Media Mentions

President Donald Trump hinted during a speech in Arizona on Tuesday that he plans to pardon former Sheriff Joe Arpaio over his federal contempt-of-court conviction, but the president said he wouldn't take such an action immediately in order to avoid "controversy." Trump, speaking at a rally in Phoenix, suggested that relief was on the way for the 85-year-old ex-lawman known for his tough treatment of illegal immigrants...“It’s ‘in-your-face, court,’” said Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge who now teaches at Harvard Law School. “This is the kind of charge that goes to the integrity of the process…. Part of the symbol here is of basically not paying respect to an order of a federal judge.” “It’s not unlawful, but it says something about his own contempt for the system,” she added.

Tensions ran high at the Texas Legislature during this most recent Special Session. Legislators cut summer plans short to spend the majority of their vacation time in Austin to fight over matters like bathrooms, property taxes, and school finance—with no resolve. The contentious nature of the Legislature resulted in very little items moving through the Texas House without objection. Well, that was until a resolution to make October “Texas Pecan Month” appeared in the Texas House...That story starts with two brothers from the Rio Grande Valley—Ricco and Sam Garcia [`19]. Earlier this year Sam Garcia, a Harvard Law Student, was sifting through statistical data from Google Trends and came across an interesting trend. Sam and his older brother, Ricco Garcia, were in the middle of researching for a book they are writing over potential state and federal policy suggestions to aid Texas agricultural growth when Sam discovered a peculiar annual phenomenon concerning the term “Pecan.”

With white supremacists emboldened and a national spotlight shining on bigotry and hate, 67 former state attorneys general are calling on Americans and their leaders to condemn hatred unequivocally. Follow the example, they suggest, that an Alabama attorney general set four decades ago...The statement — which was released Monday and is conspicuously addressed not to President Trump or any other official, but rather to the broad, unnamed public — begins, “There are times in the life of a nation, or a president, or a state attorney general, when one is called upon to respond directly to the voice of hate.” Mr. Baxley’s example, it continues, without directly quoting it, should serve as inspiration for “all who seek to equivocate in times of moral crisis.” Mr. Baxley “obviously spoke with real clarity — he just made it as clear as a human being can make it,” said James E. Tierney, a former Maine attorney general who helped pull the joint statement together.

An essay by Jeannie Suk Gersen. At his rally in Phoenix on Tuesday night, Donald Trump remarked, of his decision to take on the Presidency, “Most people think I’m crazy to have done this. And I think they’re right.” A strange consensus does appear to be forming around Trump’s mental state...The class of professionals best equipped to answer these questions has largely abstained from speaking publicly about the President’s mental health. The principle known as the “Goldwater rule” prohibits psychiatrists from giving professional opinions about public figures without personally conducting an examination, as Jane Mayer wrote in this magazine in May.

An op-ed by Glenn Cohen. There’s a scientific development on the horizon that could upend the abortion debate: artificial wombs. The research remains preliminary, but in April a group of scientists at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia announced amazing advances in artificial womb technologies. The authors explained how they had successfully sustained significantly premature lambs for four weeks in an artificial womb they had designed. This enabled the lambs to develop in a way very similar to lambs that had developed in their mothers’ wombs. Indeed, the oldest lamb — more than a year old at the time the paper was published — appeared to be completely normal.

...Mother Jones learned of these prison investments from an independent investigator who was invited by former Deputy Attorney General Philip Heymann to look into the legal case of the Postville meatpacking plant’s manager, Sholom Rubashkin...“The judge shouldn’t have any significant financial incentives for a longer sentence or a shorter sentence, or financial incentives to approve a very large raid or to disapprove a very large raid,” says former Deputy Attorney General Heymann, now a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School.

An op-ed by Chiraag Bains. On Tuesday night, Donald Trump all but promised he would pardon disgraced Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt three weeks ago. “I won’t do it tonight,” he said. “But Sheriff Joe can feel good.” CNN is now reporting the White House has prepared the paperwork for Trump’s signature. As many have warned, pardoning Arpaio – famous for racially profiling Latinos in Maricopa County – would be an endorsement of racism. There’s another reason the possibility of a pardon should trouble us: it reflects Trump’s deep disdain for the judiciary and its role in our system of checks and balances.

An interview with Lawrence Lessig. Before he started working with Aaron Swartz, the Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig built his professional life around internet law and copyright policy. In the early 2000s, Lessig was at the top of his academic field, then working at Stanford. As an undergraduate student, Swartz, who had met Lessig at a computer conference when he was just 14, convinced the professor to radically change his career path. The two developed a mentorship and partnership that would lead them to take on the complex goals of making information more accessible and demanding greater transparency from political institutions. Swartz became known for his involvement in Creative Commons and Reddit, and for his alleged attempt to make information from the academic-research site JSTOR free for public viewing. And then, in January of 2013, Swartz committed suicide.

“[A]ffirmative action is like an injured bear,” writes Randall Kennedy. It’s “too strong to succumb to its wounds but too hurt to attain full vitality.” The renowned Harvard Law School professor wrote that four years ago, but it’s sure germane now in light of the Justice Department’s apparent renewed interest in anti-affirmative-action complaints against colleges. Harvard, in particular, is in the legal crosshairs. Jeff Sessions’s team says it wants a closer look at allegations filed on behalf of a group of Asian-Americans who say they face a higher bar for admission at Harvard than other racial and ethnic groups, including whites.

An interview with Bruce Schneier. In the internet era, consumers seem increasingly resigned to giving up fundamental aspects of their privacy for convenience in using their phones and computers, and have grudgingly accepted that being monitored by corporations and even governments is just a fact of modern life. In fact, internet users in the United States have fewer privacy protections than those in other countries. In April, Congress voted to allow internet service providers to collect and sell their customers’ browsing data.

President Trump spent 18 months as the ultimate law-and-order candidate, promising to rescue an American way of life he said was threatened by terrorists, illegal immigrants and inner-city criminals. But during seven months as president, many critics and legal scholars say, Mr. Trump has shown a flexible view on the issue, one that favors the police and his own allies over strict application of the rule of law...“I don’t think you have to be a champion of it; all you need to do is comply with it,” said Charles Fried, a Harvard Law School professor who was a solicitor general under President Ronald Reagan. “And he shows himself absolutely unwilling to respect it,” Mr. Fried said, citing the pardon as a particular thumb in the eye of a judge.

An op-ed by Ronald Sullivan. There is no greater injustice than an innocent person being convicted of a crime they didn’t commit. And even when a defendant may not be factually innocent, confidence in our criminal a justice system, and fundamental fairness, is undermined when a defendant doesn’t receive a fair trial. In 2012 and 2013, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office came under intense criticism for the number of wrongful convictions that had occurred under the then-District Attorney and his predecessors. Ken Thompson, now sadly deceased, was elected in 2013 on a promise to investigate and overturn wrongful convictions and restore fairness and integrity to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. Soon after Thompson’s election, the current Acting District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, Thompson’s Special Counsel, reached out to me and asked that I design and implement what became Brooklyn’s Conviction Review Unit.

Since its establishment in 1817, Harvard Law has educated presidents, senators, CEOs, and six of the nine sitting Supreme Court justices. So, how to celebrate a 200th birthday? Harvard Law is doing it with not one but three events over the course of the school year. Each event is intended to “show what an interesting place [Harvard] is by doing interesting things, rather than talking about how interesting we are,” explained Professor Richard Lazarus, the faculty chair of the bicentennial’s planning committee...“It’s not what you think Harvard Law School would do,” remarked Lazarus. He noted that the event “underscores the reach of the law school in different ways that are surprising, and also fun.”

Thirteen legal scholars, in a letter to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, say U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's reassignment of 50 senior executives is illegal if the moves are part of an attrition strategy or to punish views inconsistent with the Trump administration's policies...The 13 legal scholars, whose areas of expertise involve constitutional, administrative and civil service law, include Yale Law School's Bruce Ackerman, Washington University School of Law's Kathleen Clark, UCLA School of Law's Jon Michaels, University of Chicago Law School's Jennifer Nou, Harvard Law's Ian Samuel and University of California Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. Clement's complaint, the scholars said, "presents important questions about the extent of agency heads' authority to reassign members of the SES (senior executive service)."

When entering a lease for a new apartment or home, it is important for landlords and tenants to know their rights and responsibilities, housing law experts say...One of the most important things a tenant can do is thoroughly read and understand the terms of the lease, said housing attorney Julia Devanthery, who represents low-income clients through the Legal Services Center at Harvard Law School. Any claims or promises should be made in writing. “Make sure you look at the apartment before you rent it,” Devanthery said.

Just a few months ago, Republican attorneys general were aggressively taking the Obama administration to court, notching significant victories that blocked executive actions on immigration and the environment. Now that Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office, it's Democrats' turn to wage legal battles over some of the very same issues...Democratic officials say the party's AG ranks are more active than they were under the last Republican president, George W. Bush. And in solidly blue states where Democrats have control over all the levers of government, money is flowing to the AG office, says former Maine Attorney General James Tierney, who is now a Harvard Law School lecturer focusing on state AGs.

Government officials from Mexico and Canada reacted with skepticism Wednesday to remarks by President Donald Trump suggesting he didn’t believe a deal to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement was possible...Threatening to pull out of Nafta is “clearly a hardball tactic” meant to gain leverage to the U.S. in the talks, and is typical of the president’s negotiating style, said Guhan Subramanian, a professor at Harvard University’s business and law schools and an expert in the negotiation of complex deals. “By describing the way you negotiate you can give visibility to the other side, but the difference here is that President Trump has repeatedly said that he really doesn’t like Nafta,” Mr. Subramanian said.

An op-ed by Mihir Desai. For far too long, U.S. politicians have been promising to bring jobs to Americans. They should instead be encouraging Americans to move to jobs. The absurdity of tax incentives to "create jobs" reached new heights last month with Wisconsin’s deal to lure iPhone assembler Foxconn Technology Group -- which will reportedly cost taxpayers more than $100,000 per job. By promising to bring employment to depressed areas, politicians have convinced Americans that they have a right to a job where they live, and not that they should live where the jobs are. Even though labor-market incentives to relocate have increased over the past 50 years, with growing differences in wages and unemployment around the country, people actually move for work less and less.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. If President Donald Trump pardons Joe Arpaio, as he broadly hinted at during a rally Tuesday in Arizona, it would not be an ordinary exercise of the power -- it would be an impeachable offense. Arpaio, the former sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County, was convicted of criminal contempt of court for ignoring the federal judge’s order that he follow the U.S. Constitution in doing his job. For Trump to pardon him would be an assault on the federal judiciary, the Constitution and the rule of law itself.

An essay by Annette Gordon-Reed. Sally Hemings has been described as “an enigma,” the enslaved woman who first came to public notice at the turn of the 19th century when James Callender, an enemy of the newly elected President Thomas Jefferson, wrote with racist virulence of “SALLY,” who lived at Monticello and had borne children by Jefferson. Hemings came back into the news earlier this year, after the Thomas Jefferson Foundation announced plans to restore a space where Hemings likely resided, for a time, at Monticello.

A letter to the editor by Sanford Levinson. With regard to Arizona’s affinity for President Trump and its rejection of political liberalism, one might at least point out that Arizona flourishes only as a result of handsome federal subsidies by and large financed by strapped taxpayers living elsewhere. In fact, in 2014, the Grand Canyon State received about 43 percent of its operating funds from the national government, the highest ratio in the country. Perhaps the most dismaying failure of liberal Democrats is their consistent inability to hammer home the extent that would-be rugged individualists (most of them white and disdainful of “welfare”) are in fact dependent on the kindness of strangers.