Media Mentions

An interview with fellow Leah Plunkett. How young is too young to get married and who decides? The current legal age in New Hampshire is thirteen for girls and fourteen for boys. Now, as the legislature debates several bills to change this, we examine the legal, cultural, and political issues involved.

The Department of Labor has proposed a new regulation that would allow businesses to collect tips earned by their employees and either redistribute them to non-tipped workers or keep them as part of their own profits. The proposal — a win for the powerful National Restaurant Association — has outraged critics, and a new report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found it would transfer $5.8 billion per year from workers to employers, with nearly 80% of these tips taken from female workers...Women and people of color are both more likely to be tipped employees and to earn lower wages than white men, so critics say the law would have a disproportionate adverse impact on both, and particularly women. "What is at stake is the ability of women to support themselves and their families," Sharon Block, executive director of the Labor and Worklife program at Harvard Law School and a former DOL official under the Obama administration, told Business Insider. "People often overlook that minimum wage workers are disproportionately women."

Widespread abuses. Rampant impunity. Forgotten victims. Afghanistan was just the kind of case that the founders had in mind when they set up the International Criminal Court to bring powerful people to justice. More than 15 years later, prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has asked judges for permission to open an investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity in the country. But with the government, militants and US forces in the prosecutor’s sights, is the ICC promising more than it can deliver to the countless victims who have suffered decades of violence and abuse?...Alex Whiting, a professor at Harvard Law School and a former senior official in the prosecutor’s office, says the ICC is in a difficult situation – which is perhaps why it took 10 years to bring its case to judges. “It you don't act, your legitimacy is undermined, and you look weak and not willing to take on big powers,” he said.

There are good ways to start measuring how much the Trump tax cuts might be helping American workers. Tracking the bonus announcements flowing from corporations is not one of them....The flurry of high-profile bonus announcements “are hard to interpret,” said Mihir Desai, an economist at Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School whose research supports the idea that corporate tax cuts lead to at least modest wage increases. “They may well be evidence for these gains, but just as well may be an example of savvy public relations. The reality is we’ll have to wait for a few years and good empirical work to really know the answer.”

Not every lesson learned at Harvard Law School takes place in a classroom. One startup, Evisort, was created by Harvard Law School students who saw the need to bring efficiency to the analysis and review of legal documents. Originally, the students were not even planning to start a company. But they began working on Evisort’s development after speaking with attorneys who told them about the inefficiencies found in the legal industry, especially as the volume of data skyrockets...Jerry Ting [`18], Evisort’s co-founder and CEO, told Legaltech News, “Our algorithms were developed by our team members, beginning with our first proof of concept nearly two years ago. Since then, we’ve built up a suite of algorithms aimed at tackling the different types of data within contracts, and a platform that allows users to leverage the powerful algorithms we run on their contracts.

On Saturday, Democratic New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand provided a pertinent reminder that the road to mass incarceration is paved with good intentions. In a trio of tweets, Gillibrand, a likely contender in the 2020 presidential race, expressed her support for the campaign to recall Aaron Persky, the judge who sentenced Brock Turner to just six months in jail for violent sexual assault...“The current recall movement,” Harvard Law professor Jeannie Suk Gersen wrote in the New Yorker, “could have the effect of pressuring judges to play it safe by sentencing more harshly—and there is no reason to believe that will be true only in cases with white male rape defendants.”

A book review by Annette Gordon-Reed. The title of Hillary Clinton’s memoir of her unsuccessful campaign for the presidency, What Happened, has no question mark at the end, although many people around the world might reflexively add one. Clinton’s defeat surprised—stunned—many, including, as is clear from her recollections, Clinton herself. The majority of polls of the likely electorate indicated that she was headed for a nearly certain win, although her prolonged struggle for the Democratic nomination against a wild-haired, septuagenarian socialist from Vermont was a blinking sign of danger ahead. A significant number of voters were in no mood to play it safe, and the safe choice was what Clinton far too confidently offered in both the primaries and the general election.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. On balance, the question of whether social media platforms are good for democracy is easy. On balance, they are not merely good; they are terrific. For people to govern themselves, they need to have information. They also need to be able to convey it to others. Social media platforms make that tons easier. There is a subtler point as well. When democracies are functioning properly, people’s sufferings and challenges are not entirely private matters. Social media platforms help us alert one another to a million and one different problems. In the process, the existence of social media can prod citizens to seek solutions.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Combining stock market performance and approval ratings provides useful (and different) information about presidential performance. The market boom under Trump is not the largest rally in history, but it’s big. We don’t know to what extent Trump’s policies are responsible for the rise, but he didn’t hurt and he probably helped. At the same time, his approval ratings are under 40 percent. In modern history, no president has entered his second year with such low numbers.

The American labor movement, over the past four decades, has had two golden opportunities to shift the balance of power between workers and bosses — first in 1978, with unified Democratic control of Washington, and again in 2009...Unions started discussions around EFCA in 2003, when Republicans controlled Congress and the White House...But the politics ended up being far more treacherous than labor anticipated — or perhaps more than the movement allowed itself to see. “We never had 60 votes for EFCA, we just didn’t,” said Sharon Block, who worked as senior labor counsel for Kennedy on the Senate committee on Health, Education Labor, and Pensions in 2008.

Republicans have been touting the number of companies handing out employee bonuses and pay raises — such as Walmart and Bank of America — as a surprising sign that the Trump administration’s tax cuts are working their economic magic faster than anyone expected...But a deeper look at the list of approximately 200 companies shows that more than economics is probably at play, with business experts and analysts saying that alternative motivations are likely to be behind the sudden flood of corporate generosity...Mihir Desai, a finance professor at Harvard Business School whose research was used by the White House to estimate how tax cuts would boost workers’ wages, said he believed the recent wave of bonuses could reflect lower tax rates but also an effort “to take some of the heat off what corporations are currently feeling.”

An op-ed by Francis Shen. Another year, another failed Alzheimer’s drug trial. In what is becoming routine news, in 2017, another Alzheimer’s drug failed in clinical trial, leading to the apt headline: “The List of Failed Alzheimer’s Drug Treatments Keeps Growing.” Moreover, there seem to be few evidence-based options even to limit cognitive decline. Research continues of course, and there remain multiple—and potentially promising—pharmacological interventions in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pipeline.

A professor at Harvard Law School recently criticized supporters of the #MeToo movement for failing to uphold “principles of basic fairness.” Elizabeth Bartholet, who teaches civil liberties and family law, extensively detailed her concerns with the #MeToo movement in an editorial for The Harvard Crimson. Despite her approval of #MeToo’s ability to deliver justice when needed, and its power in supporting victims of sexual assault, Bartholet expresses deep concerns over whether due process may be falling by the wayside...Speaking to Campus Reform, Bartholet said that she was motivated to speak up after witnessing the rise of sexual harassment policies at Harvard Law, explaining that the school has devised harassment policies that “[ignored] fairness to the accused, and that went too far to shut down romantic and sexual conduct that was consensual.”

Massachusetts Senator and former Law School professor Elizabeth Warren endorsed Harvard’s graduate student union Friday, weeks ahead of an election that will determine whether eligible University teaching and research assistants may unionize. “For generations, graduate students have done hard work that keeps universities running. It’s past time for them to be treated with respect and past time for them to have their own elected representation in the decisions that affect their lives,” Warren wrote in an emailed statement to The Crimson Friday...Law School student and union organizer Rachel J. Sandalow-Ash ’15 [`20] said she thinks Warren’s message should encourage eligible students to vote in favor of unionization. “Her support is a sign that voting for the union is the right thing to do for people who believe in Senator Warren’s vision of an economy and a politics that works for everyone,” Sandalow-Ash said.

University President Drew G. Faust sent a letter Thursday to House and Senate leadership asking for “immediate attention” to protections for undocumented youth as legislators debated that issue in an unsuccessful effort to stave off a government shutdown. Lawmakers failed to reach a deal, and the shutdown is now entering its third day...In light of the Ninth Circuit ruling, Harvard informed students Wednesday that it will begin assisting with renewal applications. In an email to students, Jason Corral, the staff attorney for Harvard Law School’s Immigration and Refugee Clinic, said DACA renewal applications have been posted to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services website. The University currently has around 65 undocumented students, administrators estimate...“I worry that immigration hardliners will ask for too much of a compromise that may negatively affect immigration law and policy in the long run,” Corral wrote.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Steve Bannon’s claim of executive privilege in his refusal to answer questions this week from the House Intelligence Committee is raising a novel and somewhat difficult problem: Should there be executive privilege for communications between the president and his close advisers during the transition period between the election and the inauguration? On the one hand, the president’s need for candid advice starts before he takes office. On the other hand, there’s something strange about applying a constitutionally based executive privilege to someone who is not, after all, the executive.

After taking the oath of office a year ago, President Donald Trump turned west to offer a preview of his presidency. “From this moment on, it’s going to be America first,” he declared from the Capitol steps. To many Californians, however, Trump’s turbulent first year in office has felt as if it’s come with a different mantra: California last...The sustained resistance from California during Trump’s first year in office represents the most vigorous dispute between a state and the federal government since Southern politicians fought desegregation measures in the 1960s, said Michael Klarman, a Harvard Law School professor who’s written several books about the civil rights movement. “There hasn’t been anything else like it in these last 50 years,” he said.

Bill Cosby goes back to court in April, but his retrial on sexual assault charges will unfold in a very different America than his first. Since then, the #MeToo movement has established that women who individually once feared their accusations would be discounted or dismissed can find corroboration and power when they come forward as a group...There has long been a debate on just how much judges are, or should be, swayed by public opinion...Others, such as the Harvard law professor Michael Klarman have argued that certain landmark rulings like Brown v. Board of Education would never have been possible if judges had not been reflecting shifting social mores. In some ways, Mr. Cosby paved the way for the #MeToo moment as he battled accusations for years that he had hidden a history of mistreating women behind his comforting pose as America’s Dad.

President Donald Trump possibly obstructed justice or intimidated a witness if he did indeed tell Steve Bannon not to answer certain questions during his interview with the House Intelligence Committee, according to Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor who worked at the Department of Justice under President Barack Obama...“Instructing Bannon to invoke a non-existent ‘executive privilege’ for pre-presidential communications—if that’s what Trump in fact did—would be legally improper at the very best, and could well constitute a form of witness tampering, and, in conjunction with Trump’s pattern of interference with the official probes into his campaign and the transition, an obstruction of justice,” Tribe told Newsweek by email.

Money to keep the U.S. government up and running could be about to run out — again. As of Thursday, Congress still hasn’t reached an agreement on passing the 12 appropriation bills that the provide annual budget, and its third extension on making that decision is about to expire on Friday...During the Carter administration, Congress couldn’t pass the budget on time, and President Carter asked Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti how that would affect the management of the federal bureaucracy. Civiletti returned with a legal opinion on the Anti-Deficiency Act of 1870...Over time, however, enforcement of the law grew lax...Then, in an April 1980 opinion, Civiletti wrote that there is no gray area on this issue. The opinion didn’t overrule any longstanding precedent, Howell Jackson, professor at Harvard Law School, tells TIME, but it still made a big difference.

An op-ed by Martha Minow. The Constitution created three coequal branches of government, but President Trump repeatedly demeans the judiciary. Before he was president, the Justice Department charged Donald Trump’s company with violations of the Fair Housing Act. Black “testers” were denied apartments when similar white testers were offered apartments in the same buildings managed in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. Trump settled.