant A. G.s will get back to work,” Mr. Tierney said. In fact, he said, cases might proceed more smoothly without Mr. Schneiderman, whose tendency to garner publicity for himself could be a distraction.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. “Follow the money.” That Watergate meme is now poised to dominate the Donald Trump-Michael Cohen investigation for this news cycle — and beyond. The impetus is a document released by lawyer Michael Avenatti, confirmed by the New York Times, that revealed that a shell company Cohen created and used to pay off the porn star Stormy Daniels received $500,000 from a company linked to a Russian oligarch with ties to Vladimir Putin.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. As more details emerge about President Donald Trump’s self-described fixer Michael Cohen, the whole mess in which Trump now finds himself may seem inevitable: Lie down with dogs and you wake up with fleas, as Poor Richard’s Almanac memorably put it. But that’s wrong. Trump could have avoided a full-on criminal investigation of the lawyer who paid off Stormy Daniels and did who knows what else that seems likely to create further serious legal problems for the president. We are where we are because of something very concrete Trump did himself a year ago this week: On May 9, 2017, the president fired James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

"Defendant is a cheater,” said Epic Games in its October 2017 lawsuit against a 14-year-old boy. “Nobody likes a cheater. And nobody likes playing with cheaters.” Epic isn’t the first games studio that’s has sued over cheating...Epic Games v. Rogers is a little different from the rest of the cases that were filed alongside it...None of the other cases have gone after mere cheaters themselves, according to Kendra Albert, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School who’s an expert on the law around video games. Albert does note that Jagex v. Does (otherwise known as the Runescape case) went after John Does who were using bots. But in that case, the company appeared to be using a lawsuit to identify bot-using players through their PayPal accounts. Once it had that contact information, it dropped the lawsuit, banned players, sent out settlement letters.

An op-ed by Jack Goldsmith. The particular manner in which President Obama crafted the Iran deal paved the way for President Trump to withdraw from it. Obama made the deal on his own presidential authority, in the face of significant domestic opposition, without seeking or receiving approval from the Senate or the Congress. He was able to do this, and to skirt constitutional requirements for senatorial or congressional consent, because he made the deal as a political commitment rather than a binding legal obligation.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. In December of 2006, Donald Trump paraded Masayoshi Son, CEO of Japan's SoftBank, through the lobby of Trump Tower. The proud president-elect called Son “one of the great men of industry.” Indeed, the two have a lot in common. They're both big talkers with deep respect for enormous numbers of zeros—Son is the world's 39th richest man—whose favorite currency is favors. Son promised over a year ago to bring jobs to the US, and, in response, Trump promised to make it easier for Son to do business in America. Last week, relentless, idiosyncratic, one-man-show dealmaker Son (sound familiar?) began the process of calling in Trump's promise of deregulation: Sprint, which is owned by SoftBank, will be acquired by T-Mobile, even though the federal government has twice in the past seven years said such a combination would be illegal. Is our government bound by the rule of law or the rule of President Trump?

So Warren Buffett is "delighted" that Apple Inc. has decided to buy back $100 billion worth of its own stock. And really, why wouldn't he be? As he pointed out Saturday during Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s annual meeting, Berkshire owns somewhere around 5 percent of Apple. "And," he noted happily, "with the passage of a little time, I figure we might own 6 or 7 percent simply because they repurchased shares." He added, "I love the idea of having our 5 percent or whatever it may be grow to 6 or 7 percent without us having to lay out a dime." But how should the rest of us feel about this use of Apple's cash?...When I asked Jesse Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School and the author of a recent article defending share buybacks in the Harvard Business Review, why companies weren't using the money to give employees raises, he scoffed. "The idea that a for-profit company shares the wealth with its workers is pretty far-fetched," he said.

An interview with Nancy Gertner. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman will resign after four women told The New Yorker he choked and repeatedly slapped them during romantic relationships. Schneiderman had filed over 100 legal or administrative actions against President Trump and congressional Republicans. What will his departure mean for the future of those actions and the agenda of attorney general's office?

President Donald Trump wants Americans to get lower prices for medicines — and the rest of the world may pay for it. His "America First" message on drugs at home, coupled with pro-pharmaceutical industry policies abroad, could lead to higher costs for patients around the world — without making drugs more affordable for those in the U.S. Trump on Friday plans to deliver his long-promised speech on how to lower drug costs, addressing an industry he has in the past accused of "getting away with murder." Global health officials worry he will also target practices that keep medicines affordable in other countries...“It’s certainly possible that pharmaceutical companies will pocket the profits from higher overseas pharmaceutical prices to the benefit of shareholders,” without lowering U.S prices, said Mark Wu, a trade expert at Harvard Law School. “On the other hand, it could provide the administration with some leverage to push pharmaceutical companies to lower their prices domestically in return for these overseas gains and benefits from the new tax plan.”

President Trump has won confirmation of 15 circuit court judges, but he still has a long way to go in reshaping the courts because most of those picks have replaced retiring Republicans rather than adding to the party’s overall numbers. So far, Mr. Trump has not dramatically altered the makeup of any of the 12 circuit courts of appeals. But with a dozen circuit court nominees pending, that could soon change. In several circuits, the number of Democrat-appointed judges is slightly higher than the number of Republican-appointed judges...Charles Fried, a law professor at Harvard University, is disappointed that judicial nominees are chosen these days on more ideological and political grounds. “In the end, we might as well elect our judges and have done with it,” he said.

A new interdisciplinary project at Harvard will explore how behavioral science and behavioral economics can help improve health outcomes for patients and decisions made by doctors. It also has the potential to increase cost-effectiveness. The project, Behavioral Insights Health Project at Harvard, is a University-wide partnership between faculty members at Harvard Medical School, Harvard Law School and other Harvard schools...The Project’s board of advisers, which is expected to grow, includes a wide range of faculty from the Harvard community, including Harvard Medical School, Harvard Law School, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard Kennedy School. [Cass] Sunstein said he expects the project to attract students and faculty from schools across the University, and, in particular, to draw on the research and expertise of the Behavioral Insights Group based at the Harvard Kennedy School.  “We intend to share best practices, explore which interventions work and which do not, and find ways to reduce illness, suffering and premature mortality,” said Sunstein.

Bloomberg Boston Bureau Chief Tom Moroney and Radio News Anchors Peter Barnes, Pat Carroll and Anne Mostue are joined by top names from local business and finance to medicine and politics, along with Bloomberg reporters covering the latest stories in Boston, the Bay State and beyond...Harvard Law Professor Jonathan Zittrain explained what he believes Mark Zuckerberg could do to fix the mess at Facebook.

For the last 17 months, Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York, had held himself up as the anti-Trump: a one-man legal wrecking ball, taking on the president and his agenda in both the courts and the court of public opinion. His sudden and spectacular downfall — Mr. Schneiderman announced his resignation hours after four women emerged to describe in detail how he had physically assaulted them — has raised questions of whether a powerful office at the heart of the Democratic legal resistance could be sidelined and besmirched by scandal...Even though Mr. Schneiderman has often served as the public face of the sprawling legal battles against Mr. Trump, Mr. Rankin said that his organization had already devised a strategy to share responsibility for the various lawsuits against the president’s policies...“Nothing is going to change,” predicted James E. Tierney, a former attorney general of Maine who is now a lecturer at Harvard Law School. “No change — zero.”

As America heads toward the 2018 midterms, there's an 800-pound gorilla in the voting booth. Despite improvements since Russia's attack on the 2016 presidential race, the U.S. elections infrastructure is vulnerable — and will remain so in November. Cybersecurity expert Bruce Schneier laid out the problem to an overflowing room full of election directors and secretaries of state — people charged with running and securing elections — at a conference at Harvard University this Spring. "Computers are basically insecure," said Schneier. "Voting systems are not magical in any way. They are computers."..."This is the problem we always have in computer security — basically nobody has ever built a secure computer. That's the reality," Schneier said. "I want to build a robust system that is secure despite the fact that computers have vulnerabilities, rather than pretend that they don't because no one has found them yet. And people will find them — whether it's nation states or teenagers on a weekend."

An op-ed by Bruce Schneier. Earlier this month, the Pentagon stopped selling phones made by the Chinese companies ZTE and Huawei on military bases because they might be used to spy on their users. It’s a legitimate fear, and perhaps a prudent action. But it’s just one instance of the much larger issue of securing our supply chains. All of our computerized systems are deeply international, and we have no choice but to trust the companies and governments that touch those systems. And while we can ban a few specific products, services or companies, no country can isolate itself from potential foreign interference.

The Trump administration is preparing to battle California’s tough car pollution regulations using an approach that federal courts have already rejected. Twice. Federal regulators are drafting a proposal that takes aim at California’s cherished authority to set its own smog-busting rules. A leaked draft of the plan that is being finalized for submission to the White House shows that it wouldn’t outright revoke the state’s ability to set pollution standards, but it asserts that a 1975 law prohibits states from setting their own limits on greenhouse gas emissions...The so-called preemption argument in the draft EPA-NHTSA proposal “looks like an effort to do an end-run around the waiver,” said Jody Freeman, a Harvard environmental law professor.

An interview with Glenn Cohen. More than 12 million people have had their DNA analyzed by direct-to-consumer genealogy tests like 23andMe and ancestry.com. That number more than doubled last year, giving the industry a huge boost. Late last month, authorities charged a man in Sacramento County, California as the so-called Golden State Killer after tracking him down with a private DNA test company, one called GEDmatch.  Joseph James DeAngelo is accused of a string of rapes and murders in the 1970s and 80s. The suspect never gave his own DNA to GEDmatch, but his relatives did, and that allowed police to find him. Some law enforcement officials say such tests are a promising tool to catch criminals, while privacy advocates are worried that innocent people might be swept up if a search is too broad. 

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. There is talk these days about a complex and somewhat arcane legal concept: obstruction of justice. The term refers, broadly speaking, to willful efforts to interfere with the operations of the legal process, including criminal investigations. Let’s bracket the hardest definitional puzzles for now, and ask a question that could become pressing before long: What happens if special counsel Robert Mueller concludes that President Donald Trump has, in fact, obstructed justice? In answering, we should take a vow of neutrality. We should not allow our views about any particular president — negative or positive — to color our understanding of the meaning of the Constitution.