Media Mentions

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. In calling on NFL owners and fans to punish athletes who engage in political protests, President Donald Trump has become a Super Bowl champion of something he purports to oppose: political correctness. Apparently he’s fine with punishing dissenters, so long as he abhors what the dissenters are saying. In recent years, many Republicans and conservatives have complained that political correctness -- on university campuses, in workplaces and elsewhere -- can squelch minority opinions and enforce a left-wing orthodoxy. They’re right.

On their own, computers don’t know that it’s bad to treat racists or anti-Semites as just another niche marketing demographic. But Facebook and Google aren’t deploying enough human eyeballs to prevent the misuse of their ad systems. Instead, they’ve been making money off it...Facebook and Google, in contrast, have consciously decided to offer ads, via automated sales platforms, to algorithmically identified interest groups. Because of narrow targeting, people who might otherwise spot a misleading ad, and raise a ruckus about it, may never see it in the first place...“If they’re just passing along content from someone else, they can’t be held liable,” says Harvard Law School professor Rebecca Tushnet.

Two members of the legal team that settled a lawsuit earlier this year against the psychologists who designed and implemented a Central Intelligence Agency torture program spoke Friday afternoon at the Law School about their work on the landmark case. Paul L. Hoffman—a civil and human rights lawyer and lecturer at the Law School—and criminal defense lawyer Lawrence S. Lustberg played major roles on the American Civil Liberties Union’s litigation team in Salim v. Mitchell, filed on behalf of three former CIA detainees...Elvina Pothelet, a visiting researcher at the Law School, said she was impressed with the obstacles the litigators surmounted in arguing the case to a settlement. “It gives hope that this kind of case can find their way to the courts,” she said. Lindsay A. Bailey [`19], a second-year Law student, agreed. “It’s inspiring to hear about the cases that are a win, because we take a lot of losses in the human rights litigation field,” she said.

Sheila Hobson never imagined the lawsuit she filed seven years ago about some unpaid overtime would one day become a Supreme Court case with far-reaching implications for American workers. But two days ago, on the eve of oral arguments, she came in for an even bigger shock — the U.S. government, her biggest champion, had suddenly switched sides...The answer is in an amicus brief filed by the U.S. Solicitor-General’s office in her case, National Labor Relations Board v. Murphy Oil. The Trump Justice Department had reconsidered the position taken under President Obama, the brief said, and “reached the opposite conclusion.”...The new position of Trump’s Justice Department threw that principle out the window, said Sharon Block, executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and a former Obama administration official. “It could essentially close the courthouse door on workers,” she said.

European leaders are embracing a Libyan general who has ordered his soldiers to commit war crimes, according to new evidence that has been analysed by senior legal experts. The allegation of human rights abuses by Gen Khalifa Haftar, a former CIA asset who controls nearly half of Libya from his base in the east, comes as the general is due to arrive in Rome on Tuesday, where he will be received by Italian officials...The legal questions, and longstanding doubts among officials in the west about Haftar’s trustworthiness, have not dissuaded European leaders from seeking to forge an alliance with him. The analysis by Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel to the general counsel of the Pentagon, and Alex Whiting, a former international criminal prosecutor at the ICC, paints a troubling picture of Haftar’s record. The two experts point to a video that was posted on YouTube on 10 October 2015, recording a speech that Haftar gave to his LNA fighters on 18 September.

Taylor Swift has made it clear to the world she controls her brand, and one tool the singer leverages regularly to achieve this goal is trademark law. Swift's team has been regularly filing trademark applications for lyrics and other slogans under her holding company, TAS Rights Management LLC, striking down infringers in the process. But does it really work, and is this approach for everyone?...Enforcing a trademarks can be more difficult than obtaining one, though, especially in the digital age...As Harvard Law School Professor Rebecca Tushnet put it, “It looks bad to sue your fans if they're doing it because they are your fans.”

Facebook and Google, two of world’s biggest and most influential companies, pride themselves on their ad businesses. These operations generate tens of billions of dollars per year, thanks in part to letting advertisers target even the most obscure microcommunities using unprecedented sets of data. As the revelations of last week evidenced, however, that ability is a double-edged sword, one that has come back to haunt these ad-supported giants...“These kinds of controversies will keep happening because the scale and expectations around how many employees are needed to oversee the content or ad programs is teeny compared to the number of ads being served,” says Kendra Albert, a lawyer and fellow at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic.

Vice President Mike Pence defended the diminished role of Washington in the latest health care bill introduced in the Senate by citing ardent anti-Federalist Thomas Jefferson..."Thomas Jefferson said, ‘Government that governs least governs best,’ " Pence said. "I mean, the question that people ought to ask is, who do you think will be more responsive to the healthcare needs in your community? Your governor and your state legislature, or a congressman and a president in a far off nation’s capital?" It must be nice to have Jefferson on your side — except Jefferson didn’t say it. "This comes up a lot," said Annette Gordon-Reed, a Harvard legal history professor who has written extensively about Jefferson.

Micheal Baca has become the third Colorado presidential elector to join a federal lawsuit against Secretary of State Wayne Williams alleging Williams violated their constitutional rights by making threats and removing Baca as an elector ahead of the high-drama 2016 Electoral College vote...The lawsuit was announced in August by Equal Citizens, an advocacy group founded by Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, and filed on behalf of two Democratic electors, Polly Baca (unrelated to Micheal) and Robert Nemanich...“The Constitution vests in electors the choice for whom they will vote,” Lessig said in a news release Wednesday announcing Baca has joined the lawsuit.

A rich candidate campaigns as a representative of the common man against a shadowy elite, but once in office governs in ways that support and enrich people like him...To understand the phenomenon of populist plutocrats, a Harvard conference on Saturday will host a gathering of analysts who will discuss political leaders from Italy, Thailand, the Philippines, Peru, and South Africa who share at least some of the expressed characteristics. In advance of the session, the Gazette interviewed Harvard Law School Professor Matthew Stephenson, who is one of the organizers and who researches anticorruption from an international and comparative perspective, about how the gathering aims to help people learn lessons from around the world about how populist plutocracy works.

An op-ed by Mark Tushnet. Next week is “Free Speech Week” at the University of California Berkeley. Conservative speakers, some very incendiary, are scheduled to appear in public spaces — the storied Sproul Plaza, the nearby Mario Savio Steps — offering their views on feminism, Islam, and more. Maybe the organizers really want to gather an audience that will listen to what the speakers have to say — the list seems quite fluid, but the names of alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, anti-Islamic polemicist Pamela Geller, and former White House strategist Steve Bannon have been bandied about — and exit with changed minds. Mostly, though, they want to lay down a marker at what they regard as a center of intolerance for conservative views. And they probably expect some disruptions that will, they hope, discredit their opponents.

An essay by Mark Mortensen and Heidi K. Gardner...Across the world, senior managers and team leaders are increasingly frustrated by conflicts arising from what we refer to as “multiteaming”—having their people assigned to multiple projects simultaneously. But given the significant benefits of multiteaming, it has become a way of organizational life. It allows groups to share individuals’ time and brainpower across functional and departmental lines. It also increases efficiency and provides pathways for knowledge transfer. As clear as these advantages are, the costs are substantial and need to be managed.

An essay by Cass Sunstein. The American colonies imported the idea of impeachment from England, where Edmund Burke called it the “great guardian of the purity of the Constitution.” But from 1750 to 1775 republican fervor was running rampant, and the colonists made the idea all their own. Long before shots were fired in Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, colonial assemblies used impeachment as a homegrown weapon of republican government, rebuking the King’s agents for the abuse or misuse of power.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. The Trump administration has a real opportunity to deliver on its promise to streamline the regulatory state. That opportunity comes from the proposed elimination of more than 50 regulations imposed on the airline industry -- many of them designed to protect safety. Air safety has been a sensational success story. In the U.S., commercial accidents have been at very low levels for years.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. As Donald Trump’s administration enters its ninth month, it’s worth considering a surprising possibility: Things have never been better in the turbulent period since the president took office. Trump’s most blatantly unconstitutional actions, like the travel ban on immigrants from a number of majority Muslim nations, have been blocked by the courts. Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn and Sebastian Gorka are out of power. The reasonable generals (John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, James Mattis) are in. The repeal of the Affordable Care Act has failed (so far). A deal with Democrats on DACA, the policy allowing undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to stay, is in the offing. There will be no wall, paid for by Mexico or otherwise, on the southern border. Dangerously extreme tax reform seems unlikely to pass.

The Colorado Electoral College member who went rogue by not casting an official ballot for Hillary Clinton in December is suing Secretary of State Wayne Williams claiming Williams violated his constitutional rights by removing and replacing him and not counting his vote...National election law expert and Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig filed the federal complaint in Denver district court in mid-August, and says he is filing a new one today adding Micheal Baca’s name...Lessig says the plaintiffs aren’t in the lawsuit for money and have capped their damages at a dollar. He says he hopes for a quick ruling that answers the question about whether members of the Electoral College can vote their consciences. “Regardless of what you believe the law is, it’s really important that it be clear before the next election,” he says.

Over the course of four centuries, Harvard has seen presidents of many stripes. They’ve been clergymen and classicists, ambassadors and governors, chemists and botanists, and secretaries of State and the Treasury. Their training and trades may have varied—but to date, all have been white. And, until current University President Drew G. Faust, male...Ten years later, some would like to see Harvard make history yet again. “The school has made wonderful strides with respect to the student population,” Law professor and Winthrop Faculty Dean Ronald Sullivan said. “There’s still work to be done with respect to the faculty, and there’s even more work that needs to be done with respect to the top levels of administrators at the University.”

Last November, some political commentators predicted that Donald Trump’s unconventional candidacy might give way to a much more conventional presidency. Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith argues that perhaps the opposite is true – that eight months into his term, Donald Trump is fundamentally changing the office of the president.

Amid the unwelcome glare of the Sept. 11 shooting death of Carlos Munoz Portal — a Narcos location scout killed on the job in the rural region north of Mexico City — Netflix must also contend with an ongoing trademark dispute with the family of Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drug kingpin dramatized in the hit series...According to Rebecca Tushnet, a Harvard Law School professor who focuses on copyright and trademark law, it's unlikely that Escobar Inc. could have a trademark claim to "Narcos" — a word which has come to mean anyone involved in the drug-cartel trade. "It's possible to have trademarks that are the same for different goods and services. For example; Delta Airlines, Delta Dental, Delta Faucet," Tushnet says. "But at least some of the goods and services in the applications are overlapping.

An op-ed by Chiraag Bains. In January 2012, Sheriff Doug Gillespie of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department sent a team to Washington, D.C. to ask the Justice Department for help. The LVMPD had been the subject of a five-part series published by the Las Vegas Review-Journal just months before. The paper’s investigation covered 20 years of shootings by the department. It concluded that many of the incidents were avoidable and accused the LVMPD of being an “insular” agency that celebrated “a hard-charging police culture while often failing to learn from its mistakes.” Two weeks after the last piece ran, an LVMPD officer killed an unarmed, mentally ill, black veteran.

...the guests were witnessing the product of a clever and thoughtful arts collaboration between Clayton and the Harvard Art Museums. This year’s celebration was the fourth iteration of the popular event, which draws many returning students as well as a plethora of freshmen. The autumnal festivity introduces students to the museums and highlights the role that they can play in their lives...It was the first time at the museums for Harvard Law School students Cortney Robinson ’18 and Demarquin Johnson ’20. “I thought it was a good chance to be introduced to the museum,” said Robinson.