Media Mentions

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.

...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.”

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.