Media Mentions

Rural Alaska runs on diesel. Although many communities are open to alternative energy ideas, they don’t have the funding to even explore them. But help could come in the form of graduate students from Harvard University, who have been tasked with the assignment of solving some of Alaska’s fossil fuel energy woes. Harvard law student Mike Maruca [`18] may sound like he’s describing a spring break trip. “We also got to drive out to Seward and went skiing at Alyeska,” Maruca said. “We managed to catch the northern lights last night, sort of. They were not very clear.” But Maruca’s actually in Alaska for a class that’s looking for practical solutions to reduce the use of fossil fuels, especially in low-income, under-served communities.

An op-ed by Jack Goldsmith. Many critics of President Trump, including a sizable number of Democrats in the Republican-controlled Congress, are wary about the incipient congressional investigations of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and the possibly related Russian entanglements with the Trump administration and campaign. They suspect that an independent investigation from outside the government is the only hope for checking a president who seems oblivious to press criticism, whose party controls Congress and who has the executive branch under his thumb. These worries are understandable but misplaced.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. Just a handful of newsflashes have come home to me in such a way that I never forgot where I was when I heard them. Most were disasters, like the Challenger explosion or the attacks of September 11. In February 2010, I was sitting in my office in Ann Arbor when another event made the list — but this one surprised and delighted me. I cheered. Google had announced its fiber experiment, a plan to wire at least 50,000 homes with fast, bountiful connections. Finally, someone was going to try to unstick the monopolistic, stagnant, second-rate market for high-capacity internet access in the US.

An op-ed by Jeannie Suk Gersen. With a one-sentence order last week, the Supreme Court dashed hopes of a big transgender-rights decision this term. The Court was supposed to review the case of Gavin Grimm, a transgender teen-age boy who sued the Gloucester County School Board for the right to use the boys’ bathroom and won, in the Fourth Circuit. But the basis of the Fourth Circuit’s decision was the Obama Administration’s view that Title IX, the 1972 law that prohibits schools that receive federal funding from discriminating “on the basis of sex,” requires schools to treat transgender students in a way consistent with their gender identity.

As President Trump last week issued a new executive order preventing citizens from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for 90 days, Harvard continued to ramp up efforts to support international students and scholars in understanding and coping with the policy shift...Resources include a website that provides a centralized source of information for undocumented members of the Harvard community, weekly support groups where students can talk with a counselor, and legal assistance through the Immigration and Refugee Clinic, which recently hired attorney Jason Corral to represent undocumented students and those with legal status obtained through the DACA initiative. “We’ve been advising people since the first set of executive orders came out in January pretty consistently until now,” said Sabrineh Ardalan, the clinic’s assistant director.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Small businesses and startups are responsible for a big chunk of U.S. economic growth and job creation. Unfortunately, many of them are stymied by state and federal regulation. The good news is that the Regulatory Flexibility Act, originally enacted in 1980, could provide a lot of help. If the administration of President Donald Trump starts to pay attention to it, it could give that tired old law a lot more energy – and promote important economic goals.

Thanks to some fine work by two Bloomberg news reporters, David Kocieniewski and Caleb Melby, we now know that a major Chinese financial services firm may invest $4 billion in a Manhattan skyscraper owned by the family of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner...In the eyes of some legal experts, the simple fact that Trump accepted the trademarks is a violation of the Constitution’s mandate against presidents accepting payments of any kind from foreign governments. “If the trademark has value in contributing to Trump’s wealth, the amount of the forbidden emolument might not be ascertainable before the transaction closes, but the constitutional prohibition doesn’t turn on how large the emolument turns out to be,” Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School, wrote in an email.

Last year, an “extremely enthusiastic” charitable nonprofit foundation based in India approached Education Management Corp. with an offer. Hoping to break into the United States, the Ritnand Balved Education Foundation wanted to buy the Pittsburgh for-profit education provider’s two largest art institutes — the New England Institute of Art, in Brookline, Mass., and the Art Institute of New York City — and keep them open as nonprofit institutions, according to letters and emails exchanged between EDMC and Massachusetts education officials...EDMC’s programs “burden graduates with unmanageable student loan debt — programs that will be subject to even less federal oversight once they have been sold to a nonprofit,” said Toby Merrill, an attorney and director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. When the boss asks you to resign, should you say yes or make him fire you? In the executive branch of the federal government, there’s a strong tradition of stepping down, especially if you’re a political appointee of the other party. Yet Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, made President Donald Trump fire him, as did Sally Yates, the acting attorney general who refused to defend Trump’s original executive order on immigration back in January.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. South Korea’s president Park Geun-hye was officially removed from office Friday after the constitutional court affirmed her impeachment by the national assembly. It’s a remarkable outcome for a relatively new democracy, and the scandal holds some important lessons for how impeachment can take place in a political culture deeply dominated by partisanship. Park’s removal depended on three key elements: peaceful, sustained popular protests; a corruption scandal so egregious that even politicians from Park’s party were forced to admit it merited impeachment; and an orderly constitutional process for removal that was followed to the letter.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The Trump administration is considering a new assault on American legal and constitutional structures by taking on federalism -- and vehicle emissions. Specifically, the Environmental Protection Agency reportedly will try to revoke a waiver that California has enjoyed for 45 years, which allows the state -- and any state that wants to copy it -- to regulate tailpipe emissions more stringently than the federal government does.

...Notably, Spicer did not take Liasson’s invitation to claim a potentially legitimate reason not to declassify wiretap evidence: that Trump did not want to appear to interfere with an ongoing investigation. Of course, if Spicer had agreed, it would have brought up innumerable other issues. For instance, if there is an ongoing investigation involving Trump wiretaps, that would be so politically explosive the Justice Department would have little choice but to appoint a special prosecutor...Lawrence Tribe, a famed professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, Justice Department official during the Obama administration, and now vociferous Trump critic, goes further. “What Sean Spicer said about the separation of powers made no sense at all,” Tribe believes. “The separation of powers provides no justification for saying that Congress rather than the president should investigate” Trump’s assertions.

Within days of President Donald Trump’s first executive order halting travel to the United States from seven majority-Muslim countries, states and organizations filed a flurry of lawsuits to fight the ban. And though Trump issued a revised ban Monday, many of those states and organizations believe the policies are so similar that they don’t even need to file new lawsuits...If U.S. District Judge James Robart agrees, the travel ban will be be stopped before it can go into effect on March 16. One of the biggest questions Robart faces, Harvard Law School professor Gerald L. Neuman said, is whether to consider the ban on its own — or consider that a court already found a similar policy to be likely unconstitutional.

Hundreds of others have received new sentences since the Supreme Court struck down mandatory life-without-parole terms for juveniles. Now, the man whose name is on that decision gets his chance...In addition to recounting his youth and a long history of abuse, neglect and depression, attorneys from the Equal Justice Initiative — which took Miller’s case to the Supreme Court — are expected to bring evidence about the science of brain development, which underpinned the justices’ ruling. Scientists now believe the parts of the adolescent brain that control emotional, risk-taking behavior aren’t fully developed until after the teenage years. “The result of this developmental process means that adolescents will not think like or process like adults will until probably their mid-20s,” said Robert Kinscherff, a forensic scientist and attorney at the Project on Law and Applied Neuroscience — a joint venture of Harvard Law School and Massachusetts General Hospital.

As the Malaysian police seek further evidence to back their suspicions that the North Korean government was behind last month’s assassination of Kim Jong-nam in Kuala Lumpur, international investigators are gathering testimony to put top North Korean leaders on trial for a much broader range of heinous crimes. The UN special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea on Monday called on the world to bring members of the dictatorial regime to justice at the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity...And history can take sudden twists, points out Alex Whiting, a professor of international criminal law at Harvard Law School. At one time, he recalls, few expected anyone ever to face justice for crimes committed in Cambodia or the former Yugoslavia. International tribunals have since tried and sentenced perpetrators of crimes against humanity and war crimes during those conflicts.

Condemnation over President Trump's decision to fire U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara came fast and furious on Saturday, from both sides of the aisle. Bharara refused the administration's request to resign along with 45 other U.S. attorneys across the nation and was summarily fired, sending shockwaves across New York, where the prosecutor was known to crusade against corruption in state and local governments...Bahara "is a hero. His firing was no ordinary turnover," tweeted Harvard constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe. "It was a cowardly about-face by #conmantrump fearing Bharara's investigations."

Artificial intelligence is everywhere and it’s here to stay. Most aspects of our lives are now touched by artificial intelligence in one way or another, from deciding what books or flights to buy online to whether our job applications are successful, whether we receive a bank loan, and even what treatment we receive for cancer...For Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of internet law at Harvard Law School, there is a danger that the increasing complexity of computer systems might prevent them from getting the scrutiny they need. “I'm concerned about the reduction of human autonomy as our systems — aided by technology — become more complex and tightly coupled,” he says.

An op-ed by Jack Goldsmith. Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s possibly criminal failure to register last year as a foreign agent is but the latest of many White House ethics lapses in the first seven weeks of the Trump presidency. Responsibility for this problem—like so many others in the young Trump presidency—lies at the feet of White House Counsel Donald McGahn.

The Wall Street Journal reports: A lawsuit filed Thursday by a Washington wine bar targets President Donald Trump’s lease with the federal government to rent the Old Post Office downtown, with the aim of forcing him to divest himself from the Trump International Hotel operating in the historic building...The Cork Wine Bar plaintiffs could, of course, add a claim under the emoluments clause, claiming government representatives pay for hotel rooms, meals and banquet facilities that are prohibited. “An emoluments clause complaint against the president in his official capacity would be fully consistent with the unfair competition claim they have now filed against Donald J. Trump in his capacity as a private businessman,” constitutional litigator Larry Tribe tells me.

An op-ed by Mark Roe. The 2008-2009 financial crisis exposed a serious weakness in the global financial system’s architecture: an overnight market for mortgage-backed securities that could not handle the implosion of a housing bubble. Some nine years later, that weakness has not been addressed adequately. When the crisis erupted, companies and investors in the United States were lending their extra cash overnight to banks and other financial firms, which then had to repay the loans, plus interest, the following morning. Because bank deposit insurance covered only up to $100,000, those with millions to store often preferred the overnight market, using ultra-safe long-term US Treasury obligations as collateral.

It seems like a simple solution: Companies with excess food should just donate it to people in need. So why don’t they? Maybe they’re worried about liability. Perhaps they can’t afford to transport the food to where it will do the most good. Or, they’re unsure about the expiration-date labeling and would rather not chance giving away past-due goods. So what’s to be done? Plenty, according to a report released Thursday, March 9, by The Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic and the Natural Resources Defense Council...“If even a quarter of the recommendations in the report are embraced and implemented, millions of pounds of wholesome food will make it to those in need instead of clogging up our landfills,” said Emily Broad Leib, director of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic and one of the report’s main authors.