Media Mentions

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. With the indictments of two campaign associates of then candidate Donald Trump, and the guilty plea of one of his foreign policy advisers, some people are starting to talk again about the possibility of impeachment. Let’s put contemporary issues to one side and instead ask an enduring question: Did the framers get impeachment right? In other words, does the Constitution strike the right balance?

Forty years ago this month, Ms. magazine put sexual harassment on its cover for the first time. Understanding the sensitivity of the topic, the editors used puppets for the cover image — a male hand reaching into a woman’s blouse — rather than a photograph. It was banned from some supermarkets nonetheless. In 1977, the term sexual harassment had not been defined in the law and had barely entered the public lexicon. And yet, to read that Ms. article today, amid a profound shift in discourse, is to feel haunted by its familiarity...It was two years after that Ms. magazine cover, in 1979, that Catharine A. MacKinnon published a groundbreaking legal argument: that sexual harassment was a form of discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It was based on a legal theory she had developed while in law school...“Ashley Judd is the butterfly of this moment,” Professor MacKinnon said of the actor who began the recent groundswell of accusations against Mr. Weinstein. “She is the one who broke it open, who has made this possible for so many other women. And so you have an explosion of it because it’s for so long been suppressed.”

An op-ed by Alex Whiting. The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced today that she will file a request with the judges of the Court to open an investigation in Afghanistan, including into allegations that U.S. military and CIA personnel committed acts of torture in connection with the conflict there. This is a big deal that could have significant implications for relations going forward between the U.S., the ICC, and States Parties of the ICC. How did we got to this point, where we are headed, and what exactly does it mean for the U.S. and the ICC?

The Trump administration has pulled out of a global deal to combat corruption in the fossil fuel industry, a move critics said could help oil companies keep hidden how much they pay in U.S. taxes. The Department of the Interior announced the decision on Thursday in a letter to withdraw immediately from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), which compels oil, gas and mining companies to disclose payments to governments worldwide...“The decision to pull out was of greater symbolic significance than anything else,” Matthew Stephenson, a Harvard Law School professor who writes a blog about corruption, told HuffPost by phone on Friday. “It indicated the U.S. no longer had an interest in working with, let alone leading, the international community on this issue.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. One legal question looms larger than others over special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and its possible Russia connections: What laws, exactly, would be violated by collusion if it could be shown? Remember that the word “collusion” itself has no formal legal status in this investigation. No relevant federal criminal statute that I know of makes “collusion” -- as opposed to conspiracy -- a crime. The letter appointing Mueller directs him to investigate “links and/or coordination” between Russia and the campaign, with no mention of “collusion.”

With the release of an ambitious overhaul of the tax code, House Republicans are moving to fulfill a long-held desire of corporate America: a large and audacious tax cut. Yet economists are divided over whether the plan is likely to revitalize the economy or merely bestow a windfall on the wealthiest investors...Such dismissiveness failed to deter fans of the twin pillars of the House bill: lowering the top nominal tax rate on corporations to 20 percent from 35 percent, and changing the way global profits are taxed. “This will make the United States a better place to invest and a better place to be headquartered in,” said Mihir A. Desai, an economist at Harvard Business School who has at times complained about the White House’s economic claims.

Banks do pretty well under the tax bill unveiled Thursday: it puts them on track for big tax cuts yet lets the firms avoid some of the biggest potential downsides of the overhaul. At a 20% corporate tax rate, banks stand to be the among the biggest winners from tax reform, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence...The legislation proposed by the House Ways and Means Committee appears to let banks sidestep that issue, though. It does so by limiting the deductibility for companies that spend more money on interest than they take in, said Mark Roe, a professor at Harvard Law School. Banks by and large bring in far more in interest than they pay out.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe. After more than 40 years of experimenting with capital punishment, it is time to recognize that we have found no way to narrow the death penalty so that it applies only to the “worst of the worst.” It also remains prone to terrible errors and unacceptable arbitrariness. Arizona’s death-penalty scheme is a prime example of how capital punishment in the United States unavoidably violates the Eighth Amendment’s requirement that the death penalty not be applied arbitrarily. The Supreme Court will soon consider accepting a case challenging Arizona’s statute and the death penalty nationwide, in Hidalgo v. Arizona.

When the New York State Court of Appeals ruled in 2016 that a person who acted as a parent — despite the absence of a biological or adoptive relationship to a child — had legal standing to seek custody and visitation rights, it was hailed as progress for nontraditional families, including same-sex couples...Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor on Gunn’s legal team, says Nervo did not correctly apply the 2016 Court of Appeals ruling in deciding the case Brooke S.B. v. Elizabeth A.C.C. It also was not in keeping with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage equality decision, which mandated that same-sex couples have access to all the legal benefits that straight couples do, Feldman says. “As a constitutional matter, the judge’s ruling failed to treat Kelly [Gunn] in her role the same way the law would treat a heterosexual, biological parent under those circumstances,” Feldman says.

More than a dozen handmade stickers reading “It’s okay to be white” surfaced around Harvard Square Wednesday, prompting Cambridge officials to remove them and a Harvard Law School Dean to denounce the signs as “provocations intended to divide us.”...“It seems likely that these anonymous postings, made in the middle of the night, were provocations intended to divide us from one another,” Law School Dean of Students Marcia L. Sells wrote in an email sent to Law students Wednesday after the stickers were spotted at Wasserstein and Hastings Halls. “HLS will not let that happen here. We live, work, teach, and learn together in a community that is stronger, better, and deeper because of our diversity and because we encourage open, respectful, and constructive discourse,” Sells wrote.

Trying to help a high school senior get into his dream school, Laurie Kopp Weingarten called the college to emphasize that the boy should be able to lay claim to the latest, and fuzziest, of all admissions hooks: being a first-generation student...Some public policy experts believe the definition should be narrowed for admissions and financial aid. Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a Harvard law professor, argues that only those most in need should receive special admissions considerations. She wants both parental education and income taken into account, limiting the definition to those whose parents never attended college and are eligible for Pell grants.

Author and broadband thought leader Susan Crawford delivers a stirring keynote address at WRAL TechWire's "Evolution of a Smarter City" event in Wilson. Yes, technology represents threats to jobs and life as we know it - but emerging opportunities, products and services also mean that humankind is at "just the beginning of an extraordinary era."...Crawford pointed out that high-speed fiber infrastructure will enable delivery of better healthcare, face-to-face interaction, augmented reality, virtual reality, "real-time translation" and much more. "Cities should be considering fiber networks" to put in place a platform over which governments can delivery a variety of services and encourage the private sector to "light up" fiber for communications, entertainment and much more, Crawford said.

Harvard Law School has raised $365 million for its capital campaign since its launch in 2015, according to Law School Dean John F. Manning ’82. When the campaign publicly launched in 2015, the Law School had already raised $241 million of its $305 million goal. The Law School did not set a new goal after reaching its milestone earlier this year. Manning said in an interview that the Law School will continue to solicit donations for the campaign—a portion of Harvard’s $8 billion University-wide effort—through the end of the school year. “We’ve got until June 30th to continue to raise money and we will,” Manning said. “We will be trying.”

A student-created report on Harvard Law School and the United States' commitment to providing legal services to the public argues that the Law School needs to do more to guide students into public interest law instead of corporate practice. The report, primarily authored by current third-year Law student Pete D. Davis ’12 [`18], argues that the Law School needs to refocus on training its graduates for public interest careers...Dean of the Law School John F. Manning ’82 said in an interview that both he and the Law School are strong advocates for public interest. “Harvard Law School is very supportive of public interest,” Manning said. “From the very outset we have a very large, energetic office of public advising, we have a program on law and social change that really helps people identify and think about careers that try to affect social change.” According to Manning, students in the class of 2017 spent an average of 586 hours working pro bono, well beyond the school’s required 50 hours.

...The US Constitution is the most difficult to alter of any in the world. Article V lays out two ways to propose amendments: with the support of two-thirds of both houses of Congress, or by a convention of states called by Congress upon the request of two-thirds of the states...Perhaps the most prominent opponent of Citizens United has been the Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, who ran a long-shot campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. Given the impossibility of getting a “representational integrity” amendment passed in Congress, as well as the apparently successful conspiracy to keep the judicial branch in Republican hands for the foreseeable future, Lessig’s only hope rests with a convention of states. In a recent phone call, Lessig observed that the movement behind the Phoenix convention is strictly partisan and therefore likely to fail.

Best-selling author and Harvard Law School lecturer Douglas Stone is one of the foremost experts on difficult conversations. Having literally written a book with that name, he has trained audiences around the world in how to navigate these discussions. This work has inspired his latest book, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well, which he co-authored with his colleague Sheila Heen. When we spoke recently, Stone explained why feedback conversations are rife with challenges. “One of the biggest challenges is that the person receiving the feedback doesn’t know exactly what it means,” Stone says, “because it is given in language that is too general.”

An op-ed by Hugh Simons and Heidi Gardner. We know it’s coming. While Big Law on average may eke out growth in profitability this year, about half of firms will see a decline. For many, this will be the second down year in a row. For even more firms, momentum in profitability growth has been lost and increases in profit per equity partner (PPP) are not keeping pace with inflation. When we close the books for 2017, we know what to expect: partners will start to complain bitterly about inequities they perceive in the compensation system.

At the kick-off of Harvard Law School’s bicentennial celebration last week, Dean John F. Manning took the stage in Sanders Theatre and, in reverse order of their classes at the school, introduced a retired justice and four sitting justices of the Supreme Court: Neil M. Gorsuch, J.D. ’91; Elena Kagan, J.D. ’86; David H. Souter, retired, ’61, L.L.B. ’66, LL.D. 2010; Stephen G. Breyer, LL.B. ’64; and Anthony M. Kennedy, LL.B. ’61. He saved for last John G. Roberts Jr. ’76 and J.D. ’79, chief justice of the United States. Manning observed that “it’s very easy to take for granted just how exceptional” HLS is, so he shared some facts about the institution that were startling even after he said they would be:

The national priority in education can be summed up in a four-letter acronym: STEM. And that’s understandable. A country’s proficiency in science, technology, engineering and mathematics is vital in generating economic growth, advancing scientific innovation and creating good jobs...A working grasp of the principles of science and math should be essential knowledge for all Americans, said Michael S. Teitelbaum, an expert on science education and policy. But he believes that STEM advocates, often executives and lobbyists for technology companies, do a disservice when they raise the alarm that America is facing a worrying shortfall of STEM workers, based on shortages in a relative handful of fast-growing fields like data analytics, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and computer security. “When it gets generalized to all of STEM, it’s misleading,” said Mr. Teitelbaum, a senior research associate in the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.

An article by Cass Sunstein. Despite its importance, impeachment is a challenging and arcane subject — the Finnegans Wake of constitutional law. Fortunately, there are some terrific books on the topic, helping to guide the perplexed.

Mark Zuckerberg’s original motto for Facebook was “Move fast and break things.” It now appears that he’s going to have to answer for moving too fast and breaking too many things. After years of trying to avoid oversight from Washington, the 2-billion-person social network platform is set for a reckoning. Facebook is approaching its first major congressional oversight hearings in November after it revealed that a Russian “troll factory,” called the Internet Research Agency, purchased advertisements in order to influence the 2016 election...Yochai Benkler, the Berkman professor of entrepreneurial legal studies at Harvard Law School, suggested another change: Lawmakers could pass a bill to require social networks to identify bots (automated accounts) and “sockpuppets” (fake accounts run by real people) to detail their role in spreading political advocacy advertising. No legislation has been discussed to tackle the problem of social media bots spreading paid propaganda...“Facebook is too immunized from competition to be left to adopt self-regulation,” Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler said.