Media Mentions

Every day, American families throw out tons of spoiled food — or food they think is spoiled because they misunderstand “sell by” labels. Restaurants dispose of usable leftovers, and farmers toss imperfect produce. In the United States, about 30 to 40 percent of all food is not eaten. About 95 percent of that wasted food, 38 million tons in 2014, ends up in landfills or incinerators, where it produces methane, a gas that is one of the most potent contributors to climate change...The Food Waste Reduction Alliance, which represents the food industry and restaurant trade associations, recently worked with Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic to simplify and standardize “use by” and “sell by” labels, which befuddle many consumers. People toss a lot of edible food because they misunderstand the difference between the two terms. “There has been an enormous amount of change over the past two or three years,” said Emily Broad Leib, director of the clinic.

Black students at Harvard University are organizing a graduation ceremony of their own this year to recognize the achievements of black students and faculty members some say have been overlooked. More than 700 students and guests are registered to attend Harvard's first Black Commencement, which will take place two days before the school's traditional graduation events. It isn't meant to replace the existing ceremony, student organizers say, but rather to add something that was missing...Organizers of the Black Commencement say it's partly meant to highlight racial disparities on campus. But ultimately it's a celebration of achievement, said Jillian Simons [`18], a law student and president-elect of the Harvard Black Graduate Student Alliance. "We want to acknowledge how far we've come," Simons said.

Nearly 40 years after the world was jolted by the birth of the first test-tube baby, a new revolution in reproductive technology is on the horizon -- and it promises to be far more controversial than in vitro fertilization ever was. Within a decade or two, researchers say, scientists will likely be able to create a baby from human skin cells that have been coaxed to grow into eggs and sperm and used to create embryos to implant in a womb...Three prominent academics in medicine and law sounded an alarm about the possible consequences in a paper published this year. “I.V.G. may raise the specter of ‘embryo farming’ on a scale currently unimagined, which might exacerbate concerns about the devaluation of human life,” Dr. Eli Y. Adashi, a medical science professor at Brown; I. Glenn Cohen, a Harvard Law School professor; and Dr. George Q. Daley, dean of Harvard Medical School, wrote in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

An op-ed by Samuel Garcia `19. I am from the Rio Grande Valley, an area in South Texas defined by its blue collar, hardworking citizens and its close connection with Mexico. Positioned right on the U.S.-Mexico border, the Rio Grande Valley has many of the low-cost labor benefits that Mexico offers, with access to the full contract enforcement and specialized labor market that the U.S. offers. As a result, economic growth in the RGV has been explosive, and even endured through the 2008 recession. However, that robust growth may now be in serious peril since Texas may have ceded its advantage of easy access to cheap labor. How did this happen? It is a result of the state’s recent enactment of Senate Bill 4, a law meant to secure borders by abolishing sanctuary cities.

An interview with Alex Whiting. The Washington Post broke the story: US intelligence has been sent into a mad scramble after Donald Trump gave the Russian foreign minister and ambassador intel about the IS group that came courtesy of an ally of Washington. Does the most powerful nation on the planet have a president who can't keep a secret?

...Legal and national security experts, including Harvard Professor Jack Goldsmith, say violating this oath of office alone is grounds for impeachment...Impeachment is a constitutional process by which Congress removes a president from office for "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanours". "It's very hard to argue that carelessly giving away highly sensitive material to an adversary foreign power constitutes a faithful execution of the office of President," they wrote on the blog Lawfare. "Legally speaking, the matter could be very grave for Trump even though there is no criminal exposure." They suggested Mr Trump could feasibly face "a hybrid impeachment article alleging a violation of the oath in service of a hostile foreign power".

An op-ed by Bruce Schneier. Ransomware isn’t new, but it’s increasingly popular and profitable...The ransomware that has affected systems in more than 150 countries recently, WannaCry, made press headlines last week, but it doesn’t seem to be more virulent or more expensive than other ransomware...The lessons for users are obvious: Keep your system patches up to date and regularly backup your data. This isn’t just good advice to defend against ransomware, but good advice in general. But it’s becoming obsolete.

An op-ed by Bruce Schneier. The Department of Homeland Security is rumored to be considering extending the current travel ban on large electronics for Middle Eastern flights to European ones as well. The likely reaction of airlines will be to implement new traveler programs, effectively allowing wealthier and more frequent fliers to bring their computers with them. This will only exacerbate the divide between the haves and the have-nots -- all without making us any safer.

...Because every error is someone else’s fault, President Trump — who went through three campaign leaders — is reportedly thinking about a major shake-up — or at least threatening a shake-up in his already shell-shocked White House...If the president is engaged in obstruction of justice, partially through his lies to the public, then aides who knowingly lie are implicated as well. At the very least, close aides may need to lawyer up before they enter the White House. Harvard Law School professor and constitutional law expert Laurence H. Tribe warned, “Unlike POTUS, they’re all subject to federal prosecution, indictment, trial, criminal conviction and ordinary sentencing for conspiring with, aiding and abetting, or helping cover up federal crimes.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Oh for the days when Donald Trump wasn’t taking the presidential daily brief -- and didn’t know highly classified information that he could give to the Russians. But a bit bizarrely, Trump’s reported disclosure of Islamic State plans to two Russian officials during an Oval Office visit last week wasn’t illegal. If anyone else in the government, except possibly the vice president, had revealed such classified information that person would be going to prison. The president, however, has inherent constitutional authority to declassify information at will. And that means the federal laws that criminalize the disclosure of classified secrets don’t apply to him.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Outside the headlines, something remarkable is going on in Syria. The Kurds, making a long-term play for an autonomous region, seem to have decided that their best bet is to buy it from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. And the U.S. is signaling that it may be on-board -- a startling reflection of its pro-Russian, anti-Turkish policy. The evidence for this reading of events starts with the upcoming fight for Raqqa, the headquarters of Islamic State. The so-called Syrian Democratic Forces, an umbrella group of fighters dominated by the Syrian Kurdish force known as the YPG, has reportedly gotten the green light to go ahead not only from the U.S. but also from Assad and Russia.

An interview with Kristin Turner `17. Why are mixed-race colleges having black-only graduation ceremonies? We’ll ask. Harvard will host its first ever university-wide black commencement. On campuses across the country, there are also Lavender Ceremonies for LGBT students and RAZA celebrations for Latino students. Student organizers say the goal is to have a safe space to honor unique student achievements. Critics say it's segregation and there should be one commencement for everyone. This hour On Point, a big rethink of graduation ceremonies.

When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had to decide in 2006 which wetlands and waterways make up the "waters of the U.S." protected by the Clean Water Act, he reached for his trusty Webster's New International Dictionary: Second Edition. What, he asked Webster's, is the meaning of the word "waters"? The dictionary, which the late conservative icon loved so much it appears in his official Supreme Court portrait, was the basis for Scalia's opinion in Rapanos v. United States, concluding that Clean Water Act protection extends only to relatively permanent surface waters and wetlands connected to larger water bodies...Harvard Law School professor Richard Lazarus agrees, saying arguing about Webster's dictionaries "is probably not a viable argument" as long as Kennedy remains on the bench. But dictionary definitions of "waters" could once again become significant if Kennedy leaves the court during the Trump administration, Lazarus said.

The National Football League should consider providing treatment to any player caught using performance-enhancing drugs, according to a new Harvard University study. The recommendation was one of several put forward by researchers from the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School...“NFL football has a storied history and holds an important place in this country,” the authors wrote, while noting the NFL is the top-grossing pro sports league in the United States with 2017 revenues expected to reach $14 billion. “The men who play it deserve to be protected and have their health needs met and it is our fervent hope that they will be met.”

...The sport of football, in 2017, is in a state of intense self-scout. The reasons are many: self-preservation, love for the game, fear of the game, concern for the livelihood, a desire to find concrete answers to nebulous questions. Etc. It’s in this landscape that Harvard researchers released a new report today about the health and safety practices for players at the game’s highest level. It’s part of the Football Players Health Study, a long-term project funded through the NFL Players’ Association by money set aside in the 2011 collective bargaining agreement...“We are in a moment where [because of] people’s attitudes toward football and toward the health risks of football, these conversations have to happen,” says I. Glenn Cohen, Harvard Law School professor and a co-author of the study.

The physical demands are different. The types and severity of injuries are different. And the economics can vary wildly. But there are several common threads shared by professional sports leagues when it comes to health and safety issues, and a new report from the Harvard Law School is seeking to identify, study and compare them...“In terms of employee benefits, we think the NFL actually offers many employee benefits that Fortune 500 companies and many good employers do not,” said Harvard’s Glenn Cohen, one of the study’s co-authors...“Where players have only played one or two seasons (and perhaps games), there might be questions as to whether it is appropriate to provide lifetime health insurance to someone who was employed for such a short period of time,” states the report, which was co-written with Christopher Deubert and Holly Fernandez Lynch.

A decades-old settlement in Manhattan federal court serves as a measuring stick for how far Big Law has come in the fight for gender equality...The case, Blank v. Sullivan & Cromwell, was part of a series of lawsuits and complaints filed in the 1970s that put law firms on notice that women expected equal treatment in the legal profession under the relatively new law, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin...Blank “was one of the handful of cases that opened up the law firm world to women,” said Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a Harvard Law School professor who studied the case as part of her work on a biography of Constance Baker Motley, the Southern District of New York judge who oversaw it.

Ed Robinson, Stein’s attorney, countered with his fake news defense: His client’s fears about Somalis were a byproduct of screeds on Facebook and conspiracy theories not only from right-wing web sites, but from Donald Trump himself...Whatever impact Trump’s rhetoric had on the Crusaders, it has little basis in fact. A study conducted by Nora Ellingsen [`18], a Harvard Law School student, identified a total of 97 terrorism suspects arrested as part of FBI counterterrorism investigations over the past two years. Only two involved refugees from countries on Trump’s list of majority-Muslim countries...“Since January 2015,” Ellingsen concludes, “the FBI has arrested more anti-immigrant American citizens plotting violent attacks on Muslims within the United States than it has refugees, or former refugees, from any banned country. The empirical data indicate that foreign nationals simply aren’t plotting attacks within U.S. borders at the same rate as U.S. citizens. Indeed, the rates aren’t anywhere close to comparable.”

...To Americans of a certain age, Washington’s atmosphere recalls the Watergate crisis that made Richard Nixon the first man to resign the presidency. Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School and a former counsellor to Mr Obama, says the first article of the impeachment against Mr Nixon accused him of obstructing justice. Most Republicans in Washington have only loose ties to Mr Trump, a populist who executed a hostile takeover of the party. If his standing deteriorates, more Republicans could embrace the idea of a special counsel to investigate the Russia links. “The ability of the system to dust itself off and move forward cannot be taken for granted,” says Mr Tribe. “It is a dangerous time.”

The WikiLeaks publication of hacking tools and malware the CIA has allegedly used continues to stir the ire and fear of those concerned about the possible risk of the US government’s backdoor access to private data. But WikiLeaks’ publication of alleged CIA-created malware instructions, which the CIA has not confirmed as authentic, diverts attention away from how numerous other state-sponsored agents are aggressively seeking to steal intellectual property and other data, security experts say...Tools developed by governmental agencies also often eventually trickle down for use by hackers once they are leaked. The hacking tools revealed in the Vault 7 data, have been “around for a while” because of the dates on the files, Bruce Schneier, the chief technology officer of IBM Resilient and a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center, told Intellectual Property Watch. “Today’s top-secret NSA programs become tomorrow’s PhD theses and tomorrow’s hacker tools,” Schneier said. “These capabilities goes downhill.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Calling Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey a constitutional crisis is an exercise in crying wolf. At first it was just a few Democratic senators and representatives reacting in the moment, which called for disagreement but not detailed rebuttal. Now, after reflection, some serious constitutional experts are still using the phrase “constitutional crisis” to describe Tuesday’s events. That’s not just analytically mistaken but also potentially dangerous, especially in the Trump era. We need to save the concept of constitutional crisis for situations where there’s a fundamental breakdown in the structure of government.