Media Mentions

A coalition led by California sued the Trump administration over car emissions rules on Tuesday, escalating a revolt against a proposed rollback of fuel economy standards that threatens to split the country’s auto market. In a lawsuit filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, California and its coalition — 16 other states and the District of Columbia — called the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to weaken auto emissions rules unlawful and accused the agency of failing to follow its own regulations, and of violating the Clean Air Act...It is not yet clear if the E.P.A. will take those steps, but Tuesday’s lawsuit could strengthen California’s legal hand if that were to happen. “This is a preliminary challenge. It’s a shot across the bow,” said Jody Freeman, a professor of environmental law at Harvard University who advised the Obama administration. “It sets the table to challenge the agency’s reasons for rolling back the rule, if they go ahead and do it.”

A letter by Samuel Garcia `19. As Mickey Edwards clearly states in “Trump’s travel ban isn’t just about executive authority — it’s also about congressional responsibility” (Opinion, April 26), Congress has created a list of “dos and don’ts” that dictate how the president should implement immigration policy. That list includes that you cannot discriminate based on nationality, but even if the travel ban was repealed on those grounds, would it stop officials who feel empowered by the president from discriminating anyway? It seems that the president’s sentiment toward immigration has seeped through to the nation’s agencies, and it is unclear whether any strict legal guidance can stop them.

Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard University professor of law and former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, received the Evangelium Vitae Medal from the University of Notre Dame's Center for Ethics and Culture...Glendon said the award serves to honor the many individuals involved in the pro-life movement. "You are paying tribute to the rank-and-file of the broadest-based grass-roots movement in America -- men and women who have made time in their lives to respond in whatever ways they can to the call to help build the culture of life and love," Glendon said. "It is no small achievement that Americans have become steadily more pro-life over the years."

Over more than two decades, Jean-Noel Frydman built France.com into a thriving business, selling tours online to Paris, Burgundy, the Riviera and other popular French destinations. But on March 12, his business vanished. That was the day the French government prevailed in a yearslong effort to seize the coveted domain name, persuading the company that had long managed it, Web.com, to hand it over...Now, Mr. Frydman, who says he stands to lose millions of dollars in profit without the site, is fighting back — by taking France to court in America. The battle, which began in French court in 2015, is more than just a curiosity: It could have greater consequences for the internet at large, said Vivek Krishnamurthy, a lawyer and instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, which is assisting Mr. Frydman. “The reason why we got involved is that there seemed to be a chance of a significant injustice being done here and one that has really important implications for how the internet works,” Mr. Krishnamurthy said.

An interview with Nancy Gertner. Yesterday, The New York Times published a list of dozens of questions that Special Counsel Robert Mueller hopes to ask President Trump as part of his investigation. The questions cover a wide range of topics, and provide the most in-depth look at what the Special Counsel's investigation is focusing on to date.

A lawsuit that California filed Tuesday challenging the Trump administration's plan to roll back vehicle emissions standards has more at stake than pollution limits: It might also affect whether the state can retain its unique power to chart its own course in regulating tailpipe emissions. Since 1970, California has enjoyed authority from Congress to implement its own, tighter vehicle emissions standards, which more than a dozen other states also follow. Vehicle emissions last year ranked the greatest source of heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S...The EPA, meanwhile, "could basically ignore [California's] waiver and argue that California is pre-empted from setting standards" under the law that gives federal authorities the power to set fuel efficiency standards," or "EPA could decide to revoke it," says Jody Freeman, who served as the White House's counselor for energy and climate change from 2009-2010, and is a professor and director of the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School.

...Since the 1970s and 1980s, U.S. air quality has unquestionably improved. However, new research, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that gains made in a critical component of smog, pollutants called nitrogen oxides, have slowed dramatically between 2011 and 2015. The exact cause of the slowdown is still uncertain, but finding the sources could prove more difficult under the current EPA, which has challenged independent scientific research — including the new proposal that would exclude certain public health and air pollution studies when considering changes to federal air standards. "In a historically normal administration, this would be a conversation about putting resources into investigating the question of where these nitrogen oxide emissions are coming from," Joseph Goffman, executive director of Harvard University's environmental and energy law program, said in an interview. Goffman was not involved in the new study. "Now, we're dealing with an EPA that is crippling its access to scientific resources," he said.

An op-ed by Jack Goldsmith. “I am reluctant to write a memoir and would rather write about leadership,” my friend Jim Comey told me in an email on June 16, 2017, about five weeks after Donald Trump fired him as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation...Comey did end up writing a memoir in the sense that his book is nominally about the story of his eventful life, from his childhood in Yonkers to his June 8, 2017 testimony before the Senate intelligence committee about his interactions with President Trump. But his book—which I saw for the first time after publication—is really about what he really wanted to write about: ethical leadership. It is the best book on leadership I have ever read.

University President Drew G. Faust has formed a “review committee” to determine the exact “sequence of events” leading to the forcible arrest of a black undergraduate April 13 and to undertake a “systematic examination” of a wide variety of Harvard policies. “The committee will start by determining the sequence of events leading to the student’s events,” Faust wrote in an email to students Monday. The results of that determination will then "inform a more systematic examination of opportunities for improvement across a range of institutional activities," Faust wrote...Harvard Law School and History professor Annette Gordon-Reed will chair the committee, according to Faust’s email. The group will include six other individuals including professors at the Business School, Kennedy School, Graduate School of Education, and Medical School, as well as a House faculty dean...BLSA has called the incident an instance of police brutality, and Cambridge Mayor Marc C. McGovern and Faust later called the incident “disturbing.” Harvard Law professors Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. and Dehlia Umunna, who lead the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute, are now legally representing the student.

Women speakers at the Milken Institute Global Conference on Monday called for a new push for change in the corporate world and investing now that the #MeToo movement has spread to industries outside of Hollywood...Harvard Law School professor Catharine MacKinnon, a long-time researcher on gender equality, said that male leaders at companies can make a difference by not tolerating any sexual harassment and making it clear to all employees. "I've seen heads of companies get everyone together and actually say, 'We don't do this here. You don't come here to graze on the women'," she said. She added that in her early days of work on sexual harassment research, the issue would be dismissed.

...Landing a Supreme Court clerkship after graduation is not easy. Excellent grades and prior clerking experience are often prerequisites—and Ivy League pedigrees and law journal experience help. The year-long position entails assisting a justice and researching cases, and those who aspire to be among the chosen few begin jockeying early for positions and accolades that will one day lead them to the nation’s highest court...The Law School has two full-time clerkship advisers, according to Kirsten Solberg, associate director of career services and director of judicial clerkships at the Law School’s Office of Career Services. Harvard’s centuries-long relationship to the country’s top courts has entrenched an extensive network of individuals that students tap into as they go through the application process. “We have a vast network of alumni judges, former clerks, and current clerks, not to mention faculty and staff, who actively support our applicants,” Solberg wrote...Making the cut isn’t the final hurdle on the path to clerking at the Supreme Court; for those with hefty loan burdens, finances can pose an additional challenge...The Law School’s Low Income Protection Plan aims to assist students who choose to pursue careers in public interest and other low-paying legal jobs...Clerkships, however, comprise a special case. While students are clerking, their LIPP experiences are similar to any other LIPP-eligible job. After their clerkships have concluded, though, LIPP participants must work in another LIPP-eligible jobs or they are required to pay back the assistance they received from LIPP during their clerkship. “If you take a position that’s not LIPP-eligible immediately after your clerkship, then you’re obligated to repay the clerkship you got,” Kenneth Lafler, assistant dean for student financial services at the Law School, said.

Ashley Judd sued Harvey Weinstein on Monday, opening a new legal battlefront for the disgraced film producer by claiming that her career withered because he spread lies about her in Hollywood after she rejected his sexual requests. It is rare for people to recover damages for smear campaigns — for instance, quietly labeling actresses as “difficult” when they don’t acquiesce to powerful men — because of how complicated it can be to prove the action took place, let alone directly harmed someone’s career. But Ms. Judd has an A-list director on her side: Peter Jackson, who came forward in December to say that he removed her from a casting list “as a direct result” of what he now thought was “false information” provided by Mr. Weinstein...Jeannie Suk Gersen, a professor at Harvard Law School who specializes in gender and sexual harassment issues, said Ms. Judd’s complaint is notable because it “speaks to the fact that this is not just a sexual issue — that, beyond physical and emotional harm, it also involves economic harm.” She added, “If successful, the legal arguments that are being marshaled here are a big deal for lots of people, not just in show business but in all sorts of hiring contexts.”

We will never know if consolidated shareholder litigation to block Fujifilm’s $6.1 billion acquisition of Xerox Corp would have turned out differently had it taken place in Delaware Chancery Court instead of New York State Supreme Court. But a dramatic decision in the Xerox case has spurred lawyers and academics to ask whether Delaware has become too deferential to corporate boards... The state justices essentially said that when independent boards exercise their business judgment to approve strategic mergers – and give shareholders a right to vote on the deals – Chancery Court should not stand in the way, particularly if there’s no competing bid for the company. Since then, said Harvard law school professor Guhan Subramanian, the trajectory in Delaware Chancery Court has been away from scrutiny of deal processes. Subramanian, who was an expert witness for shareholders in the Xerox case, said he was impressed that, in contrast to Delaware courts in recent years, Justice Ostrager was willing “to engage in a meaningful way” with details of the deal.

Receiving on Saturday what is arguably the most prestigious pro-life prize in the U.S., Harvard Law professor and former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon used the occasion to honor the legacy of other women who have shared in championing the cause of human life. Glendon was awarded the Evangelium Vitae medal by the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture, an annual prize “honoring individuals whose outstanding efforts have served to proclaim the Gospel of Life by steadfastly affirming and defending the sanctity of human life from its earliest stages.”...In accepting the award, Glendon recalled the late Revered Richard John Neuhaus’s description of the pro-life movement as the “most broad-based, the most diverse, the most sustained expression of citizen participation America has ever seen.” “Yet, despite that great diversity, the pro-life cause has often been portrayed as indifferent to women’s concerns,” said Glendon.

A book review by Randall Kennedy. ‘Thanks to their common goals and trajectories and calendars,” David Margolick observes, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy are linked in the popular mind “as no other black man and white man in the history of civil rights have ever been.” King was the most important leader of the black protest movement that, between 1954 and 1968, uprooted de jure racial segregation and put many forms of racial discrimination on the defensive. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Open Housing Act of 1968 all derive, directly and indirectly, from King’s inspired rhetoric and much-publicized sacrifice.

An op-ed by Lawrence Lessig. Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director and acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told lobbyists last week what they already knew: Legislators are dependent upon their funders, and their funders are not the people. Speaking to 1,300 attendees of the American Bankers Association conference, Mulvaney reported that as a congressman, he never spoke to lobbyists who hadn’t given him money, sometimes spoke to lobbyists who had, but always spoke to constituents who “came from back home and sat in my lobby.”

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have become so closely linked that their names have been joined to form a talisman for left-wing Democrats who embrace membership in the party's "Sanders-Warren wing." There are, however, differences to be considered as each ponders a run for the presidency in 2020. Sanders is an avowed socialist. Warren isn't. She's a capitalist, albeit one who believes in a strong government role if markets aren't protecting people..."She remains a legendary teacher, mentor and model of scholar-law-reformer," said Martha Minow, former dean of the Harvard Law School, where Warren taught before joining the Senate.

Mayoral candidate Adrian Perkins [`18] talks with 101.7 / 710 KEEL's Robert J Wright and Erin McCarty about what he sees are the major issues in the upcoming race for Shreveport's top political office. Perkins, a graduate of the United States Military Academy, tells KEEL listeners that he sees lowering crime, improving streets and bringing jobs to the area as his priorities. Perkins, who also attended Harvard Law School, says he has moved back to his hometown because, "I am a Shreveport boy. Everything that is on my resume is because I am from Shreveport." An in explaining the reason for his run: "I don't think Shreveport has another four or eight years to go down the road that its on. My platform is simple. I want to generate jobs and I want to decrease crime."

An essay by Jeannie Suk Gersen....The Cosby case is, in the end, an emblem of #MeToo, not just because it ended in a guilty verdict but because of the exceptional if controversial evidentiary procedure that enabled a chorus of witnesses—witnesses who would generally be excluded—to back up the main complaining witness and could well have made the difference between a juror having a reasonable doubt and not having it. It remains to be seen how broadly the legal workarounds for uncharged prior misconduct will be construed by trial courts in future sexual-assault cases, ones in which defendants are not alleged to have such a distinctive signature in the commission of their crimes—or so many victims.

Today, Democrat Adrian Perkins [`18] officially announced his candidacy. Perkins is 32-years old and was raised in Shreveport. He went to Harvard Law School and West Point. He believes his military experience makes him unique, compared to other candidates. Perkins wants to improve our airport, city streets, and work to provide high speed internet to everyone. He also wants lower crime saying, the way to do that is to get a new chief of police. "I want to pursue getting new leadership within the police department so we can make cultural changes. Right now, I speak to policemen all the time, I have multiple listening sessions with policemen and they want changes as well. I think new leadership can usher in those changes," said Perkins.

Two weeks after the verdict in a landmark human rights case in Fort Lauderdale, Thomas Becker was still excited. “This is a historic victory,” the attorney said. “This case shows that you can be a poor person and stand up for human rights, justice and social change. And you can win.”... The case was brought by a consortium of US human rights lawyers, including the Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic, where Becker was a student. He met one of the victims’ lawyers, Rogelio Mayta, at a La Paz dinner in 2005. “It was like combining water with thirst in a providential moment,” recalled Mayta whose team was already exploring whether bringing a civil case in the US might bring some measure of justice for the victims, given, in Mayta’s words, “the inefficiency in the Bolivian justice system.”