Media Mentions

In 2010, low voter turnout among young people, minorities, Democrats, and independents led to massive Republican victories...North Carolina’s most blatant attacks on voters have come in the form of racial gerrymanders. This is a complicated issue: There are some specific conditions in which race is allowed to be considered in redistricting...The most salient lesson from Cooper v. Harris is that no court decision will give justice to voters. The courts are crucial, of course: courts are the only way to fairness because you’re never going to get truly fair legislation out of a gerrymandered legislature noted Professor Charles Fried of Harvard Law School in an interview with the HPR.

Filmmaker Greg Barker was granted access to President Obama's White House for a new documentary "The Final Year." Chuck sits down with Barker, Ambassador Samantha Power and former Dep. National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes.

One of the most talked-about documentaries at this year’s Sundance Film Festival looks at the groundbreaking life of the nearly 85-year-old Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 2018 marks her 25th year on the court, and she has no plans to retire...[Amy Goodman]: We’re going to go to a break, and then we’re going to come back and hear a really interesting comment from Justice Ginsburg just yesterday. She spoke at the Filmmakers Lodge. She was interviewed by NPR’s Nina Totenberg, and she talks about this seminal, foundational work of Catharine MacKinnon and how it changed her view also of women’s rights and what the whole issue of gender harassment is all about.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The U.S. needs to start imagining NATO without Turkey. The latest reason is Turkey’s assault against the Syrian Kurds. The same Kurds who, with U.S. training and support, have borne the brunt of the fighting against Islamic State. Turkey is coordinating its attacks with Iran and Russia -- the very countries the North Atlantic Treaty Organization exists to oppose. U.S. interests appear nowhere in the equation. That’s a long-term strategic problem, which goes beyond the moral outrage every American should feel as our Kurdish allies are murdered from the air by F-16s we sold to Turkey.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India issued a strong call on Tuesday for nations to embrace globalization, combat climate change and strengthen international institutions like the World Trade Organization. “Forces of protectionism are raising their heads against globalization,” Mr. Modi said during a speech to the World Economic Forum here...Mark Wu, a former trade negotiator for the United States who is now an assistant professor of trade law at Harvard University and who attended Mr. Modi’s speech, said India faced a challenge in terms of imports: attracting foreign manufacturers without appearing to violate international trade norms. “While the prime minister articulated all the right messages on globalization at Davos, his government remains firmly committed to a strategy of leveraging its market size to drive industrial policies to spur greater high-tech manufacturing in India,” Mr. Wu said.

A Trump administration appointee to the National Labor Relations Board benefited the interests and clients of his former law firm when he cast the deciding vote to undo rules protecting workers’ rights in two cases last month...William Emanuel, who joined the NLRB in September, has recused himself from involvement in more than four dozen cases involving the firm he left to join the labor board...“Deciding a case in a way the parties didn’t ask you to decide it seems to me inevitably to raise the question: Why are you doing this?” said [Sharon] Block, who now heads the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. “Emanuel having clients that actually had made that request — at the very least that creates a huge appearance problem.”

An op-ed by Chiraag Bains and Regina Kline. In his inaugural address, President Donald Trump said he’d fight for “the forgotten men and women of our country.” One year later, his actions on civil rights tell a different story: He’ll choose big business over the American people every time. Take disability rights. Last month, Trump’s Justice Department revoked legal guidance about the rights of workers with disabilities to avoid unjustified segregation by employers in sub-minimum wage, and sometimes exploitative, factory settings called “sheltered workshops.”

An op-ed by Samuel Garcia `19 and Carlos Pena Ortiz. “We are in the NAFTA (worst trade deal ever made) renegotiation process with Mexico & Canada. Both being very difficult, may have to terminate?” — President Donald Trump. Tweets like this have drastically changed the tone of negotiations between the U.S. and Mexico, which — coupled with continued political strain from the proposed border wall, NAFTA and other issues — may seriously affect Texans.

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.”