Media Mentions

Two universities recently convened a symposium to honor the work and influence of the late civil rights lawyer Charles Hamilton Houston. Harvard University’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice (CHHRIJ) and Clemson University’s Charles H. Houston Center for the Study of the Black Experience in Education hosted “The Enduring Legacy of Charles Hamilton Houston: 3rd Biennial Symposium” at Harvard Law School last week...“The theme of building bridges to the future follows directly from the work of Charles Hamilton Houston, whose work was always built on establishing a foundation from which one could go further,” said Dr. David Harris, managing director of CHHRIJ. “He did not see school desegregation as an end but a beginning of a pathway forward. Although he would surely be disappointed in the delays we have experienced as a nation in closing the gaps between students of color and White students, he would applaud the efforts of all our panelists to eliminate obstacles and create opportunities.”...“We believe that there is so much unfinished business with regard to educational access,” [Tomiko Brown-Nagin] added. “Students of color still suffer disadvantages: disproportionate punishment, fewer resources, less experienced teachers. By working in the educational space around issues of access and quality, the Houston Institute continues the legacy of its namesake,” she added.

A book review by Annette Gordon-Reed. It is no surprise that the election of the first black president of the United States would occasion much thinking, writing and talking about the subject of race in America...At the same time, how galling it was for the not insignificant number of white Americans who fervently believed that the US began as a country for white people, and should forever remain so. The president of the United States serves as a symbol of the nation; America’s face and voice to the world. All the reasons why many saw Obama’s election as evidence of the country’s endless capacity for adjustment and renewal, an occasion for pride, were for others evidence of America’s degradation, a source of intolerable shame and anger. Something had to be done. What was done, Ta-Nehisi Coates says in We Were Eight Years in Power, the book of essays that follows his bestselling and influential Between the World and Me, was to seek to erase with extreme prejudice the effects of the country having lived under a black president by electing the man Coates dubs in the book’s final essay “The First White President” (Trump’s “ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power”).

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The claim that President Donald Trump is mentally unwell has a particular valence in today’s charged political environment. It isn’t supposed to sound like a partisan criticism. It’s supposed to sound like an objective statement of medical fact.

Countries should respond to reports of new use of incendiary weapons in Syria by working to strengthen the international law governing these exceptionally cruel weapons, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today...It urges countries at a UN disarmament meeting, held in Geneva from November 22 to 24, 2017, to initiate a review of Protocol III of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW). This protocol, which regulates incendiary weapons, has failed to prevent their ongoing use, endangering civilians. “Countries should react to the threat posed by incendiary weapons by closing the loopholes in outdated international law,” said Bonnie Docherty, senior arms researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Stronger law would mean stronger protections for civilians.”...“Existing law on incendiary weapons is a legacy of the US war in Vietnam and a Cold War compromise,” said Docherty, who is also the associate director of armed conflict and civilian protection at Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic, which co-published the report. “But the political and military landscape has changed, and it is time for the law to reflect current problems.”

The speculation spreads every time an older politician of either party blunders verbally or seems to lose the thread: Is it Alzheimer's? Early dementia? Impaired judgment? Professor Francis Shen of the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior shared a crop of typical headlines at a Harvard Law School Petrie-Flom Center forum called "Dementia and Democracy" this week. They included politicians of various stripes targeted by weaselly phrases like "may have Alzheimer's" and "may have early-onset dementia."...Shen's central point: Politicians, who have huge advantages as incumbents, and federal judges, who serve for life, tend to stay on the job well past typical retirement ages. Yet we know that some cognitive decline with age is normal, and that the risk of dementia skyrockets as we get older.

When a panel of U.N. judges hands down a verdict next week in the trial of former Bosnian Serb military chief Gen. Ratko Mladic, it will mark the end of a ground-breaking era in international law. Yet a new age of international justice is already underway, with other temporary courts and tribunals springing up around the world to prosecute atrocities. Mladic's trial is the last at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which was set up in 1993 to prosecute crimes committed in the Balkan wars of the early 1990s..."I think people now see that the ICC cannot be the answer for everything," said Alex Whiting, a professor at Harvard Law School. "Both because of capacity and resources but also because of institutional fit. I think there will be ad hoc tribunals again. They may be designed differently, a stronger tilt toward hybrid tribunals."

...To recap, we have three Americans–UCLA basketball players LiAngelo Ball, Jalen Hill and Cody Riley–arrested by Chinese authorities for alleged shoplifting. Trump took credit for their return to the states, saying he asked the country’s president Xi Jinping for help. Now we have that same president saying he should’ve done nothing. What does it mean if provable spite motivated a president’s decision to refrain from helping an American held in custody on foreign soil? Law&Crime reached out to Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman for his take on the matter, and asked if such behavior, or something like it, could be impeachable. “Not impeachable,” Feldman wrote in an email. “He was under no duty to help and no duty to be nice about it after the fact.”

State-federal tension over electricity policy is likely to continue even after current debates over nuclear and coal subsidies end, speakers told the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ Annual Meeting last week. In fact, said former FERC Commissioner Tony Clark, “things are probably going to get more tense and more difficult before they get easier.”...Ari Peskoe, of Harvard Law School’s Environmental Policy Initiative, said legal challenges to Illinois’ and New York’s zero-emission credits for nuclear plants “expose a question that courts have not addressed in the 20 years of restructuring: May a state provide an incentive for energy production without intruding on FERC’s exclusive jurisdiction over energy sales? Perhaps the state authority over generating facilities means just that — the facilities themselves, and not the energy that they produce,” he said.

When a court on the Dutch North Sea coast issues its final verdict this week, it will signal the end of an experiment that has reverberated around the world, from the killing fields of Rwanda to the CIA’s secret cells in Europe...The glass is either half full or half empty, said Alex Whiting, professor of practice at Harvard Law School. “You can say we haven’t come far enough and the new institutions, particularly the ICC, have not replicated the success of the ICTY, but you can just as easily say it’s remarkable how far we’ve come in just 25 years,” he said.

Growing up in the mostly white city of Lethbridge in southern Alberta, Canada, Julian SpearChief-Morris [`18] often felt out of place...But after graduating from a local college and coming to Harvard Law School (HLS), with its diverse student body, SpearChief-Morris felt right at home. And when he was admitted to the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, one of the three honor societies at the School, he found a family. It’s a place that SpearChief-Morris has made his own...He is the first indigenous student to lead the bureau...As the bureau’s president, SpearChief-Morris worked to build bridges with other student organizations on campus. Esme Caramello ’94, J.D.’ 99, the bureau’s faculty director and clinical professor of law, praised him. “Julian is brilliant, organized, and mission-driven,” Caramello said in an email...His leadership is a source of pride for indigenous students at Harvard, said Leilani Doktor [`19], co-president of the Native American Law Students Association. SpearChief-Morris was co-president of the association last year, and during his term made unique contributions, said Doktor. “He spearheaded initiatives to collaborate with other student organizations, build community for native students, and infuse public service into our everyday lives,” she said.

Jack Schlossberg [`20], the only grandson of the late President John F. Kennedy, spoke out on climate change and joked about life on Harvard’s campus during an appearance at the university’s Institute of Politics Thursday...Schlossberg: Harvard Law School is great. I’m lucky to be here. It’s a really difficult, intense experience. But I know so much more than I did the day before I got to law school, so that’s a cool feeling.

Justice Neil Gorsuch returned to the faithful on Thursday night to address the Federalist Society, a conservative group that was instrumental to his nomination to the Supreme Court. Greeted by a standing ovation, Gorsuch delivered a rousing tribute to the conservative jurisprudence of the man whose seat he filled: the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Gorsuch admitted, however, that the months since his nomination have been "surreal" at times..."Justice Gorsuch's manner at oral argument has rubbed some people the wrong way, but I'm not one of them," said Ian Samuel, a lecturer at Harvard Law School and host of First Mondays, a weekly podcast about the Supreme Court. "It is refreshing to have a justice join the court and decide they're not going to ease into it like a warm bath -- he's there to do a job and he decided to hit the ground running from day one," Samuel said.

The revelations overcame Edgar Maddison Welch like a hallucinatory fever. On December 1st, 2016, the father of two from Salisbury, North Carolina, a man whose pastimes included playing Pictionary with his family, tried to persuade two friends to join a rescue mission. Alex Jones, the Info-Wars host, was reporting that Hillary Clinton was sexually abusing children in satanic rituals a few hundred miles north, in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant...Welch did not find any captive children – Comet Ping Pong does not even have a basement – but he did prove, if there were any lingering doubts after the election, that fake news has real consequences. Welch's arrest was the culmination of an election cycle dominated by fake news – and by attacks on the legitimate press...That was exactly how the right-wing-media ecosystem worked during the 2016 campaign, explains Yochai Benkler, who directs the Berkman-Klein Center for the Internet and Society at Harvard. After the election, he and his colleagues mapped about 2 million campaign-news stories. He found that far-right-media outlets were organized extremely tightly around Breitbart and, to a lesser degree, FoxNews.com. "The right paid attention to right-wing sites, and the more right-wing they were, the more attention they got," Benkler says.

Literature intersects with current affairs, philosophy, cricket, cinema, economics and theatre at the ongoing Tata Literature Live! LitFest in Mumbai. The four-day festival, which is discussing a range of burning issues, looks at the world through the lenses of Nobel laureates, writers, economists and intellectuals...Lounge caught up on email with Catharine A. MacKinnon, one of the US’ leading feminist scholars, a lawyer and an academic...[Mackinnon]:Many women, and men who oppose sexual harassment, are engaging the conversation on the best way forward at this juncture of change. The fact that sexual harassment affects all women does not mean that it affects all women in the same ways, or that all women are equally vulnerable to it. But it is true that women are subjected to pressures to deliver sexually in order to survive or advance economically, educationally, and in their work generally.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein...To be sure, no one is above the law. Political opponents of a president cannot claim immunity from prosecution. But the bar must be set very high. That conclusion is vindicated not only by principle, but also by longstanding traditions. Whether Republican or Democratic, American presidents have been extraordinarily reluctant to call for prosecution of their political rivals. They have looked forward rather than backward. With his enthusiasm for prosecuting Hillary Clinton, President Donald Trump is breaking that longstanding norm of American democracy.

...Tomiko Brown-Nagin, professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law, faculty director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute, and co-director of the Program in Law and History at Harvard Law School, grew up in the Deep South in the 1970s and was among the first African-Americans in her area to attend an integrated school. “Many will say desegregation is too costly for black students; there’s social isolation, low expectations, and a lot of other disadvantages,” Brown-Nagin said. “But at bottom the benefits outweigh the costs. Students who attend desegregated schools end up with higher career aspirations and in a higher place in our world.”

The first time a woman made a very public allegation of sexual harassment before Congress, against a very prominent man, she was greeted with skepticism and hostility by male members of Congress...More than a quarter century later, public people in politics, entertainment and journalism are battling sexual harassment or assault charges...But one things appears to be changing, something that was voiced by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell when he was asked about the Alabama man hoping to join McConnell's caucus next month. "I believe the women," McConnell said in his characteristic, low-key intonation...Catharine MacKinnon, who pioneered the legal concept of sexual harassment, notes the change in attitude – if not necessarily behavior. "Women reporting sexual harassment, for the moment at least, are being believed. The biggest difference as a result is that what was a privilege of power has become a disgrace," says MacKinnon, who teaches law at both Harvard Law School and the University of Michigan.

An open letter to the Massachusetts Legislature from Chelsea Barabas, Christopher Bavitz, Ryan Budish, Karthik Dinakar, Cynthia Dwork, Urs Gasser, Kira Hessekiel, Joichi Ito, Ronald L. Rivest, Madars Virza, and Jonathan Zittrain. Dear Members of the Massachusetts Legislature: We write to you in our individual capacities¹ regarding the proposed introduction of actuarial risk assessment (“RA”) tools in the Commonwealth’s criminal justice system. As you are no doubt aware, Senate Bill 2185² — passed by the Massachusetts Senate on October 27, 2017 — mandates implementation of RA tools in the pretrial stage of criminal proceedings...As researchers with a strong interest in algorithms and fairness, we recognize that RA tools may have a place in the criminal justice system. In some cases, and by some measures, use of RA tools may promote outcomes better than the status quo. That said, we are concerned that the Senate Bill’s implementation of RA tools is cursory and does not fully address the complex and nuanced issues implicated by actuarial risk assessments.

Peggy Fontenot has had a successful career as a Native American artist working in beading, silver jewelry and black-and-white photography. She's won numerous awards at art shows and has shown her work at top-tier museums. Today her career is in jeopardy because of a 2016 state law that says only members of federally-recognized tribes can market their work as "Native American" or "Indian made." Fontenot is a part of the Patawomeck tribe, which is recognized only in the state of Virginia. Now she's suing the state on the grounds that the law violates her First Amendment rights. "To call every state-recognized tribe fake and illegitimate is just broad sweeping and wrong," Fontenot told Reason...Rebecca Tushnet, a Harvard law professor, says the Oklahoma law may have been poorly crafted, but was well-intentioned. She says fraud in the Native American art market is big problem.

An op-ed by Gabriella Blum. Wars used to be justified by their goals. Territorial expansion, restitution or claiming property, securing a throne, and mass religious conversion were all acceptable goals under the tenets of Just War Theory; and they all justified war to begin with, particularly if you ended up attaining them at the end. But since we no longer live in a legal world that sees war as the continuation of diplomacy, when we do end up going to war, it is becoming harder to define our goals. Indeed, our preoccupation with the legality or the justification for war often clouds our ability to see war – and judge it – in terms of goals sought and achieved.

...The Harvard Trademark Program licenses the University’s trademarks and investigates unauthorized use of the Harvard name. Within the College, the Office of Student Life places careful restrictions on how a student group can claim Harvard affiliation. Similar bodies exist for the University’s other schools. “The law here is actually a little murky because in general, you do have the right to say true things,” says Rebecca L. Tushnet ’95, a Law School professor who specializes in trademark law. “But Harvard can get around your right to say true things by making it part of the deal—that if you want to be recognized by the University, and if you want access to these other campus resources, you have to agree to their guidelines for using the Harvard name.”