Media Mentions

...Reporters from the outlet tracked down Rinat Akmestshin, a Russian American lobbyist who reportedly once was a Russian spy (he denies it). He confirmed his participation in the June 2016 meeting with Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. But, here’s the shocking part. Despite Trump Jr. claiming she provided no supporting information, the lobbyist told them that the Russian attorney actually did bring with her a plastic folder with “printed-out” documents detailing illicit funds allegedly being funneled to the DNC...“If it’s accurate, it obviously adds considerably to the already strong case that Don Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort violated a number of federal criminal prohibitions through soliciting illegal foreign assistance to a U.S. presidential campaign (and, in Jared’s case, through falsely and incompletely filling in SF86 in obtaining security clearance) and, again on the premise that this report is accurate, this information shows that they not only solicited but indeed received such assistance,” Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe told LawNewz.com.

...Now, a small group of scientists and thinkers believes there could be an alternative, a way to save the president—and the rest of us—from him- or herself. As soon as technology advances far enough, they think we should put a computer in charge of the country...Jonathan Zittrain, an internet law professor at Harvard Law School, thinks that even with A.I.’s flaws, computers could serve as checks against human biases. “A.I., properly trained, offers the prospect of more systematically identifying bias in particular and unfairness in general,” he wrote in a recent blog post.

...Over the past few decades, political scientists have concentrated their study of norms on developing democracies, where they came to see such informal structures as tricky things — the lack of clear-cut consequences for violating them made them permeable. But in a 2012 paper, the political scientists Julia Azari and Jennifer Smith argued for a return to studying norms in American politics, an idea that turns out to have been prescient: In 2017, our attention has been snapped back to norms by a president who seems completely unconstrained by them..."I detest much of the president’s norm-defying behavior," Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who served in George W. Bush’s Justice Department, wrote on the blog Lawfare. "But I worry at least as much about norms related to our governance that have been breached and diminished as a result of, or in response to, Trumpism."

Donald Trump Jr.’s explanation this week about why he and other top Trump advisors met in June 2016 with a Russian lawyer who promised “information helpful” to his father’s US presidential campaign raises more questions than it answers...Trump Jr. has hired New York criminal defense lawyer Alan Futerfas to represent him in any Russia-related probes. Futerfas says his client has done nothing wrong...Legal experts told Quartz they see a wide scope for criminal investigation...Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, told Quartz that “a properly conducted presidential election” could be construed as what was taken by illegal means.

Can President Donald Trump interfere with a merger because he hates CNN? His feud with the outlet probably hasn’t peaked...John Coates, a Harvard Law School professor who has done consulting services for the DOJ, told LawNewz.com point-blank that interference would break the law. “The DOJ has a long and sensible tradition of independence from the White House on enforcement policy, particularly in technical areas such as antitrust enforcement,” said Coates, who teaches a course on mergers and acquisitions.

An op-ed by fellow Jordan Brennan. The stern rebuke issued by some business groups over the proposed minimum wage increase is out of step with both popular opinion and with the bulk of economic research. Polling indicates that a strong majority of Torontonians support a $15 legislated minimum (70 per cent overall, including 84 per cent of low-wage workers). The Ontario Chamber of Commerce and Canadian Federation of Independent Business, for their part, have called on the government to undertake a cost-benefit analysis before proceeding. Fortunately, the minimum wage is one of the most studied topics in economics.

The rulings on online speech are coming down all over the world...Experts worry the biggest risk is that the whole internet will be forced to comport with the strictest legal limitations. “There’s a risk of a race to the bottom here,” says Vivek Krishnamurthy, assistant director of Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, who specializes in international internet governance. “Anything that’s mildly controversial is probably illegal in some authoritarian country. So we could end up with a really sanitized internet, where all that’s left is cute cat photos.”

In a rebuke to President Trump’s disengagement from worldwide climate change efforts, Gov. Jerry Brown told an international audience Thursday the president “doesn’t speak for the rest of us” and unveiled plans for a global environmental summit in San Francisco next year...The federal government is crucial for policy to succeed in the long run, but states can fill a role while Trump is in office, said Jody Freeman, a Harvard law professor who served as White House counselor for energy and climate change in the Obama administration. “This is just is of a piece of that effort to say, ‘Look, the U.S. isn’t stalling even though the Trump administration is committed to these rollbacks of climate and energy policy,’” Freeman said.

An op-ed by Heidi Gardner. Collaboration can be painful. Most people have had a bad team experience. Perhaps someone needed to work overtime to compensate for a free-riding colleague, or sat in a meeting convinced they could be doing a better, speedier job on their own. Others hesitate to even start a collaborative project, worried that teammates might make mistakes, fail to deliver on time or steal credit for the project’s success. Is all that trouble really necessary and worthwhile? In short, yes; at least it is when we’re trying to tackle today’s most complex and multidisciplinary issues.

An op-ed by Charles Fried. Last month, the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments in Gill v. Whitford, a case in which Wisconsin seeks to overturn a decision of a lower court holding that the state assembly district map is an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. Wisconsin’s effort should fail. The lower court got it right. Although Democratic and Republican voters in Wisconsin are about evenly divided, the state legislative districts are so manipulated that Republicans gained 60 percent of the seats in the assembly, despite receiving less than 49 percent of the statewide vote in 2012 — a result that has remained largely unchanged in subsequent elections. And it is that gerrymandered assembly that Wisconsin wants to keep in office so it can draw a new map for itself and for the state’s members of Congress in 2021.

A federal court today threw out the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's approval of a rate structure in a decision that some analysts said could limit the regulator's ability to modify electricity market designs...But Ari Peskoe, a senior fellow in electricity law at Harvard Law School, said he didn't see the ruling as limiting FERC's ability to set market designs. "In this case, it appears that FERC could have achieved the same result by rejecting PJM's filing entirely, explaining exactly why it was rejecting it, and then suggesting that PJM submit the same filing but with the suggested changes," he said.

While Friday's meeting between the leaders of the two biggest nuclear powers drew world attention, representatives from 122 other countries did something truly historic that barely registered a blip: They negotiated the first-ever treaty outlawing atomic bombs...Bonnie Docherty, an international human rights lawyer at Harvard Law School who was also in attendance, contended that the ban — even without the participation of nuclear weapons states — could “create a norm” that nuclear weapons are immoral and illegal and “set a positive standard that I think will influence disarmament law.”

Mark Weidick thought it had to be some kind of mistake. In late May, the CEO of HiQ Labs, a data analytics startup in San Francisco, received a letter from LinkedIn, ordering his company to stop using data from user profiles. LinkedIn, the Sunnyvale professional networking company now owned by Microsoft, might as well have told Weidick to just fold up HiQ, because the startup relies on that information in its algorithm to help businesses identify and retain talent...HiQ’s situation is not merely a dispute between two companies. Though early, the case could well end up in the U.S. Supreme Court. A decision would ultimately guide courts on how to meld high-minded ideas about freedom forged in the 18th century with the 21st century digital economy. But don’t take my word for it. The case could very well establish “a lasting precedent on applying constitutional principles to social media,” famed Harvard law Professor Laurence Tribe told me.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. For leaders as well as friends, spouses and colleagues, grace is a precious characteristic. Whatever one thinks of Donald Trump’s policy choices, our nation has never had a president more lacking in grace. Whether or not Abraham Lincoln was the greatest American president, he was certainly its most gracious...On the eve of victory, Lincoln avoided triumphalism or crowing. Instead he rejected malice and called for charity. He backed his firmness with both humility (“as God gives us to see the right”) and tenderness (“to care for him who shall have borne the battle”).

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. President Donald Trump still seems to think that pressuring China to rein in North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is the best way to push back against the rogue state’s nuclear expansion, most recently in the form of testing an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach Alaska. This approach hasn’t worked so far, and there’s a reason: Chinese President Xi Jinping has no strong reason to object to a North Korean nuclear insurance policy against the threat of being overthrown by the U.S.

Following Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ decision to “reset” new regulations put in place to protect students at for-profit colleges, two separate lawsuits now accuse the Secretary of breaking federal law by running roughshod over the regulatory process when she delayed the so-called Borrower Defense rule, which would have made it easier for defrauded students to get out from under their student loan burdens...Toby Merrill, director of Harvard Law’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, says that delaying the rule will affect hundreds of thousands of student loan borrowers who have bona fide Borrower Defense claims but must navigate a byzantine and outdated system. “Not only does the Department want to pull back the process it has committed to, but it also is capitulating to companies that want to keep borrowers from enforcing their rights in court,” says Merrill.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Independence Day arrives this year during a period of intense political polarization, anger and distrust, potentially jeopardizing the ideals for which the American Revolution was fought. That’s a problem, but it also signals an opportunity. Nations benefit from the unifying effects of shared memories -- especially if those memories reflect a commitment to ideals. The revolution was inspired by two such ideals: self-government and human liberty.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Does Canada own the internet? The question may sound like a joke, but it’s the serious challenge presented by a Canadian Supreme Court decision issued last week. The court ordered Google to deindex search results that were letting one side of a lawsuit violate the intellectual property rights of the other -- not just in Canada, but worldwide.

In the four months since he took office as the Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator, Scott Pruitt has moved to undo, delay or otherwise block more than 30 environmental rules, a regulatory rollback larger in scope than any other over so short a time in the agency’s 47-year history, according to experts in environmental law...“Just the number of environmental rollbacks in this time frame is astounding,” said Richard Lazarus, a professor of environmental law at Harvard. “Pruitt has come in with a real mission. He is much more organized, much more focused than the other cabinet-level officials, who have not really taken charge of their agencies. It’s very striking how much they’ve done.”

An op-ed by Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter S. Onuf. It was an article of Thomas Jefferson’s faith that no government should interfere in anyone’s private religious beliefs. A passionate student of history, Jefferson knew that religious struggles through the ages had caused “rivers of blood” to flow all over the world. The blood is still flowing. News of sectarian violence reaches us daily from across the globe, bringing us unimaginably horrific and mind-numbing images. One of Jefferson’s most fervent hopes was that Americans would be spared this carnage, and he did his best to set us on that path. It’s worth pausing, this Fourth of July, to ponder this facet of Jefferson’s deep wisdom, and how well we’ve lived up to it.

...Among the proponents of a sunset provision for dual-class share structures are Lucian Bebchuk, a professor at Harvard Law School and director of the program on corporate governance who, with Kobi Kastiel, a research director of the program, published a detailed paper in April providing a framework for designing such structures. “The debate should focus on the permissibility of finite term dual-class structures—that is, structures that sunset after a fixed period of time (such as 10 or 15 years) unless their extension is approved by shareholders unaffiliated with the controller,” they wrote in the research paper.