Media Mentions

It's a good time to re-examine our relationship with Facebook Inc. In the past month, it has been revealed that Facebook hosted a Russian influence operation which may have reached between 3 million and 20 million people on the social network, and that Facebook could be used to micro-target users with hate speech. It took the company more than two weeks to agree to share what it knows with Congress...Will Facebook solve this problem on its own? The company has no immediate economic incentive to do so, says Yochai Benkler, a professor at Harvard Law School and co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. "Facebook has become so central to how people communicate, and it has so much market power, that it's essentially immune to market signals," Dr. Benkler says.

AIG is poised to save as much as $150m in annual compliance costs after US officials released it from “too big to fail” supervision, a decision that could also help the insurance company expand again after years of post-crisis shrinkage. A team of federal officials who have been stationed within the group to monitor its activities will be heading for the exit after a council led by Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin ruled AIG’s collapse would no longer pose a threat to the financial system...Hal Scott, professor at Harvard Law School, said he expected regulators to take up Prudential’s case soon. “I’d be shocked if it wasn’t next on the list,” he said.

A legal battle over the future of the US electricity system is looming after the Trump administration shocked the industry with proposals for new subsidies for coal-fired and nuclear power plants. If implemented, the plan could mean the most radical shake-up of the market in decades. Rick Perry, the energy secretary, on Friday sent a proposal to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission calling for payments for power plants that provide “essential energy and ancillary reliability services” — and defined these in a way that means only coal and nuclear generators are likely to qualify...Ari Peskoe of Harvard Law School said Mr Perry’s plan did not meet the legal requirements for proposed rules under US administrative procedures, and recommended that FERC treat it as a “comment” on its existing work on supporting grid reliability.

Released at the end of August, the Department of Energy's grid study concluded that the reliability of the bulk power system is strong today, but changes in the resource mix could present challenges in the future. The report urged federal regulators to begin examining how to better compensate generators for the services they provide for reliability and resilience if it finds reliability is threatened..."I would say this is not a proposed rule that could form the basis of a final rule," said Ari Peskoe, senior fellow in electricity law at Harvard Law School's Environmental Policy Initiative​. "Usually proposed rules have far more detail that would provide a basis for comments on specific aspects of the proposal and that's not really here."

A corrosive custom forced on investors is finally getting the ax under new regulations in Europe. Too bad some on Wall Street are working overtime to ensure that United States investors don’t get the same deal. The rule change governs how investors pay for brokerage-firm research...Howell E. Jackson, a professor at Harvard Law School and an expert in financial regulation, thinks the unbundling of trading and research costs would be a boon to investors because of the sunlight it would bring to the financial markets. Under the European rule, Mr. Jackson said in an interview, “consumers can see how much of their commissions are going to research.”

In a rare move that could spark sweeping changes in energy regulation, Energy Secretary Rick Perry today called on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to take action that could prop up struggling coal and nuclear plants. The Department of Energy wrote in a notice of proposed rulemaking that FERC has an "immediate responsibility to take action to ensure that the reliability and resiliency attributes of generation with on-site fuel supplies are fully valued."...DOE's proposed rule orders FERC to finalize the regulation within 60 days of its publication in the Federal Register, but that timeline might not meet legal requirements, said Ari Peskoe, a senior fellow at the Harvard Law School Environmental Policy Initiative. "FERC rules usually have much more technical detail," said Peskoe. "This reads more like a directive to FERC to figure this out."

Several Constitutional law professors have weighed in on the endless debates surrounding the propriety of protesting during the national anthem, most of whom called it a “complicated” issue...While most professors surveyed by Campus Reform agreed that both Collett and Brady made legitimate claims, only one—esteemed Harvard University Law School Professor Laurence Tribe—came down strongly on the side of Brady. “In recent days, I have been explaining on Twitter and elsewhere why I believe players have a strong First Amendment claim under the landmark Supreme Court precedent of West Virginia Bd of Education v Barnette (1943), which held that no government official—a category that certainly includes the president—may pressure people to salute the American flag or follow any government-specified way of expressing their views about the pledge of allegiance or the national anthem,” Tribe told Campus Reform, arguing that “football players cannot be required to leave their free speech rights in the locker room.

An op-ed by Martha Minow. What does it take to remove evil and stop hatred? This question has plagued humans throughout centuries, and although there is no simple answer, Germany changed from a pariah state to exemplar of constitutional democracy through the combination of post-World War II criminal trials, reforms of law and media, and investment by new generations who asked their parents persistently, “Where were you during the war?” A crucial element came with the criminal trials, initially through the international military tribunal and then subsequent state-based prosecutions.

When attorneys at Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending learned Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was speaking at the Ivy League university Thursday evening, they saw an opportunity to connect her with the for-profit college students they serve... The attorneys extended the secretary an invitation last week to meet these former students, but she declined. “The people who have been affected by the secretary’s policies deserve to have their voices heard,” said Toby Merrill, director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending. “I’m disappointed that she refused to meet with our clients, but not completely surprised given how frequently the department has sided with industry over students.”

NPR's Robert Siegel speaks with Thomas Abt, a senior research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard Law School, about the latest statistics showing a national increase in homicide.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Roy Moore is more extreme than you think -- and his candidacy for a U.S. Senate seat is not a joke, but a serious threat to the Constitution and the rule of law. The shenanigans that got Moore thrown out of office as the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court -- twice! -- were more than just acts of civil disobedience on behalf of evangelical religion. Both times, Moore intentionally defied and denied the authority of the U.S. courts to have the final say on the Constitution. That’s the core principle on which our legal system rests.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. It’s good news that women will soon be able to drive in Saudi Arabia. But as a milestone, it isn’t primarily a marker of sex equality, which remains a distant objective in the kingdom. Rather, it’s an important indication that the monarchy now thinks it doesn’t have to defer to the country’s religious establishment. That’s a remarkable development that may allow some modernization -- but also heralds a move away from the separation of powers and toward consolidation of absolute authority in a totalitarian king.

An op-ed by Sharon Block and Benjamin Sachs. The Trump Administration is waging a quiet war on workers. The effort involves anti-union appointments to federal agencies, repeal of Obama-era regulations that were designed to raise the wages of low and middle income workers, and support for anti-worker legislation in Congress. But the most recent salvo may actually prove to be the most devastating. In a case called Murphy Oil, slated for the first day of the Supreme Court’s new term, the Trump administration is inviting the court to eviscerate the rights of employees who don’t have a union.

The votes have been counted and President Trump has moved into the White House, but the campaign to upend the Electoral College is far from over...The idea is not to eliminate the Electoral College, which would require a constitutional amendment, but to require states to implement a system in which electors cast ballots based on the percentage of the popular vote. “It’s crazy that our nation’s least-democratic election is the one for president,” said Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law School professor and founder of Equal Citizens.

It’s not often – if ever – you’ll come across a book written by a Harvard finance professor who seems just as comfortable talking about the romantic choices of Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennet or the business acumen of Stringer Bell in The Wire, as about economic theory. But, in his new book The Wisdom of Finance, Mihir Desai, a professor at Harvard Business and Harvard Law School, has drawn on the arts to make his case...He had two motivations in writing the book. “One, there is a great deal of misconceptions about finance and then finance gets demonised, and a lot of this happens because people don’t understand finance. And my second motivation is that people in finance . . . we have to rehabilitate finance, and look at what we do with a moral lens.”

It doesn’t look like any NFL players will be disciplined for kneeling or locking arms in protest during the playing of the National Anthem. But First Amendment experts say most employees can be fired from many jobs for exercising their freedom of speech...But government employees are in a different position, Harvard Law professor Mark Tushnet told TheWrap. He said that under the First Amendment, government workers who speak about public policy can’t be fired unless their speech interferes with their jobs — by provoking fights, for example. “Typically, though, governments aren’t able to make that showing,” he said.

With his stellar credentials, Andrew Manuel Crespo, 34, could have had a gilded entree to the elite worlds of finance, academia or government. He graduated from Harvard College magna cum laude. At Harvard Law School, he was the first-ever Latino president of the Harvard Law Review and he clerked for two Supreme Court justices. But when it came time to get a job, Crespo became a public defender in Washington, D.C. His first client was eight years old. The way his young clients and their families trusted him, Crespo remembered, was something that he never took for granted. “I was working in juvenile criminal court, and my clients were 12, 13, 16 years old,” Crespo said. “There is something very powerful about meeting people for the first time when they are literally behind bars. You are introducing yourself when they are at one of the most broken, vulnerable moments in their lives.”

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. Hype about using enormous sets of sensor-collected data to “drive results” in US cities is getting pretty thick. Local government officials across the country are overrun by vendors offering to install soup-to-nuts systems that will monitor parking, pedestrians, pollution, and pests, among a zillion other things. It’s as if the big tech companies are baffled by why local government needs to exist at all. “We’ve got engineers! We’ll do it for you!” is the implicit pitch. McKinsey says the global Internet of Things market may be worth as much as $6.2 trillion over the next few years. But all that data won’t help if it doesn’t address the most vital issues in our cities. And one of the most vital of all is inequality of opportunity.

An article by Gabrielle G. Hirz, Kathleen Saunders Gregor, and Stefan G. Gerlitz `18. You own a business selling medical marijuana, an enterprise which, while legal in 29 states and the District of Columbia, is prohibited by the Controlled Substances Act as a business trafficking in a Schedule I controlled substance. Although, under 2013 guidance, the Obama administration discouraged federal prosecutions of marijuana dispensaries that operated legally according to state laws permitting its medical or recreational use, perhaps you are more concerned under the current administration. When it comes time to file your Federal income tax returns, and those of your business, what are you legally obligated to disclose?

The US investment regulator’s powers to recoup losses from financial advisers who break the law were dealt a blow by a landmark Supreme Court decision this summer. But the Securities and Exchange Commission has stressed to the FT that the court’s decision will have a limited impact on its ability to go after wrongdoers...Several legal experts have claimed the case puts the regulator at a considerable disadvantage when seeking redress. “The decision clearly imposes a limit on SEC enforcement powers and may force the staff to rely more on civil money penalties,” says Howell Jackson, a professor at Harvard Law School.

Seated cross-legged on the floor and armed with poster paper and colorful markers, roughly 20 students gathered at Harvard Law School Tuesday evening to scrawl messages protesting the arrival of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who is slated to speak on campus Thursday. “The cost of education shouldn’t include sexual violence,” read one poster...In a written statement Tuesday evening, Harassment/Assault Law-Student Team co-presidents Sarah B. Gutman [`18] and Marielle Sanchez [`18] wrote that “being silent is being complicit.”