Media Mentions

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions continued to stonewall Congress by recycling an excuse he used four months ago. Sessions is seeking to avoid answering questions about his conversations with President Donald Trump, who has yet to invoke executive privilege regarding conversations with his top officials...“Attorney General Sessions is skating on very thin legal ice now that he has had more than four months to discuss the executive privilege issue with President Trump, given that his lack of opportunity to do so was the only excuse he gave for refusing to answer the Senate’s clearly relevant questions without invoking the privilege on June [13],” Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, told ThinkProgress in an email.

...Initiatives under way at HLS have returned it to a prominent role in advancing legal aid—and in developing new approaches that will change and enhance the delivery of these services in the future. Daniel Nagin, vice dean for experiential and clinical education and faculty director of both the school’s Legal Services Center and its Veterans Legal Clinic, is exploring improvements in legal services that could help bridge the divide between those who insist that lawyers are essential in providing legal services and those who believe they aren’t. Green professor of public law D. James Greiner, faculty director of the Access to Justice Lab, is HLS’s main proponent of the view that sometimes the solutions can be simpler and less expensive...[Martha] Minow emphasized HLS’s mission as a justice school, as much as a law school, by expanding opportunities for public-interest work and by bringing the curriculum and clinical offerings closer together—so theory informs practice and vice versa...Esme Caramello, a clinical professor who is the bureau’s faculty director, told me, “Within five years of graduating from the law school, a lot of students who did HLAB are in public-interest jobs, doing legal services and otherwise. They feel compelled to do this work.”

...In a panel discussion Monday evening at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) moderated by MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, former members of President Obama’s cabinet, including onetime Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, and Samantha Power, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, described what they see as a fraying of alliances, a loss of credibility with allies and enemies, a stepping back as a leader on human rights and democracy, and a relinquishment of diplomacy as a critical component of national security...“Is President Trump a person who gets haunted, who can think about other people, even in this country, as deserving of empathy and respect, or can he put himself in the shoes of others?” said Power, the Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at the Kennedy School and professor of practice at Harvard Law School.

An interview with Heidi Gardner. Whether you’re a business executive or a lawyer in a law firm, an in-house counsel or a sole practitioner, you have probably wondered whether collaboration matters to your business and how it can help. Heidi Gardner initially explored these questions during her tenure at McKinsey & Co. She continued that exploration later in the course of obtaining a doctorate on the subject of group collaboration. In her research, spanning what is now a period of 20 years, Dr. Gardner found that teams that fully leverage their members’ talents earn higher margins, inspire greater client loyalty and attract and retain the best talent. Much of that research culminated in her recent book, Smart Collaboration: How Professionals and Their Firms Succeed by Breaking Down Silos.

An op-ed by Benjamin Sachs and Noah Zatz. As National Football League owners and players’ union representatives meet in New York today and tomorrow to discuss the players’ recent demonstrations — the kneeling, linking arms or raising fists during the national anthem — they should know how the law views these protests. This will not only tell them what the league lawfully can do; it also will reveal something about American values.

The White House inflated the potential benefits to workers from a proposed corporate tax cut, according to a Harvard University economist whose work informed the estimate, highlighting a challenge Republicans face as they push a tax rewrite that President Trump has promised will benefit the middle class. Mr. Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers said in a report released on Monday that reducing corporate taxes could raise average household incomes by as much as $9,000 a year. The top end of that estimate was based on work by a trio of researchers, and on Tuesday one of them, Mihir Desai of Harvard, said Mr. Trump’s team had misread the research...Mr. Desai, who wrote the study with Harvard’s C. Fritz Foley and James Hines Jr. of the University of Michigan, said his own estimates of the effect of such a rate cut was closer to $800 a year. “I’m a believer in corporate tax reform, and I’m a believer in corporate tax cuts, and I believe they would go to workers,” he said. “But I don’t believe those numbers add up.”

Reginald Herbert Smith’s Justice and the Poor is in the library of Harvard Law School’s Legal Services Center, in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, about five miles from Harvard Square, along with many other books from the personal collection of the late Gary Bellow, LL.B. ’60, who co-founded the center in 1979...As community legal needs have changed, the center’s services have, as well...Daniel Nagin, faculty director of the center, says, “I tell students that, if they really want to make a difference, they should explore all of the things Congress has tried over the years to restrict grantees of the Legal Services Corporation from doing: class actions; lobbying the government; efforts to change and improve the law on behalf of groups.”

A Boston mom says she feels hurt and intimidated after she and her 4-month-old baby were booted from an American Airlines flight to New York after she asked for her stroller back during a long delay. Briana Williams [`18], 24, said she was flying from Atlanta to visit family in Brooklyn and Queens when her nightmare commute began on Aug. 21...“This type of unregulated discretion is a segue into discriminatory policy,” she said. “The pilot put me in a potentially dangerous situation with law enforcement as a young, black woman, saying that I was a ‘threat,'" Williams said.

A program at the University of Baltimore School of Law recruits African-American undergraduates to confront the disproportionately small number of black lawyers in the U.S....David B. Wilkins, faculty director for the Center on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School, said the gap is especially pronounced when looking at the most prestigious and highly paid positions, such as law firm partners. What makes people think our legal system is fair, in part, is when they believe all views are represented, Wilkins said. “If an important demographic in our country feels less valued in the profession, this is going to make the system seem less legitimate, particularly to black Americans.”...A report by the Center on the Legal Profession about black graduates of Harvard’s law school took a deeper look at African-Americans working in the legal profession. Surveying virtually all of the law school’s living African-American graduates, the report looked at their current jobs, career trajectories, levels of satisfaction and attitudes on race relations.

Four former Obama-era national security officials criticized the Trump administration’s approach foreign policy at the Institute of Politics Monday night...[Samantha] Power likewise lambasted the Trump administration for what she perceived as a failure to carry out a foreign policy that supported American values. She argued that China might be able to supplant the United States on the world stage without proper American leadership. “We have a State Department that’s rewriting its mission statement to cut democracy promotion from even its stated purpose,” she said. “That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the political capital we have around the world, and it allows China to step right in.”

The Federal Government has scrambled to appoint former Goldman Sachs banker James Shipton to replace Greg Medcraft as chairman of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC)...Mr Shipton is currently executive director of studies in international finance systems at Harvard Law School in the United States after serving as a commissioner at the Hong Kong Securities and Exchange Commission...Mr Shipton also spoke at the media conference on Tuesday morning. "The challenges ahead for Australia's financial system and its regulators are significant," he said.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The growing military confrontation between Kurdish and Iraqi forces around Kirkuk has been a long time coming -- since 2004, in fact, when Iraq’s Transitional Administrative Law, its interim constitution, flagged the city’s status as disputed territory and deferred resolution into the indefinite future. The conflict combines nationalism, politics and the magic ingredient that makes so many of the region’s problems so hard to fix: oil. The consequences of an escalating conflict are huge. Kirkuk has the potential to spark a full-on civil war between the central government in Baghdad and the regional government of Kurdistan.

An op-ed by Lawrence Lessig. There’s a bunch of chatter about imminent action by the special prosecutor. Some of that chatter suggests evidence of a real tie with Russia during the election. By “real tie” I mean more than that the Russians tried to help. A “real tie” would be real evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. I don’t know if I believe it. I certainly haven’t seen clear evidence of it. And I don’t think it’s appropriate to speculate about whether there is clear evidence of it or not.

Deconstructing the multifarious and complex questions around migration and globalization may be the most direct route to a solution for the migration crisis facing the world today, Harvard experts said last week. Questions about its ethical, legal, social, cultural, and economic implications were the focus of the Harvard Global Institute’s second annual symposium on effecting resolution to critical issues...Panelist Sabrineh Ardalan, assistant director at the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program and assistant clinical professor of law at Harvard Law School, said her work at the clinic gives her an up-close view of the burdens on asylum seekers to prove their eligibility for protection, demonstrate creditability, and provide corroborating evidence. Applications for asylum have doubled since 2014, with 260,000 filed last year. “Every day, our clinic gets at least one phone call, and usually many more, from someone desperate looking for a place to call home, lost in the bureaucratic mess of our immigration system,” she said.

An essay by Jeannie Suk Gersen...The removal of Trump using the Twenty-fifth Amendment is the aim of a newly launched social movement composed of mental-health professionals. The group, called Duty to Warn, claims that Donald Trump “suffers from an incurable malignant narcissism that makes him incapable of carrying out his presidential duties and poses a danger to the nation.” On Saturday, the organization held coördinated kickoff events in fourteen cities, where mental-health experts spoke out about Trump’s dangerousness and, in several, took to the streets in organized funereal marches, complete with drum corps.

In the media world, as in so many other realms, there is a sharp discontinuity in the timeline: before the 2016 election, and after. Things we thought we understood—narratives, data, software, news events—have had to be reinterpreted in light of Donald Trump’s surprising win as well as the continuing questions about the role that misinformation and disinformation played in his election...In June 2014, Harvard Law scholar Jonathan Zittrain wrote an essay in New Republic called, “Facebook Could Decide an Election Without Anyone Ever Finding Out,” in which he called attention to the possibility of Facebook selectively depressing voter turnout. (He also suggested that Facebook be seen as an “information fiduciary,” charged with certain special roles and responsibilities because it controls so much personal data.)

An unprecedented effort to force President Trump and other White House hopefuls to disclose their personal income tax returns was blocked by Gov. Jerry Brown on Sunday, who argued the plan would likely be overturned by the courts. Brown's veto of Senate Bill 149 put him at odds with legislative Democrats who insisted its mandate for five years of income tax information would help voters make an informed choice...Laurence Tribe, a Harvard University law professor, insisted that the California bill would pass constitutional muster. He and two other legal scholars wrote that the proposal fell on the side of being constitutionally allowed when evaluating "permissible ballot access laws and impermissible attempts to add qualifications."

We know the number of blacks in the profession is still abysmal, but what about those who graduate from tippy-top law schools? Do they enjoy an advantage? The short answer is yes—with qualifiers. That's the finding of Harvard Law School's 2016 study of its black alumni authored by Harvard law professor David Wilkins, the report takes an exhaustive look at the career patterns of black graduates from 2000-2016, painting a picture that's both hopeful and ominous...In fact, respondents to the survey rated HLS's prestige factor (the "H-Bomb") as "extremely important" to their career advancement, outranking all diversity initiatives. "It provides credential and network—and those things are way more important if you're black," says Wilkins.

An op-ed by Phil Caruso `18. In 2014, during my second deployment to Afghanistan, I stood and watched the sun set over Iran. Tensions were high over Iran’s nuclear program, and I knew that if a solution could not be reached, the U.S. military might be called upon to denuclearize Iran forcefully. Thankfully, that day never came. Now, however, I wonder again.

An op-ed by Patricia Smith and Sharon Block. The clock is ticking. Will the Labor Department appeal a judge’s recent decision that could deny overtime pay to millions of Americans? Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta has been clear that he doesn’t like the Obama administration’s overtime rule, insisting that he wants to reconsider it and possibly make one of his own. But he needs to appeal the judge’s decision regardless, otherwise he’s creating uncertainty that isn’t good for anyone. This summer, the Labor Department issued a formal “request for information” to get public feedback on which white collar employees should get overtime pay.

An op-ed by Benjamin Sachs. Last Sunday, Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, said he would bench players who did not stand during the national anthem. This threat was publicized nationally and applauded on Twitter by President Trump, who summarized the two men’s shared view: “Stand for Anthem or sit for game!” On Wednesday, the president elaborated on his views, telling Fox News that the NFL “should have suspended” Colin Kaepernick for kneeling during the anthem because “you cannot disrespect our country, our flag, our anthem — you cannot do that.” It is quite possible the players have First Amendment protection against retaliation of this kind.