Media Mentions

Over the last eight years, food policy has gone from being a topic for industry insiders and wonks, to a regular staple on mainstream America’s menu of interests. Case in point: A plurality of Americans now believe healthy food should be more affordable, farm subsidies should be used to grow that healthy food, farming should happen in harmony with the environment, and food system workers should be treated—and paid—fairly...Emily Broad Leib thinks it can be done...“This isn’t pie in the sky—we have the tools in the U.S. and have used them to create national strategies on lots of other things that are not as foundational as food,” Leib said.

...Campus disciplinary proceedings are, in theory, educational rather than punitive. School officials may hold hearings, take testimony and make factual findings, but they cannot convict or incarcerate—which is why the accused are not entitled to the full range of protections they would have in a court of law. But while the punishment isn’t prison, it can be hugely significant. Janet Halley, a professor at Harvard Law School and a well-respected feminist scholar says, “I would ask people to think, what would it be like if your brother or your son was expelled. It’s not nothing. Its the end of a life plan.”

In his drive to dismantle President Barack Obama’s regulatory legacy, President Trump has signed executive orders with great fanfare and breathed life into a once-obscure law to nullify numerous Obama-era regulations. But his administration is also using a third tactic: Going to court to stop federal judges from ruling on a broad array of regulations that are being challenged by Trump’s own conservative allies....“If the courts uphold the previous administration, you still have the discretion to change things, but you’ve lost the argument that you were forced to do it or that the previous administration exceeded legal bounds,” said Richard Lazarus, a law professor at Harvard University.

...If the president was happy with Lichtman's analysis then, he might not be so thrilled with this next prediction: "the prediction of impeachment," as Lichtman calls it. He expects the House of Representatives will formally vote that the Senate should try, convict, and remove the President from office within his first term...Still, to initiate impeachment proceedings in the House would require overwhelming public support for legislators to consider forming the judiciary committee. The committee would have to find the person has committed specific articles of impeachment — treason, bribery or "high crimes or misdemeanours," a catchall term vague enough to permit impeachment "even in the least appropriate cases," says Harvard University Constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe, like "the garden-variety offence" of lying under oath about a prior sexual affair.

The repeated censures BHP Billiton copped from aggressive New York hedge fund Elliott Management last week signalled the wave of shareholder activism that has engulfed the United States has descended to Australia with brute force....Yet the most comprehensive academic research led by Harvard University law professor and corporate governance expert Lucian Bebchuk debunks claims that activist hedge funds cause long-term underperformance and losses to other shareholders. Bebchuk and two academic colleagues reviewed all of about 2000 interventions by activist hedge funds from 1994 through 2007, finding no evidence that target companies' performance or share prices suffered in the five years after an activist fund announced a campaign. "During the third, fourth, and fifth year following the start of an activist intervention, operating performance tends to be better, not worse, than during the pre-intervention period," the academics conclude. The study found no evidence of "pump-and-dump" patterns where stock prices collapsed after activists sold out.

As President Donald Trump prepares to put his own stamp on the all-important U.S.-China trade alliance, experts are urging the White House to avoid being distracted by potential quick market access victories and instead prioritize a comprehensive approach to resolving the partners' deep-seated problems. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping emerged from their bilateral summit in Florida last week with a 100-day plan to create a new framework for trade talks. The U.S. has been holding bilateral economic talks with China in some form or another for several years, but each new administration has been eager to reset that conversation on its own terms...Those are the kinds of things that can pay dividends for U.S. companies in the near term, which has been a key priority for the Trump administration, but Harvard law professor and former U.S. trade negotiator Mark Wu said that such steps are ultimately a bandage on the deeper issues facing the two trade behemoths.

A jury on Friday cleared Aaron Hernandez of committing a double murder in 2012, handing the former New England Patriots star his first significant legal victory since his shocking arrest for a third slaying in 2013...When the verdict came down, Jenkins-Hernandez, his fiancee, cried, holding the hands of two friends and nodding furiously with her eyes shut. She later told reporters she was “very happy.” It was a sentiment echoed by Ronald Sullivan, one of Hernandez’s lawyers, who said the “actual perpetrator of this crime was given immunity by the Commonwealth. He [Hernandez] was charged with something that someone else did."

Cities have a way to go before they can be considered geniuses. But they’re getting smart pretty fast. In just the past few years, mayors and other officials in cities across the country have begun to draw on the reams of data at their disposal—about income, burglaries, traffic, fires, illnesses, parking citations and more—to tackle many of the problems of urban life...Widespread use of sensors and video can also present privacy risks unless precautions are taken. The technology “is forcing cities to confront questions of privacy that they haven’t had to confront before,” says Ben Green, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and lead author of a recent report on open-data privacy.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The votes from Turkey’s constitutional referendum are in, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has claimed victory for his side, even as the result remains disputed. What’s clear is who the winner is not: constitutional democracy. On the surface, the amendments turn Turkey into a presidential system instead of a parliamentary one. Underneath, they strengthen the personal authority of Erdogan, who in the last decade and a half has gone from prime minister to president to quasi-authoritarian leader.

A letter by Delcianna Winders. Just because Syria Shrine Circus handlers didn't abuse the animals while a Pittsburgh councilwoman was riding on their backs doesn't mean they're well-treated ( “Pittsburgh councilwoman takes circus test ride”). To the contrary, abundant evidence leaves no question that these animals suffer routine abuse. Carson & Barnes Circus, the company that supplies the elephant act for the circus, has an extensive rap sheet of Animal Welfare Act violations. It has repeatedly paid penalties for these violations, including after its head trainer was caught on video hitting elephants with a bullhook, which resembles a fireplace poker, and shocking them with an electric prod.

Labor unions in America are in crisis. In the mid-1950s, a third of Americans belonged to a labor union. Today, only 10.7 percent do, including a minuscule 6.4 percent of private sector workers. The decline of union membership explains as much as a third of the increase in inequality in the US, caused voter turnout among low-income workers to crater, and weakened labor’s ability to check corporate influence in DC and state capitals...But the recent victorious fight for a $15 minimum wage in New York offers a path to sectoral bargaining at the state level...“Sectoral bargaining is certainly getting more attention in legal academic and labor law policy debates,” Benjamin Sachs, a professor at Harvard law school and former practicing labor lawyer, says.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. If there’s one thing that brings Americans together, it’s our hatred of the giant companies that sell us high-speed data services. Consumers routinely give Comcast, Charter (now Spectrum), Verizon, CenturyLink and AT&T basement-level scores for customer satisfaction. This collective resentment is fueled by the sense that we don’t have a choice when we sign up for their services. By and large, we don’t: These five companies account for over 80 percent of wired subscriptions and have almost total power in their territories. According to the Federal Communications Commission, nearly 75 percent of Americans have at most one choice for high-speed data.

The evidence is staggering. Three tons of captured Syrian government documents, providing a chilling and extensive catalog of the state’s war crimes, are held by a single organization in Europe. A Syrian police photographer fled with pictures of more than 6,000 dead at the hands of the state, many of them tortured. The smartphone alone has broken war’s barriers: Records of crimes are now so graphic, so immediate, so overwhelming...Alex Whiting, a Harvard law professor, said accountability is a matter of politics and so far Syria has not been high in the world’s priorities. But he has been surprised, tenuously, since the latest chemical attack.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has brought sweeping change to the Department of Justice. In just two months as the nation’s top cop, Sessions has moved quickly to overhaul the policies and priorities set by the Obama administration...Alex Whiting, faculty co-director of the Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School, said it appears Sessions is resurrecting the tough on crime policies last seen during the George W. Bush administration. “Obama moved away from that approach, and I think in the criminal justice world there seemed to be a consensus between the right and left that those policies, those rigid policies of the war on drugs and trying to get the highest sentence all the time, had failed,” he said.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe, Richard W. Painter, and Norman L. Eisen. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump broke with decades of tradition and declined to release to the public his federal tax returns, as every president since Richard Nixon had done. Trump's decision highlighted the fact, previously unknown to many, that prior candidates had released their tax return not due to a legal obligation, but because they believed -- correctly -- that the information was important to voters.

Corrected version. Professors and students at the Law School gathered on Tuesday to argue whether aggressive acts by international states should be included under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court...Harvard Law professor Alex Whiting and Middlesex University London professors William Schabas and Donald Ferencz spoke on the panel. Law School Dean Martha Minow and Law School professor Gerald L. Neuman '73 also spoke at the event...The event continued with references to essays written by symposium contributors, including members of the Harvard International Law Journal that organized the symposium. Marissa R. Brodney [`18], an executive editor of Harvard International Law Journal, wrote an essay on the designation for victims of aggression. “The symposium explores what has always been a relevant question and has become an increasingly relevant question in our current geopolitical moment” Brodney said.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The news media have been quick to note U.S. President Donald Trump’s embrace of bombing in Syria and the need for NATO as reversals of the foreign policy he advocated on the stump. But he’s made another flip in the past week that’s just as consequential, and possibly more important for his future foreign policy. By asking China to “solve the North Korean problem” in exchange for an improved trade deal, Trump has embraced linkage. Broadly, linkage is the idea that economic policy and geopolitical strategy can be used in tandem, with trade-offs between the two realms. This idea wasn’t on Trump’s radar before the election, especially not with respect to China.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Most of the coverage of the United Airlines bumping debacle assumes something like, “United Airlines had a right to remove that flier. But should it have?” But a close reading of the fine print of the contract included in every ticket purchased from United Continental Holdings Inc. strongly suggests that United in fact breached its contract with passenger David Dao. The contract allows the airline to deny boarding involuntarily in case of overbooking. But that’s not what happened; the airplane wasn’t oversold.

A letter by Delcianna Winders. Anyone considering going to the Jordan World Circus should know that this notorious outfit has been cited for a host of animal welfare violations. Jordan World Circus and the animal exhibitors it features have repeatedly endangered the public, including when an elephant attacked her trainer while giving rides, allowing an elephant to escape and a bear to get loose, and failing to protect the public during photo-ops with bears.

Ten Harvard Law School student affinity groups have endorsed Professor David B. Wilkins ’77 to be the next Dean of the Law School in a letter published in The Harvard Law Record Wednesday...Natalie D. Vernon [`17], who co-wrote the letter and is the president of the Women’s Law Association, said drafters of the letter started by determining the qualities of an individual who would be best suited to the deanship. “We started with a big picture conversation about the qualities we think a dean should possess,” Vernon said. “We took a look around and we had some conversations about who would best meet these qualities, and Professor Wilkins is above and beyond the best candidate for the job.” Kristin A. Turner [`17], who also co-wrote the letter and is the president of the Black Law Students’ Association, said the students who drafted the letter decided to endorse a specific candidate to offer a concrete option.

Samantha Power, who served as the 28th U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 until 2017, has been named to a joint faculty appointment at Harvard Law School (HLS) and Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), the deans of the two Schools announced Thursday. The appointment begins immediately...“I am very excited to return to Harvard, as I believe it is essential that we do all we can to ensure that graduates have the skills they need to succeed in messy geopolitical and multilateral environments,” said Power. “Given the daunting challenges we confront — whether from terrorism, rising nationalism, climate change, or mass atrocities — it is essential that we in academia draw lessons from experience, devise practical approaches, and prepare the next generation to improve their communities, their countries, and the world.”