Media Mentions

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.

When a Norwegian committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) for its work behind a treaty to ban nuclear weapons, 3,500 miles away six people at Harvard cheered loudly. They had reason to celebrate. Bonnie Docherty, associate director of armed conflict and civilian protection, and clinical instructor Anna Crowe, who teach at the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School (HLS), and four law students had taken part in the treaty negotiations spearheaded by ICAN, a Geneva-based international coalition of organizations from more than 100 countries...“The negotiations were timely and urgent,” said Docherty. “It reminded the world of the need to take tangible steps for nuclear disarmament. The treaty banning nuclear weapons will make a real difference in the world.”

At a time when American politics are beset by deep divisions and regular paralysis, five U.S. senators told a Harvard Law School (HLS) audience Friday that there is real reason for concern, yet some hope for their institution and the country. Returning to a school where all had graduated or taught, Democratic senators Tim Kaine, J.D. ’83, of Virginia, Jack Reed, J.D. ’82, of Rhode Island, and Mark Warner, J.D. ’80, of Virginia, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, ’98, J.D. ’02, of Arkansas, and Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a former HLS professor, also urged students to help solve the nation’s challenges.

An op-ed by Ramy Khouili and Daniel Levine-Spound [`19]. For LGBTIQ Tunisians, abusive police-stops and arbitrary arrests at the hands of law enforcement are commonplace, while anti-gay hate speech and incitement to homophobic violence appear frequently in Tunisian media. After receiving several complaints, the Tunisian Independent High Authority for Audiovisual Communication (HAICA) – in what can be considered the first official reaction from a public institution to violence against the LGBTIQ community – issued a warning against a TV station for homophobic statements in October, 2015.

An interview with Cass Sunstein. With special counsel Robert Mueller bringing federal charges against two former advisers to President Trump’s campaign, and a campaign foreign policy adviser pleading guilty to lying about efforts to obtain damaging information from the Russians about Hillary Clinton, what was once inconceivable has become a little less so. Should evidence eventually emerge of possible criminal activity involving Trump himself, analysts say, Congress might have to ponder opening the impeachment process against him, as it last did against President Bill Clinton in 1998. Few clauses in the U.S. Constitution are as mysterious or as misunderstood by Americans as impeachment, and that’s unfortunate, contends Cass R. Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School.

Is the Papadopoulos case the real bombshell of the day? While the initial announcement of indictments against President Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and Manafort associate Rick Gates dominated the news early Monday morning, the allegations against them did not go directly to the question of whether Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians, who wanted to tip the 2016 election to Trump. But a second case made public later Monday did — and court records show the target in that matter is cooperating with federal investigators...Alex Whiting, a Harvard Law professor who is a former federal prosecutor and former investigations coordinator at the International Criminal Court, said that while Papadopoulos “seems to be cooperating,” the ultimate trajectory of the probe remains unclear. “Whether people will be charged with collusion, whether more senior officials will be charged, we just don’t know at this stage,” Whiting said.