Media Mentions

President Donald Trump asserted in his extraordinary letter firing James Comey that the ousted FBI director told him three times he’s not under investigation, a questionable claim that if true would be a startling breach of protocol...Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe, who served in the Obama Justice Department, wrote, “That self-serving assertion was completely implausible. To put it bluntly, it appears to have been a blatant lie.” Tribe said “it would have violated well-established DOJ rules and policies for the director to offer any such assurance to anyone, especially the president. In addition, given Comey’s dependence on the president for retention of his role as head of the FBI, offering that assurance would be highly unethical and at odds with Comey’s reputation as a man of integrity.”

...To put it bluntly, Rosenstein was tasked with overseeing an investigation in which — for arguably false, pretextual reasons — he assisted in and recommended the firing of the lead investigator. What he thought he was doing or why he thought this was remotely acceptable has former Justice Department lawyers flummoxed...Rosenstein might consider resigning, perhaps the one act that could save his reputation and restore the integrity of the Justice Department. At the very least, Rosenstein “could partially redeem himself by asking a 3-judge court to appoint a genuinely independent prosecutor to investigate the Russia-Trump connection,” says constitutional expert and Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe.

An interview with Alex Whiting. Is this Trump’s Watergate moment? Just as the FBI is investigating his administration's present and past ties to Russia, director James Comey heard on the news that he'd been fired. The official reason: Comey's handling of the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails. How will the sacking define Trump's presidency, his way of governing, and his relations with his own government agencies? Will this latest twist play to Vladimir Putin's advantage?

The FBI-led probe into whether Russian influence operations helped put Donald Trump in the White House is on a knife’s edge and could easily veer into either of two distinct directions...Some career investigators may not take kindly to the political pressure, said Alex Whiting, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches at Harvard Law School. “If they feel like this was designed to push them back, they will be emboldened,” Whiting said, and may confront Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who has taken the reins of the Russia probe because Attorney General Jeff Sessions withdrew from involvement in the inquiry after it was disclosed that he met twice with Russia’s ambassador last year.

In a major and surprising shift, the Trump administration late Tuesday fired FBI Director James Comey. Citing recommendations by Justice Department officials, President Trump said Comey was dismissed for mishandling the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email practices. Skeptics of that rationale were quick to note that Comey oversaw the criminal and counterintelligence investigation into alleged ties between Trump associates and Russian officials, as well as Russia’s involvement in hacking the 2016 election. Comey had earned the ire of both political parties for his unusual pronouncements late in the campaign confirming the FBI’s probe into Clinton’s use of private emails for some public business while she was secretary of state....Alex Whiting is a professor of practice at Harvard Law School who focuses on complex international and domestic prosecutions...Whiting spoke with the Gazette about the legal issues surrounding Comey’s dismissal.

As the news broke late this afternoon, the politicos of Washington stared into their smartphones, stunned, struggling with what to make of it. TV networks cut into their regularly scheduled programming. Chyrons promising “breaking news” actually delivered it: President Donald Trump had fired FBI Director James Comey...Cass Sunstein..."There are two ways to understand President Trump's firing of James Comey, and neither is unreasonable. The first is that in light of the multiple controversies that came to surround Comey, he was rightly fired. The FBI director needs to be widely trusted by the American people. Comey is not widely trusted. For the FBI, a fresh start is a good idea. The second is that Trump does not want an independent FBI director; he wants someone who is fully subservient to him.

Students across the University will hold the first-ever commencement ceremony for black students on May 23 in an effort to bring black students across schools together and acknowledge challenges that students of color may face at Harvard...Kristin A. Turner [`17], president of the Harvard Black Law Students Association, said the event looks to help black students “claim our visibility” at the University, an institution that has historically been majority white. “We chose Black Commencement as not only a commemoration of all the different dynamics that go into being a person of color at Harvard University, but also a celebration of what an accomplishment it is to not only come out on the other side,” Turner said.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Pity the poor residents of Belle Plaine, Minnesota. They’re about to get a veterans memorial with Satanic symbols in their public park -- and it’s their own fault. They allowed a Christian memorial earlier this year, opening the park to all memorials in order to avoid violating the constitutional prohibition against establishment of religion. Now they have to allow the Satanic memorial as a matter of free speech. Whipsawed between two different clauses of the First Amendment, they probably don’t know what hit them. To understand what’s happening in Belle Plaine -- and why it makes legal sense, if no other kind -- you need to start with the complex, judge-made rules about what happens when religion and free speech interact.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. It’s not a constitutional crisis. Technically, President Donald Trump was within his constitutional rights Tuesday when he fired FBI Director James Comey. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is part of the executive branch, not an independent agency. But the firing did violate a powerful unwritten norm: that the director serves a 10-year, nonrenewable term and is fired only for good cause. Only one director has ever been removed from office involuntarily: President Bill Clinton fired Director William Sessions in 1993 after an internal report found that he had committed significant ethics violations. There is therefore reason to be deeply concerned about Comey’s firing, which has the effect of politicizing law enforcement -- a risky precedent in a rule-of-law democracy.

Alex Whiting, professor at Harvard Law School, and William Banks, Director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism at Syracuse University Law School, discuss former acting attorney general Sally Yates’ testimony before Congress, in which she detailed the timeline that lead up to former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s expulsion. They speak with Greg Stohr on Bloomberg Radio’s "Bloomberg Law."

An interview with Nancy Gertner. A Massachusetts judge has vacated the first-degree murder conviction of former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez. He was convicted in the 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd. Hernandez was found hanged in his prison cell last month. His death was ruled a suicide, which led to today's news that Superior Court Judge Susan Garsh has overturned Hernandez's conviction.

An article by Lawrence Susskind...The average planner in America earns about $80,000 a year, but most are less concerned with the salaries they make than they are with playing an active role in helping communities solve key problems like the provision of affordable housing, enhancement of meaningful job opportunities, protection of important natural resources, managing the risks associated with climate change, improving basic urban and regional infrastructure (including better transit and mobility), and providing greater opportunities for citizens to participate in helping their communities make decisions that affect them. The full list of problems is much longer, especially in the developing world.

A growing group of political newcomers are lining up early to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. John Faso for a coveted congressional district in the Hudson Valley and Catskills. Gareth Rhodes [`18], a former aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, on Monday became the latest to explore a Democratic bid for the 19th district. Announcing his interest in running, Mr. Rhodes, a Harvard Law School student who held several communications positions in the governor’s office and was close to Mr. Cuomo, wrote an online essay describing his upbringing in the district and becoming the first in his family to graduate from college. “We need a new generation of leaders to step up and fight for the communities that raised them,” Mr. Rhodes wrote.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Plenty of Donald Trump’s decisions have been outside the conservative mainstream. But when it comes to judicial nominees, the Republican president seems to be calling them right out of the Federalist Society playbook. First came his U.S. Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, whose selection was predictable based on his elite legal conservative credentials. Now the individuals in his first wave of appellate nominees seem to be cut from the same cloth.

Are the most important negotiations the ones you have with yourself? There will always be days where we don’t feel centered. Maybe it’s a tough deadline, raised expectations, or a personal conflict, but it can trigger a fight-or-flight response. In those moments, we are forced to make decisions that don’t always sit well with us in the long term. Is there a way to negotiate from within, and come out a winner? Erica Ariel Fox is on the faculty at Harvard Law School, she's a New York Times best-selling author, and the founding partner of Mobius Executive Leadership. Her latest book is Winning from Within: A Breakthrough Method for Leading, Living, and Lasting Change. I recently interviewed Erica for the LEADx podcast to learn more about how to win in your inner struggle.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. When it comes to Middle East policy, usually all roads don’t lead to Rome. But President Donald Trump has good reason to visit the pope on the same circuit as his peace mission to Israel and Saudi Arabia. Trump’s plan, which has a small but not trivial chance of success, depends on creating a grand anti-Iran alliance running through Jerusalem and Riyadh. To put it bluntly, it doesn’t involve too many countries or people that the rest of the world likes. If he can get Pope Francis to bless the idea, even obliquely, that would add a moral dimension to the brutal business of dealmaking that is to come.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. President Donald Trump’s executive order on religious liberty is a significant win for liberals -- not for what it says, but for what it doesn’t say. For months, evangelical conservatives have anticipated and liberals have feared an order that would have invited anti-gay discrimination under the rubric of religious freedom. A document purporting to be a draft order to that effect began circulating shortly after Trump’s inauguration. Yet the order issued Thursday is silent on gay marriage or gay rights. It includes just three brief substantive sections, none of which is of great practical or symbolic significance. The underlying message of the executive order is that the Trump administration is tired of issuing symbolic orders and then having them frozen in court. This order is constitutionally kosher -- in part because it does so little.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. If a nation wants to increase productivity, it is natural to focus on promoting innovation, improving education and decreasing regulation. But a positive step, potentially supported by Republicans and Democrats alike, could come from an unlikely place: increasing both the availability and the size of the earned-income tax credit. True, the EITC is not normally thought to promote productivity at all. Most people see it as an antipoverty measure, designed to help the working poor. Its goal is to redistribute wealth, not to increase it. But that’s much too simple.

...And he said he added some new furniture: Chairs across from the Resolute desk -- the seat of power for presidents including John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan -- where he asks his visitors to sit. "I changed the -- the way it works," Trump said, motioning toward chairs right in front of the famous desk. "I'll have people sitting here. Used to be they never had chairs that anybody can remember in front of the desk. But I've always done it this way where I'm at the desk and I have people here."...Meanwhile, negotiations experts say that sitting across a table or desk from an opponent doesn't usually send a signal of cooperation. "It's fair to say that if you deliberately have people sitting across the table from you, you’re conveying less of a collaborative approach and more of a hierarchical or adversarial approach," says Guhan Subramanian, a professor at Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School.

A member of the Navy SEALs was killed and two other American service members were wounded in a raid in Somalia on Friday, the first American combat fatality there since the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” battle...As a result, the military is reviewing all its potential targets, examining updated intelligence reports on flows of displaced civilians, and confirming with aid organizations where they are operating in Somalia, as first reported by The Intercept last week...“D.O.D. has more cover to act aggressively when the president has a reputation for restraint and less cover when the president has a reputation for aggressiveness, because everything D.O.D. does will be judged through that lens,” said Jack Goldsmith, referring to the Department of Defense. Mr. Goldsmith is a Harvard law professor who dealt with counterterrorism legal policy as a senior Bush administration official.

An article by Emily Broad Leib. Ready your tractors and plows—the farm bill is upon us. This omnibus package of legislation, reauthorized every 5 to 7 years, shapes virtually every aspect of our food and agricultural system. Yet this wide-ranging, $500 billion piece of legislation, which aims to ensure a safe and sufficient food supply for our nation, fails to take steps to guarantee that the food we produce actually makes it to our plates. Congressional agriculture committees recently commenced hearings to begin preparation for the 2018 Farm Bill, which makes this the perfect time to discuss how the next farm bill can invest in solutions to reduce the nearly 40% of food that goes to waste in the U.S.