Media Mentions

Tommy [Tucker] talks to Alex Whiting, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and a former prosecutor, about the investigations into Russia and Trump associates and why Mike Flynn was asking for immunity.

The defense team for Aaron Hernandez said Monday they will present some evidence and call witnesses in the former New England Patriot’s double murder trial. “We do have evidence,’’ defense attorney Ronald Sullivan told Suffolk Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Locke. “We do have motions.” The announcement came after First Assistant District Attorney Patrick Haggan told Locke that the state has completed detailing the evidence prosecutors believe will prove that Hernandez committed the 2012 killings.

...In Illinois, lawmakers introduced in February legislation that would outlaw money bonds, and Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx moved last month to release inmates with bonds of $1,000 or less who could not afford to pay them. Nationally, both New Jersey and Maryland have dramatically overhauled the way they use cash-based bail this year, and other states promise to follow suit. Facing lawsuits and tight budgets, states and local governments across the country have started to rethink the use of money to keep people in jail. “We’re really at an amazing moment with bail,” says Larry Schwartztol, executive director of the Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Mass. “There is a really extraordinary wave of momentum to change in pretty fundamental ways [how] bail works.”

An op-ed by Lawrence Lessig. Congressman Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) has announced that he will run against Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) next year. This is extraordinarily great news. I’ve known Beto since he was first elected to Congress in 2012. A month before he was to be sworn in, he called, out of the blue, and wanted to meet for coffee. We met the next day. Seven months before, he had managed a stunning upset in the Democratic Primary, unseating an eight-term incumbent. He went on to beat the Republican in the general election with 65% of the vote.

"I have a simple question: What the heck are you thinking? What is in your mind?” With that, a dumbfounded Rep. Michael Capuano took to the House floor on Tuesday and spoke for many as Republicans passed a measure to kill internet privacy regulations that were approved late last year. The rules would have prevented internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon from sharing or selling data on customers’ browsing history...David O’Brien, a senior researcher at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, says ISPs not only use information gathered directly from consumers, they can even draw inferences from their search queries and Internet habits to develop snapshots of a consumer’s preferences and needs.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. With the settlement approved last week in the Trump University case, Donald Trump’s lawyers were free to shift their attention to another civil case with the potential to be a nuisance to his presidency. They are poised to argue that he can’t be sued in state court while he’s president. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed Paula Jones to sue Bill Clinton while he was president -- but that was a federal suit, not a state suit. The difference between state and federal gives the courts an opening to make Trump temporarily immune from private suits while he’s in office. And if they’re wise, the courts will do exactly that.

On February 6th of this year, the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, passed the Regularization law. Known by opponents as the ‘land-grab’ law, it was passed with 60 in favour and 52 against it. But what is it exactly? According to Elena Chachko - a doctorate candidate at Harvard law school, who clerked for Chief Justice Asher D. Grunis on the Supreme Court of Israel, and worked on national security issues at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs- “this law essentially aims to ‘legalize’ illegal settlements in the West Bank.”

My friend Cheryl Pelicano is a blue sparkler in the circus of red that is South Carolina. And like all Democrats, she is aghast at everything related to President Trump. But all this Russia stuff, especially the latest involving Michael Flynn and his request for immunity, compelled Pelicano to ask me a series of “how can we get rid of this guy?” questions. So, I asked Laurence Tribe, legendary constitutional law professor at Harvard University, for the answers...“We’re in totally uncharted waters here,” Tribe told me via email. To say that he thinks Trump is illegitimately in the White House would be an understatement.

Ruth L. Okediji, an intellectual property lawyer and professor, will join the Harvard Law School faculty as a tenured professor and co-director of the Berkman Klein Center in July, the Law School announced Friday. Okediji, whose scholarship also focuses on global economic regulation, received both her Master of Laws and Doctorate of Juridical Science from the Law School and is currently a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School...Urs Gasser, the executive director of the Berkman Klein Center, wrote in an email that Okediji’s global expertise will benefit the center. “Professor Okediji's thought-leadership in innovation policy, [intellectual property], and international law with a focus on the Global South will bolster our ongoing global research and network-building efforts,” Gasser wrote.

Does the technology industry have such a shortage of qualified Americans that it needs to import thousands of workers from halfway around the world? For years, that’s been the sector’s central argument in favor of the federal H-1B visa program, which lets US employers hire up to 85,000 skilled guest workers each year, mostly in high-tech fields. But some economists and labor experts say the numbers simply do not support claims of a broad talent squeeze...“Claiming shortages works, politically,” said Michael S. Teitelbaum, a Harvard Law School demographer. “If you just say, ‘Well, we think it would be great to have more H-1B visas because it would increase our profits,’ that’s not going to work very well.”

Remembering Will Zhang, India G. McAlister, Zhang’s college friend, recalls an intelligent, humble friend with a passion for Greek philosophy, international law, and finding the best steak in Toronto. “I think we should remember him as being a very multilayered person. He was able to be at one hand very thoughtful and very deep. He enjoyed deep conversation and philosophy. On the other hand, he was kind of like a child in the sense that he just loved doing things that were fun,” McAlister said. “He was someone whose passion and whose love for life was definitely contagious.” Zhang, a first-year student at Harvard Law School, died March 23. He was 23.

A Mexican man who had been arrested despite his participation in a program designed to prevent the deportation of those brought to the U.S. illegally as children walked free after more than six weeks in custody...His legal team, which includes the Los Angeles-based pro bono firm Public Counsel and Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, pressed claims in federal court that the arrest and detention violated Ramirez's constitutional rights.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The state of Georgia is refusing to allow a couple to give their baby the last name Allah -- not because it’s sacrilegious but because the state requires a baby’s last name to be the same as one of its parents’ or a combination of the two. That’s arguably unconstitutional, although it’s not an open and shut question. It also raises the broader question of what it means to name a child legally, and what rights parents have in relation to the government.

Early Friday morning, more than 90 national organizations published a letter to President Trump’s administration demanding the federal government enforce Title IX...Sarah Gutman [`18], a Harvard Law student and member of the graduate program’s Harassment & Assault Law-Student Team, told HuffPost she hopes DeVos takes note of their demands. “We hope the administration, and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in particular, realizes the fundamental importance of Title IX and its promise,” Gutman said. “Every student deserves equal access to education and that can only happen through the enforcement of Title IX.”

Higher wages for low-skilled jobs often prevents return to prison. The mission statement for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction is: “Reduce recidivism among those we touch.” But a big factor keeping a parolee from going back to prison is what the job opportunities are like where an inmate is released, according to a recent study. Ex-offenders released to counties with higher low-skilled wages stand a better chance of not going back to jail, wrote Crystal Yang, a Harvard Law School researcher. Yang studied 4 million offenders in 43 states released between 2000 and 2013. Among those were inmates released from Ohio prisons between 2009-2013. At the beginning of 2013, Ohio parolees numbered 14,653, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Michael Flynn, the short-tenured national security advisor for President Trump, is offering to testify to both the FBI and the congressional intelligence committees about possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russia in exchange for immunity...What does Flynn's public offer to testify mean? Alex Whiting, a Harvard law professor and national security law expert, makes a convincing case that Flynn is attempting to "bait" one of the congressional committees, not federal prosecutors, into getting him to testify: "I suspect that Flynn's lawyer is really targeting Congress. He is hoping that one of the Congressional committees will take the bait and grant him immunity in exchange for his testimony. If that happened, it would be extremely difficult to prosecute Flynn after he testified. Remember Oliver North?..." Whiting concludes the gambit wouldn't work and wonders if Flynn's lawyer knows his client doesn't have much to offer prosecutors and may be looking for a way to avoid charges himself.

A report released on Thursday by one of the nation’s top law schools concludes the state of Arkansas has ignored the mental states and legal representation of eight death row inmates scheduled to die next month. It’s the latest wrinkle in the state’s drive to kill eight inmates in 10 days. Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project claims five of the eight men suffer from either a serious mental illness or intellectual impairment. One death row inmates has an IQ of 70 after suffering a head injury. Another is a paranoid schizophrenic who says he sees his dead father around the prison as well as dogs. The report from Harvard Law notes the U.S. Supreme court has ruled it a violation of the Eight Amendment to execute people with intellectual disabilities.

For many people, a tax refund means a chance to fund a vacation or splurge on a big purchase. For some, though, it’s a way to wipe out crushing debt — not by paying it off, but by giving them enough money to pay for bankruptcy. A review of the past four years supports what attorneys know anecdotally: Filings of Chapter 7 bankruptcy, the most common form for individuals, have a seasonal spike...Many consumers rely on their refunds as a way to manage big expenses. “People use it to get caught up on rent or bills, and if they’re too far behind to get caught up, they hire a bankruptcy attorney to discharge their debts,” says Roger Bertling, an instructor in consumer protection at Harvard Law School.

At a gym near Kendall Square, hip-hop music provides the soundtrack as a trainer leads a client through a series of exercises. It looks like a typical gym, and in many ways it is. There are mats, weights, kettlebells and an exercise bike. But the trainers at InnerCity Weightlifting, or ICW, are not typical. Most have done significant time in jail, most have been shot, and some of them, like Dan Royal, who grew up in Dorchester, almost didn't make it...Mickey Belaineh[`16], a Harvard Law School grad who helps run ICW, says part of the philosophy is to never give up on anybody — even those who end up back in jail.

President Trump this week signed an executive order that begins rolling back the climate actions taken by his predecessor. Making good on promises to cut regulations and restrictions on energy production, Trump told coal miners on stage with him, "you're going back to work." There is much debate over whether that can happen..."The most immediate impact is a lot of litigation," said Ari Peskoe, senior fellow in electricity law at the Harvard Law School Environmental Law Program Policy Initiative.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Contrary to numerous reports, President Donald Trump’s executive order on climate change does not come even close to eliminating President Barack Obama’s legacy with respect to greenhouse-gas reductions. Most of that legacy, involving dramatic emissions cuts in the transportation sector and from household appliances, remains intact.