Media Mentions

This week on Freak Out And Carry On, recorded live in front of an audience at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Ron Suskind and Heather Cox Richardson talk with Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig. They discuss reforming the electoral college, the gerrymandering case in front of the Supreme Court, and how to get money out of politics. They look back on the four presidents who won the electoral college but lost the popular vote and detail the 2000 Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore.

Six members of the Supreme Court—one former and five current Justices—kicked off a marquee event of the Law School’s year-long bicentennial celebrations Thursday in Sanders Theatre. The Justices, including Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. ’76 and former Law School dean Elena Kagan, all attended the Law School as students and returned for the evening. The event, billed “HLS in the World,” featured remarks and a question and answer session between the Justices and current Law School Dean John F. Manning ’82. Manning, who introduced the Justices, spoke about the school’s outsized presence on the Court and in other high-profile institutions. “Our alumni are leaders in area after area, field after field, year after year, and now we can say century after century,” Manning said.

When a law school has educated one of every six justices to ever serve on the Supreme Court, and its alums make up a majority of the current court, a certain amount of gasconade — to use a Harvard word — is to be expected. So the audience was appreciative Thursday when Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. took the stage at Harvard Law School with one former and four current Supreme Court justices and announced: “A minority of my colleagues send their regrets.” The boastful gathering of justices marked the 200th anniversary of the law school: HLS in the World—The Harvard Bicentennial is the rather grand name of the summit...In a “lightning round” of questions, [John] Manning brought up little-known facts about the justices: Kennedy once worked on oil rigs in Canada and Louisiana. Roberts had a summer job in the steel mills. Souter was injured at Harvard in a mock duel, when his friend’s saber slashed his hand.

...Five current and one former justice took part in the unusual public discussion at Sanders Theatre to mark the law school’s bicentennial. Court observers said such a conversation among six justices was unprecedented in recent memory. The discussion showcased the justices in a less formal and often jovial setting, as they laughed frequently and talked about their favorite professors and the challenges of serving on the nation’s highest court. “Nothing prepares you for the Supreme Court,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer told the audience of students, professors, and alumni, recalling that Justice Harry Blackmun once told him, “You’re going to find this an unusual experience.”

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Just a few days after Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize in economics earlier this month, the U.K.’s Behavioural Insights Team released its annual report. What good timing! Thaler helped inspire the creation of the Behavioural Insights Team in 2010, not only with his academic work, but also by numerous (and continuing) discussions with the team.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. Last week, San Francisco became the first major city in America to pledge to connect all of its homes and businesses to a fiber optic network. I urge you to read that sentence again. It’s a ray of light. In an era of short-term, deeply partisan do-nothing-ism, the city's straightforward, deeply practical determination shines. Americans, it turns out, are capable of great things—even if only at the city level these days.

Several justices on the nation's highest court are heading to Massachusetts to celebrate the bicentennial of Harvard Law School. Chief Justice John Roberts will be joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch and retired Justice David Souter at Thursday's event on campus...Roberts is expected to give remarks. Harvard Law School Dean John Manning will then lead a conversation with the justices...Other speakers on Friday include former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power.

Dozens of students gathered Wednesday to discuss a lawsuit challenging Harvard’s affirmative action admissions policy and explore equity in education more broadly...K. Sabeel Rahman, a visiting professor at the Law School, was the event's keynote speaker. In his introduction, Rahman highlighted the debate over affirmative action policies as “just a small slice” of the larger puzzle of diversity in America. “If we are trying to think about how we make a more inclusive, broader-opportunity society, affirmative action is part of that story,” Rahman said, “But it’s a relatively small part of that story, relative to the scale of the problem.”

Many companies collect metrics on employee training, fatalities, and other aspects of so-called human capital, but they often don’t report that information publicly, according to an Oct. 23 study from Harvard Law School. The study said institutional investors that are increasingly interested in this data could use its findings as a road map for seeking disclosure on topics that companies are already tracking...“Companies recognize this stuff is important and it’s important enough to collect information about it,” Larry Beeferman, who directs the school’s Pensions and Capital Stewardship Project, told Bloomberg Law. “The issue is whether they publicly report it or not.”

In a rare joint venture, six U.S. Supreme Court justices who graduated from Harvard Law School will return to the campus Thursday to join the law school’s bicentennial celebration...The six alums—Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch and retired Justice David Souter—will participate in a conversation with the law school’s dean, John Manning, in Sanders Theatre...The theme of the bicentennial celebration is Harvard Law School in the World...Among the programs is a reargument Friday of the landmark 1803 case, Marbury v. Madison, that established the power of the federal judiciary to strike down unconstitutional acts of Congress. Harvard Law’s Laurence Tribe and former Harvard Law professor and Stanford Law dean Kathleen Sullivan of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan will face off.

The N.A.A.C.P. on Tuesday warned African-Americans to exercise caution when traveling on American Airlines, citing a pattern of “disrespectful” and “discriminatory” behavior from the company. The organization’s warning came in the form of a travel advisory that described four recent times when black passengers were said to have been discriminated against...Ms. [Briana] Williams [`18] said that she believed the pilot’s actions were racially motivated based on the language he used with her, particularly since he referred to her as “belligerent” and “a threat” even as she was holding her infant daughter. She called for the airline to grant pilots less discretion, saying that it would make it harder for their biases to affect passengers. “Because they’re allowed to do whatever they want to, then if a pilot does have racist or misogynist or homophobic characteristics, then they’re able to utilize them to further oppress members of disenfranchised groups,” she said.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. Last week, San Francisco became the first major city in America to pledge to connect all of its homes and businesses to a fiber optic network. I urge you to read that sentence again. It’s a ray of light. In an era of short-term, deeply partisan do-nothing-ism, the city's straightforward, deeply practical determination shines. Americans, it turns out, are capable of great things—even if only at the city level these days.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The most important constitutional amendment of 2017 isn’t to the constitution of a country: It’s the amendment approved Tuesday to the Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party, which enshrines President Xi Jinping’s “philosophy” alongside the thought of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Talk about a sign of the times. Around the world, from Poland to Spain to Turkey, Israel, India and the U.S., constitutional democracy is undergoing a stress test. Buffeted by the forces of nationalism and populism, democratic institutions are struggling.

Harvard Law School is set to conduct a mental health survey of its students in November, part of a trend in which legal educators are playing a larger role in the well-being of their J.D.-hopefuls...“We recognize it as a first step in not only helping our students, but hoping to effectuate some change in reporting in the legal and professional community,” said Amanda Lee [`18], vice president of Harvard Law’s student government...Harvard law dean of students Marcia Sells said that the school on Nov. 1 would email a link to the online survey to just over 1,800 law students and give them about three weeks to respond...“What are the things we can do to provide more support or to understand when those points of challenge for students happen,” Sells said. “What can we do to support them?”...Student Government President Adrian Perkins [`18] said that he and Lee ran for their positions on a platform that included putting students first by creating a healthy environment at school. “The student body absolutely has been one of our priorities,” Perkins said.

Nathaniel A. Raymond, director of the Signal Program on Human Security and Technology at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, called for the refocusing of humanitarian relief from technology and data science back to the issue of human rights in a lecture at the Law School Tuesday...Ying Li [LL.M. `18], a student at the Law School who attended the talk, reflected afterwards about the recent popularization of digital technology in humanitarian work. “When I learned international humanitarian law, we covered how to coordinate all the resources from all the stakeholders, private and public, to better respond to crises," she said. "But back then, in 2013, we didn’t touch upon digital philanthropy." Suchana Seth, a visiting fellow at the Berkman Klein Center, echoed similar thoughts on the role of technology in her work. “As a data scientist and as a part of communities like that, I do see the transformative power of tech,” Seth said.

Human capital metrics, including occupational safety and health data, frequently are collected by a majority of global companies, yet many of these firms are not publicly reporting the information, according to a study released Oct. 23 by the Harvard Law School Labor and Worklife Program in conjunction with the Center for Safety and Health Sustainability (CSHS). Human capital metrics, including occupational safety and health data, frequently are collected by a majority of global companies, yet many of these firms are not publicly reporting the information, according to a study released Oct. 23 by the Harvard Law School Labor and Worklife Program in conjunction with the Center for Safety and Health Sustainability (CSHS). "Corporate Disclosure of Human Capital Metrics," authored by Aaron Bernstein and Larry Beeferman of the Harvard Law School Pensions and Capital Stewardship Project, notes that human capital metrics are of increasing interest to global investors who understand that a sustainable workforce is critical to a company’s success, including its bottom line.

An op-ed by Jody Freeman and Joseph Goffman. Lost in all the attention to the Trump administration’s effort to scuttle President Barack Obama’s clean power plan is its attempt to prop up the struggling coal industry by doing something very un-Republican — subsidizing it. Last month, Rick Perry, the secretary of energy, asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — the independent agency that regulates electricity markets — to adopt a new rule to pay certain coal and nuclear plants more than they would otherwise earn in a competitive market. In essence, consumers would pay these plants a premium for electricity that competitors could produce, and are already producing, more cheaply.

For as much as American politicians and their constituents complain about taxes, the truth is that tax reform packages to address those complaints are rare — the last major reform of the tax code was passed in 1986 under President Ronald Reagan. But starting this week, tax talk is back in vogue in Washington D.C...On a recent and unexpectedly warm day for a New England fall, Harvard Business School Working Knowledge sat down to discuss tax policy in general and reform in particular with HBS Professor Matthew C. Weinzierl and Mihir A. Desai, the Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance at HBS and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, who often testifies before Congress on corporate tax issues.

Supporters of the Department of Energy’s proposal to provide cost recovery for coal and nuclear plants are leaning on a broader interpretation of the Federal Power Act to justify the rule in their comments at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission...“There is a distinction between what FERC can do as a matter of law and what it should do,” Ari Peskoe, a senior electricity fellow at Harvard Law School, wrote to Utility Dive in an email. “As a matter of law, once FERC makes a technical judgment that a market rule will result in just and reasonable rates, as long as it has some evidence in the record to support its decision, it’s difficult to get a court to overturn that determination."

A number of the state’s Medicaid managed care organizations do not offer enough public information about their hepatitis C policies, according to a report released on Monday...The report, conducted by the National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable and Harvard Law School’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, analyzed policies in all 50 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico related to Medicaid recipients’ access to hepatitis C treatment. The report gave New York a grade of B-. The vast majority of New York’s 6.1 million Medicaid recipients as of July were enrolled in managed care plans rather than the traditional fee-for-service model.

Cass Sunstein’s new book, “Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide,” published by Harvard University Press, is “a love letter to the United States of America,” in the words of its author. Cass is a leading scholar on the topic having published his first work on impeachment almost twenty years ago. The book offers a highly accessible, brilliantly thoughtful, and politically neutral analysis of what the Constitution means for our present moment and for generations that follow. Cass was generous enough to exchange his views with me on the toughest questions I could pose to him.