Media Mentions

A Democratic watchdog group is accusing President Trump's top environmental law enforcer of misusing funds to rail against the Paris climate agreement. In a letter to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) sent Thursday, the American Democracy Legal Fund said Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt, one of the Trump administration's most outspoken critics of the climate deal, violated an obscure grassroots-lobbying law called the Antideficiency Act, which bars federal agencies from spending federal money before it has been appropriated by Congress (or in excess of such funds)...The issues raised in the letter "will likely, in my view, be taken seriously by the comptroller general and his staff," said Howell E. Jackson, a law professor and expert on federal budget policy at Harvard, referring to GAO head Gene L. Dodaro.

Since taking power in 2015, PiS has set about dismantling the country’s checks and balances. It has reduced the public broadcaster to a propaganda organ, packed the civil service with loyalists and purged much of the army’s leadership. It has undermined the independence of the judiciary by stacking the Constitutional Tribunal with its cronies. In response, the European Commission warned Poland’s government last year that such changes pose “a systemic risk to the rule of law."...In fact, Polish courts are not especially slow. Critics believe PiS simply wants to stuff them with judges who will rubber-stamp its policies. From now on, judges will owe their careers to the governing party. “It’s shockingly brazen,” says Kim Lane Scheppele, a sociologist at Princeton University who has analysed similar changes in Hungary.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe, Richard Painter, and Norman Eisen. Can a president pardon himself? Four days before Richard Nixon resigned, his own Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel opined no, citing “the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case.” We agree. The Justice Department was right that guidance could be found in the enduring principles that no one can be both the judge and the defendant in the same matter, and that no one is above the law.

The debate over whether the president of the United States can be charged with a crime is as old as the country itself...The words of the Constitution aren't much help either. It talks about impeachment, removing a president from office. But the document is vague on the issue of whether a president can be indicted while he holds the office. "We tend to talk about it as one big on-off switch," explained Harvard Law School professor Andrew Crespo. "But, really, the question ought to be: Can he be investigated, can he be indicted, can he be made to stand trial, can he be sentenced? And the burdens imposed by each of those steps of the process are different."

A group of prominent lawyers is behind a new lawsuit filed Wednesday on behalf of Democratic donors against President Donald Trump and Roger Stone, who has advised Trump in an informal capacity. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, was organized by the nonprofit United to Protect Democracy. In addition to the Protect Democracy team, other lawyers include Keker, Van Nest & Peters partner Steven Hirsch, former federal judge and Harvard professor Nancy Gertner and Richard Primus, a professor at the University of Michigan law school. All three are working on the case pro bono.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. The Trump administration has repeatedly vowed to reduce the level of federal regulation. Naomi Rao, who was confirmed this week as the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, will play a central role in that effort. In her first year, Rao, who was a law professor at George Mason University, should consider reviving a creative idea pioneered in the George W. Bush administration -- one that could enlist OIRA's expertise to spur cost-saving deregulation, an administration priority, as well as to promote life-saving regulatory initiatives.

An op-ed by Mihir Desai. While lots of attention is directed toward identifying the next great start-up, the defining tech-industry story of the last decade has been the rise of Apple and Google. In terms of wealth creation, there is no comparison...But the greatest collision between Apple and Google is little noticed. The companies have taken completely different approaches to their shareholders and to the future, one willing to accede to the demands of investors and the other keeping power in the hands of founders and executives.

...Traitors, even just accused traitors like Gadahn, are exceedingly rare in American history. That's because treason is actually a very narrowly defined crime that's awfully hard to commit. And despite the latest wild revelations in the ongoing Trump-Russia saga—Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer who promised information as part of a Russian government effort to damage Hillary Clinton—legal experts say there is no way Junior or any Trump associate will ever get charged with treason...Even Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law expert at Harvard, inveighed that Junior's meeting had the "stench of bribery & treason."...Noah Feldman, a Harvard legal historian who previously suggested Trump may have committed impeachable offenses, agreed. "It's defined in the Constitution, and this isn't even close," he emailed me Tuesday about a possible "treason" charge.

With the disclosure of a June 2016 email in which he welcomed direct assistance from the Russian government to help his father’s campaign, Donald Trump Jr. leapt Tuesday from the frying pan of political danger into the fire of potential legal peril. The president’s eldest son became a central figure in questions about interference in last year’s election after The New York Times revealed Monday that he met with a Russian lawyer after learning she had damaging information to offer about Hillary Clinton....More to the point Tuesday is whether Trump Jr. could be vulnerable under this federal election provision. “Those regulations define contributions to include ‘anything of value,’ and I would expect dirt on one’s opponent during a presidential election to qualify easily,” Chiraag Bains, a Harvard Law School fellow and former federal prosecutor, told me.

While Donald Trump once vowed to “do a number” on Dodd-Frank, Washington’s central piece of post-crisis financial legislation, his regulatory appointees will probably prove more effective agents of change than Congress, which remains locked in a legislative logjam. The administration on Tuesday named one of the key figures in its quest to ease the load of regulation, nominating Randal Quarles to be vice-chair for financial supervision at the Federal Reserve...Hal Scott, a Harvard professor who was himself a contender for the Fed post, said the choice of Mr Quarles was an excellent one. But he added: “It is not like he is the Tsar; he is the vice-chair. He has to get the support of the board for whatever he does.” 

An op-ed by Adrian Perkins `18. The lack of diversity at tech companies is well-established: Less than 10 percent of workers at Google and LinkedIn are non-Asian minorities, for example, and only 31 percent of employees at Google are women. But the technology industry is guilty of another serious blunder that hasn't spurred the same volume of national conversation: a lack of interest, and failure to invest, in the capacity of small and mid-sized cities to shape technology’s evolution.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly denied colluding with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign. Yet, the revelation of a meeting last year—between his son, his campaign chairman, his son-in-law and a Russian lawyer who promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government—suggests that the question of collusion is an open one; according to emails arranging the meeting, Trump’s son Donald Jr. was aware of that promise and said in response, “I love it.” And, of course, special counsel Robert Mueller is still investigating this very matter... [Alex Whiting]: Collusion will likely come in the form of the solicitation or encouragement of any improper assistance to the Trump campaign from a foreign source, in this case from Russia.

An op-ed by Hal Scott. In recent months, the Trump administration and members of Congress have called for reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law that separated commercial banking from investment banking. That would be a serious mistake. Instead, Congress should repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reform’s “Hotel California” provision, which prevents large banks from voluntarily separating their commercial and investment banking activities. The biggest problem with the calls for the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall is a lack of understanding about Glass-Steagall itself.

A recent decision from three New Jersey Supreme Court committees raised concerns over legal service plans from Avvo, LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer. Online legal service providers are no strangers to controversy. Renewing debate around the ethics of these plans, three committees of the New Jersey Supreme Court issued a joint opinion barring the state’s attorneys from participating in legal service programs offered by Avvo Inc., LegalZoom.com Inc. and Rocket Lawyer Inc...Ron Dolin, a regular angel investor and senior research fellow at Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession, explained that those who invest in companies facing regulatory challenges are usually both aware of potential issues and eager to challenge them. “People in it are already aware of the road blocks. I think it’s not that different of investing in Uber or Lyft, where you’re aware of the regulatory environment. We take it up to the edge and find out where the limits are. We make a good business of this by fighting the limits that are really holding you back that shouldn’t be there,” Dolin noted.

An op-ed by Alex Whiting. The criminal investigations of the Trump administration seem largely to have followed two separate paths: on the one hand, whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian interference with the election, and on the other hand whether President Trump obstructed justice. Commentary has alternated between these inquiries, but has not always connected the two. In part that is because of the piecemeal way the evidence has emerged. In part it is because the two inquiries have distinct legal elements and can, in fact, exist separately. However, at a moment when our attention is focused on the question of possible collusion, it is worth remembering this obvious point: the two investigations are, in fact, very much connected.

Donald Trump has faced an impressive array of lawsuits in his first half-year as president; July 11th brought him one more. Knight First Amendment Institute et al v Donald Trump, Sean Spicer and Daniel Scavino challenges the 45th president’s habit of blocking Twitter users whose 140-character critiques are too biting, or too popular...Mr Trump “uses his Twitter account as the principal platform for official presidential pronouncements”, Mr [Laurence] Tribe says, which makes the legal theory underlying Knight Institute v Trump at least “plausible”, though Mr Tribe says he isn’t yet sure “the suit ought to succeed."

After an Australian woman was shot dead by police in Minneapolis, experts are questioning why the officers' body cameras were not turned on during the encounter. Justine Ruszczyk, who used the last name Damond, reportedly called 911 after hearing a noise near her home on Saturday, according to her stepson-to-be. She was fatally shot by one of the responding officers..."I think a point that gets lost is that these body cameras also have the benefit of protecting officers who rightly use force, because it has this ability to record a situation and visually show that force is justified," Ronald Sullivan Jr., a professor at Harvard Law School and director of the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute, told NBC News.

An op-ed by Jeannie Suk Gersen. Debates over policies to deal with sexual assault on college campuses have been fraught in the best of circumstances. But under President Donald Trump’s Administration, such debates bring with them a particularly toxic backstory. There was, of course, the “Access Hollywood” recording of Trump boasting about kissing and grabbing women by their genitals without their consent, and at least a dozen women have publicly accused him of sexually harassing or assaulting them. Many people are understandably skeptical of policy moves on sexual misconduct that may emerge from his Administration.

A year after racially-focused protests rocked Harvard Law School, a student, faculty, and alumni task force has recommended changes to improve diversity and inclusion across the school. Though the task force was appointed by former Law School Dean Martha L. Minow, the school’s new dean, John F. Manning ’82, sent the report to Law School affiliates July 5, writing that he is “delighted” to have the opportunity to make use of the report’s findings...Cameron D. Clark [`18], a student member of the task force, said he did not sign the report because he thought it fell short of addressing what the task force had been asked to investigate. “I did not sign on to the Task Force Report because, in my opinion, the report did not reflect the critical investigative rigor expected of us in the Dean’s charge,” Clark said. “Whether by necessity or by choice, we failed to engage all stakeholders in the academic community.”

As an economist, Mihir Desai has gained wide recognition for his expertise in tax policy and international and corporate finance. His writing and teaching have covered such topics as proposed reform of the U.S. tax system and the misuse of high-powered incentives and their impact on American competitiveness. But Desai, Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School and a professor at Harvard Law School, has set aside his usual academic work in a new book, “The Wisdom of Finance: Discovering Humanity in the World of Risk and Return.”...The Gazette spoke to Desai about the book and the argument he advances in it that finance and the humanities have much to gain from reaffirming and strengthening the connections between them.

It was a performance art piece that became famous: A woman who felt that Columbia University had mishandled her charge of rape against a fellow student turned that anger into her senior arts thesis, a yearlong project in which she carried a 50-pound mattress whenever she was on the Morningside Heights campus...The policies led the government to investigate many universities and colleges, including Columbia, over their handling of sexual assault cases under the federal law known as Title IX, which prohibits gender discrimination by any school that receives federal funding...Janet Halley, a professor at Harvard Law School who has been among the critics of that university’s sexual misconduct procedures, said she was not sure what to think of Columbia’s promise to review its policies. “I can’t tell from this statement whether they’re promising to suppress the speech of someone like Emma Sulkowicz,” she said.