Media Mentions

...There is no doubt that until recently, many women’s claims of sexual assault were reflexively and widely disregarded—or that many still are in some quarters...Action to redress that problem was—and is—fully warranted. But many of the remedies that have been pushed on campus in recent years are unjust to men, infantilize women, and ultimately undermine the legitimacy of the fight against sexual violence...As Jeannie Suk Gersen and her husband and Harvard Law School colleague, Jacob Gersen, wrote last year in a California Law Review article, “The Sex Bureaucracy,” the “conduct classified as illegal” on college campuses “has grown substantially, and indeed, it plausibly covers almost all sex students are having today.”...In a 2015 article for the Harvard Law Review, Janet Halley, a Harvard law professor, describes a case at an Oregon college in which a male student was investigated and told to stay away from a female student, resulting in the loss of his campus job and a move from his dorm.

Harvard Law School has installed a memorial honoring slaves who were owned by one of the school’s founders...Law dean John Manning said at Tuesday’s unveiling that “to be true to our complicated history, we must also shine a light on what we are not proud of.”

In announcing the Trump administration's phase-out of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program Tuesday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions called DACA "an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the executive branch" under former President Barack Obama and argued that President Trump was pushed to review the program by "imminent litigation" from 10 state attorneys general...As Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith points out, the 2014 OLC opinion declaring DACA "a permissible exercise" of executive "discretion to enforce the immigration laws" is still up on the OLC website, "implying that it's still valid for the executive branch." If the office has written a new opinion on DACA, it hasn't posted it to the website yet. "Did Sessions consult OLC on this? If so, did OLC revise its views and/or withdraw the 2014 opinion?" Goldsmith asked on Twitter, adding, "If Sessions didn't consult OLC, what's the status of 2014 opinion? Will it be withdrawn?"

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. I arrived in Seoul, South Korea at the same time that President Trump was warning North Korea—just 35 miles away—that it may “face fire and fury like the world has never seen.” It gives a special flavor to a research trip to look around and ask yourself, “Are these the people with whom I’m going to be incinerated?” I wasn’t researching nuclear policy, though, but rather something that will be of vital importance if the peninsula doesn’t turn to ash: data. The Mayor of Seoul is taking steps that may be important to the development of more genuine democracy in South Korea.

...When asked by Mic, constitutional law scholars were split on whether DACA is legal — though a large number wrote Trump recently to argue for the program’s constitutionality...Laurence Tribe, a leading constitutional scholar who has been an outspoken Trump critic, said Trump’s disdain for DACA did not square with his travel ban action, a critique echoed by the legal scholars Mic interviewed across the board. “Trump argues for the religiously discriminatory travel ban by relying on sweeping presidential power to regulate immigration and then turns around and argues that clearly reasonable protection of involuntary child immigrants is beyond the power of the president.”

President Trump has nominated Robert Jackson to be a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission for the remainder of a five-year term expiring June 5, 2019. Jackson is a professor at Columbia Law School and director of its program on corporate law and policy...In a recent research paper, “Shining Light on Corporate Political Spending,” Harvard Professor Lucian Bebchuk and Jackson outlined some of what they expect the SEC will have to address as it proceeds with rulemaking. First, it will need to determine the types of political spending covered by a rule and which public companies will be subject to it. Should smaller companies be exempted from the rules, for example, or is a scaled disclosure requirement warranted?

Breaking ranks with many of their fellow Republicans, a group of prominent politicians filed briefs on Tuesday urging the Supreme Court to rule that extreme political gerrymandering — the drawing of voting districts to give lopsided advantages to the party in power — violates the Constitution...Charles Fried, a Harvard law professor who served as United States solicitor general under President Ronald Reagan, and who is among the lawyers representing Republican politicians urging the Supreme Court to reject extreme political gerrymanders, said it was important to take the long view and to act on principle. “It’s not a partisan issue,” he said. “We are working for our republic, and not for Republicans.”

President Donald Trump ended an Obama-era program that protects undocumented youth Tuesday, drawing the swift condemnation of several Harvard administrators...If a student’s DACA status expires—and they are no longer legally permitted to remain in the country—deportation won’t happen immediately, according to Jason Corral, the designated attorney for undocumented students in the law clinic. Students would first have to be placed in formal removal proceedings before facing deportation...Some immigration rights advocates have raised concerns that by handing over personal details to receive DACA status, DACA recipients have unwittingly given the federal government the information it needs to go after them once the program is terminated. “I think it is reasonable to be concerned about that,” Law School professor Gerald L. Neuman said. “I think there are legal arguments about whether that can be done or not, and there may be lawsuits about whether the government can do this if it tries.”

Improbable Worlds Ltd., backed by SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund, said it’s in talks for major game publishers to adopt its virtual world simulation software...Some of the games using SpatialOS aim to offer more than entertainment. Berlin-based Klang Games has teamed up with Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig to create Seed, an MMO title billed as an experiment in governance. In the game, players collaborate in colonizing a planet, balancing economic needs and environment sustainability.

Harvard Law School unveiled a memorial dedicated to slaves owned by the Royall family, whose donations helped endow the institution, at an event Tuesday evening. The plaque, which sits on a rock in the plaza between Langdell Hall and the Caspersen Student Center, reads, “In honor of the enslaved whose labor created wealth that made possible the founding of Harvard Law School. May we pursue the highest ideals of law and justice in their memory.” University President Drew G. Faust, newly appointed Dean of the Law School John F. Manning, and Law School professors Annette Gordon-Reed and Janet E. Halley each spoke at the dedication...Adrian D. Perkins, a member of the school’s student government, said seeing the monument gave him “profound happiness” as a student leader and African American student. He said the student government is planning a number of ways to address racial concerns on campus this year.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Judge Richard Posner, probably the world’s most influential legal thinker over the last half-century, retired from the federal bench on Saturday. If a Nobel Prize were to be given in law, he would be the first to receive it, solely on the basis of his academic contributions. Apart from that, he wrote more than 3,300 opinions as a federal judge. In countless areas, involving questions that grab headlines (like same-sex marriage) or highly technical matters, his analysis has proved enduring and defining.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. President Donald Trump has threatened to punish any “sanctuary city” that resists turning over undocumented immigrants to federal agents -- although he almost certainly lacks the authority to do so. So it’s noteworthy this week that a federal district court in Texas has held that even the state legislature can’t entirely force sanctuary cities to work alongside the federal government on immigration matters.

Congress is back tomorrow with a full plate and an unclear path forward, muddled by squabbling between President Donald Trump and the GOP leadership at the Capitol. At the top of most lists is some sort of appropriations legislation to keep Uncle Sam’s lights on before the current funding measure runs dry at the end of this month...Not everyone is sure the Trump administration drops the appeal. Sharon Block, who ran the DOL’s policy shop in the Obama administration, told me the new decision still limits the department’s regulatory authority in a way the White House might not like. “If they’re being truthful that they want to promulgate a new rule, I guess they have to figure out a rationale for a salary threshold that aligns with his reasoning,” Block said, referring to Mazzant.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Monday responded harshly to reports that President Trump was inclined to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program...Laurence Tribe posits a broader protection beyond simply using the information DACA beneficiaries provided, citing a series of cases “involving government pulling the rug out from under those who rely to their detriment on its express or implied promises that would form part of the legal narrative.” He tells Right Turn, “Clearly, in serving its interests in smoking people without papers out of the shadows and into the open, the government — by promising them that, if they registered for DACA and complied with various other conditions, they’d not be targeted for deportation — created not just some technical estoppel but a basic duty as a matter of due process of law.”

...Public-school teachers who accept perks, meals or anything of value in exchange for using a company’s products in their classrooms could also run afoul of school district ethics policies or state laws regulating government employees. “Any time you are paying a public employee to promote a product in the public classroom without transparency, then that’s problematic,” said James E. Tierney, a former attorney general of Maine who is a lecturer at Harvard Law School. “Should attorneys general be concerned about this practice? The answer is yes.”

Four Harvard Law School academics have asked the U.S. Department of Education to revisit policies regarding campus sexual misconduct investigations...The Harvard memo (PDF) was signed by Janet E. Halley, Elizabeth D. Bartholet, and Jeannie Suk Gersen, all of whom are Harvard law professors, and Nancy Gertner, a lecturer at the school who is also a retired federal judge. They submitted the memo to the Department of Education Aug. 21. “Definitions of sexual wrongdoing on college campuses are now seriously overbroad. They go way beyond accepted legal definitions of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. They often include sexual conduct that is merely unwelcome, even if it does not create a hostile environment, even if the person accused had no way of knowing it was unwanted, and even if the accuser’s sense that it was unwelcome arose after the encounter,” the memo reads.

President Donald Trump likes to tout his affinity for the American worker. He’s climbed into an American-made big rig in the White House driveway. He’s donned a hard hat while addressing West Virginia coal miners. And he’s boasted about hiring “thousands and thousands and thousands” of union workers...Trump’s budget proposed cutting the Labor Department’s funding by about 20 percent while boosting funding for the department’s union watchdog by 22 percent, despite the fact that union membership is at a record low. Most of the proposed cuts targeted workforce training programs that enjoy bipartisan support. Outside of targeting unions, Trump’s Labor Department is mostly focused on getting out of the way of employers. “Overwhelmingly, I would define their mission as a negative one,” says [Sharon] Block, who is now director of Harvard’s Labor and Worklife program.

An op-ed by Sharon Block. Labor law in our country is profoundly broken. The National Labor Relations Act is the federal statute that protects the right of employees to join a union, engage in collective bargaining or just stand together with coworkers to have a say in what happens at work. Congress passed the law in 1935 to “ encourage collective bargaining.” But the NLRA is failing to fulfill this purpose.

...Now Google is a brand worth an estimated $113 billion, and the word “google” is often used as a verb meaning “to search online.” Two entrepreneurs — who are not quite on the level of Page and Brin — are trying to exploit the popularity of the term, saying it has become so common that Google should no longer have a monopoly on its own name....“Consumers are in charge of the language,” Harvard law professor Rebecca Tushnet told TheWrap. “Whatever they think is a generic term for a product or service, is.”

...The truth is that many people want to be in a union, and, by most public opinion measurements, that desire has not waned, and has even strengthened in recent years, according to some scholars. Richard Freeman, co-director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, points out, "In 2002 the proportion of workers who said they would vote for a union rose above the proportion that said they would vote against a union for the first time in any national survey: a majority of nonunion workers now desire union representation in their workplace."

Earlier this week, President Trump took a question about the timing of his pardon of former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Trump said, "In the middle of a hurricane, even though it was a Friday evening, I assumed the ratings would be far higher than they would be normally. You know the hurricane was just starting. And I put it out that I had pardoned, as we say, Sheriff Joe.” Hurricane or not, it was a deeply controversial pardon. We dissect the legal questions surrounding it. Guest: Nancy Gertner,