Media Mentions

President Trump ordered the military on Thursday to carry out a missile attack on Syrian forces for using chemical weapons against civilians. The unilateral attack lacked authorization from Congress or from the United Nations Security Council, raising the question of whether he had legal authority to commit the act of war...On Thursday, Mr. Trump said, “It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons.” He also invoked the Syrian refugee crisis and continuing regional instability. Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who led the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department in the Bush administration, wrote that this criteria for what is sufficient to constitute a national interest was even thinner than previous precedents and would seemingly justify almost any unilateral use of force.

Richard Lazarus is known as the "dean of environmental law," but he'd rather be called the "solicitor general for environmental law." To his close friends, he's Richy. The Harvard Law School professor is well known in environmental and legal circles. He's argued before the Supreme Court 14 times and participated in 42 cases before the high court. He's also the former roommate of Chief Justice John Roberts. Lazarus has taught at top law schools, worked in the Justice Department's environmental division and was executive director to the commission investigating the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. He recently spoke to E&E News about his longtime friendship with Roberts, sizing up Supreme Court justices and his stint selling ice cream in Urbana, Ill.

As Harvard’s Title IX Office splits into two separate offices in response to “community feedback” about the University’s response to sexual assault on campus, some student activists and professors question whether that change will lead to substantive improvements...“In many ways, it seems to be more about optics than about function,” said Katherine Leung [`17], a third-year Law student and co-president of the Harassment Assault Law-Student Team...Concerns about the separation between different stages of Harvard’s response to sexual assault complaints are not new. In 2014, 28 Law professors sharply criticized the University-wide Title IX procedures when they took effect, arguing in an op-ed in the Boston Globe that these procedures put “the functions of investigation, prosecution, fact-finding, and appellate review in one office.” Law professor Janet Halley, who signed the letter, called the new structure “window dressing.” “It does not provide either neutrality or independence of decision-makers handling particular cases,” Halley said. “The Law School procedures show how to do that, and at some point the University is going to need to move to a structure like those."

For more than 15,000 students across the country, Wednesday marked the first day of Resistance School — a program where the educational focus is mobilizing against President Donald Trump's administration. "Each one of us has people in our lives who were disturbed by the outcome of the election and saw it as a call to action," said Joe Breen, one of the Resistance School co-founders. He's a third-year student in a joint degree program at Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School. "We recognized that we had the opportunity to help them develop the skills that they would need to get involved in political action." Resistance School organizers — a group of Harvard graduate students — said a couple hundred people participated in the first lesson in person at the Ivy League campus in Boston on Wednesday, while about 15,000 people of all ages tuned in via livestream from 50 states and 20 countries. They estimated the total participation was even larger because students were encouraged to host watch parties in groups.

After Donald Trump won the presidential election on Nov. 7, Samuel Garcia [`19] described the scene at Harvard law school as one of despair. Garcia, 22, called his brother Ricco Garcia, 26, to discuss the surprising election result. That conversation between the Rio Grande Valley natives would eventually lead to a new book co-authored by the brothers. “How A Goat Became Mayor and the Political Spring That Followed” is a true story about how a goat became mayor in a small Texas town after dissatisfaction with the local politicians. The book is the third for Samuel Garcia, who grew up in Mission. Garcia is now a law student at Harvard.

...The 2011 bombing of Libya, initially meant to prevent a feared imminent massacre by Qaddafi’s forces in Benghazi, was authorized by a Security Council resolution and conducted under the auspices of NATO, but as Jack Goldsmith pointed out on Lawfare last night, Obama’s Office of Legal Counsel also argued at the time that the president has the right to act unilaterally in defense of the “national interest,” which in the Libya case was “preserving regional stability and supporting the UNSC’s credibility and effectiveness”—language not all that unlike what Trump used last night.

Taking a step back from the particulars of the Susan Rice story and the investigation into Russian collusion, Jack Goldsmith and Benjamin Wittes explain the broader implications of an eroding public trust in the nonpartisanship of American intelligence agencies. After decades of misbehavior, including spying on American citizens for political ends, the intelligence agencies had lost credibility with the American public. In the 1970s, Mr. Wittes and Mr. Goldsmith write, the intelligence community entered a “grand bargain” with Congress that limited its power but restored its integrity. That “grand bargain” is now in peril.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Everyone agrees that under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, employers are forbidden from discriminating on the basis of sex. Are they also forbidden from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation? In a momentous decision earlier this week, with large implications for employers all over the country, a federal court of appeals ruled that they are. Superb opinions were delivered by both Judge Diane Wood, author of the majority opinion, and Judge Diane Sykes, author of the dissent.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. After the nuclear option, what’s next? There really are only two choices to react to the Republican decision to eliminate the Senate filibuster permanently for Supreme Court nominations: mourning or celebration. So for the record, let me begin by saying that Judge Merrick Garland should’ve been confirmed after he was nominated to this seat by President Barack Obama, and that it’s tragic that Judge Neil Gorsuch, who is comparably qualified, will be confirmed in his stead. Then let me tell you how I feel now: I come to bury the filibuster, not praise it.

...In March 2016, the Law School also took steps to address its historical ties to slavery—specifically, the Law School recommended discarding its former seal featuring the crest of the Royall family, slave-owners who endowed the school’s first professorship in the late 18th century. In the days following that decision, the Law School sought to physically remove all traces of the Royall crest from its campus and website...After being contacted by The Crimson, Law School Dean for Administration Francis X. McCrossan wrote in an email that he was aware the school’s “large-scale” effort to remove the seal last year may not have been entirely successful. “We did away with the shield in all the places where we found it, but occasionally we still come across instances that weren't caught during that review,” McCrossan wrote.

A central issue was the decision this week of U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to review the consent decrees the U.S. Justice Department had arranged with police departments after patterns of unconstitutional racial discrimination and excessive force, including the shootings of black men. Chiraag Bains, senior fellow at Harvard Law School Criminal Justice Policy Program and former senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights under President Obama, cited the review as evidence the Justice Department has been “predictably disastrous” on civil rights. “This administration insists that policing is a purely local matter into which the federal government should not intrude,” Bains said. “But we’re not talking about a federal takeover of these departments. We’re talking about the enforcement and protection of constitutional rights. There is no federalism problem.”

...By the hour, it seems, the legal and financial noose of convicting certainty is tightening around the necks of Trump’s campaign aides, and even some within his Cabinet, whose prime reason for appointment now appears to center around their ties to Russia. If some reports are to be believed, under the weight of mounting evidence, which could lead to his impeachment or imprisonment, Trump is ostensibly considering resignation. But don’t light up the fireworks — at least, not just yet...“As it stands today, the Constitution contains a serious design flaw,” Harvard Constitutional Law Professor Laurence Tribe told me Sunday in an email communication.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. It’s probably naive to think that there could be a nuanced conversation about Judge Neil Gorsuch’s citation of sources in his 2006 book, “The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia.” But that’s precisely what we need. There’s no doubt that in at least one extended passage, Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, copied wording from an article in the Indiana Law Journal with only trivial changes and without citing the article. There’s even a footnote that’s replicated verbatim from the article, down to the exact same use of ellipses in citing a pediatrics textbook.

Eight weeks ago President Donald Trump said he would be releasing a “phenomenal” tax plan within two or three weeks. But there’s no sign of a plan yet, and mixed signals from the White House are imperiling Republican promises of speedy action. The administration hasn’t yet publicly answered the most basic questions about what a possible tax reform plan would look like. Will it pay for itself with offsets or add to the deficit? Trump hasn’t said...“I don’t think there’s clarity yet on who’s running the train,” said Stephen Shay, a senior lecturer at Harvard Law School, who was a senior tax official at Treasury during the last big tax overhaul under President Ronald Reagan. Referring to the current administration, Shay said “there’s nobody inside who has the knowledge base to put together tax reform.”

Styling themselves as characters from "Harry Potter," a group of Harvard students has launched the "Resistance School," a four-session program designed to teach techniques for challenging President Donald Trump's administration. Founded by former campaign staffers, organizers, and activists, the Resistance School aims to “sharpen the tools [necessary] to fight back at the federal, state, and local levels,” according to its website...Co-founder Joseph L. Breen [`17], a student at the Kennedy School and the Law School, said the idea for the training program came after the election as students and professors discussed how they could best stand up to Trump.

...China also hasn’t always abided by the norms of the international institutions it’s sought to join. In 2016, the International Monetary Fund included the Chinese yuan in its basket of currencies that make up the fund’s special drawing rights. Yet Chinese policymakers have generally reneged on their promises to allow the currency to trade more freely. In its latest report on Chinese compliance with World Trade Organization rules, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative raised concerns that China isn’t meeting its obligations on a wide range of issues, from tax policies to export restrictions to product standards. “There is increasing disgruntlement among some trade officials that China may be gaming the system,” says Mark Wu, a Harvard Law School professor who has studied China and the WTO.

United Nations Security Council talks on Syria hit a familiar snag on Wednesday, with clashes between the United States, Russia and other members blocking action on the latest case of poison gas killings in the country’s civil war...With the administration of US President Donald Trump edging closer towards accommodating Russian and Iranian efforts to keep Assad in power once the six-year-old war grinds to a halt, prospects for justice are bleak. “Though the crimes in Syria are on a staggering scale, there has been a blockage for any accountability,” Alex Whiting, a former ICC lawyer, told Middle East Eye.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. It’s certainly symbolic that U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has called for a review of agreements made by the Obama Department of Justice with urban police departments to improve law enforcement and race relations. But in practice, reversing the 14 consent decrees in place would be extraordinarily difficult, and even the handful that are incomplete, such as the Baltimore decree, may well reach finality despite the review. President Donald Trump’s administration can affect community policing at the margin by signaling that it doesn’t care about police abuses. But it likely can’t roll back the steps taken under President Barack Obama.

Gish Jen has made a literary career in part from writing about the experiences of Chinese-Americans. During a lunchtime talk at Harvard Law School (HLS), she discussed her latest book, “The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap,” making the case for the sociological and cultural patterns that influence many aspects of identity...Jen got support for her theory during her March 29 talk from a small panel of speakers that included HLS Assistant Professor Mark Wu and Joseph William Singer, Bussey Professor of Law, who gave many pit-versus-flexi examples in business, mental health, and family.

An interview with Nancy Gertner. Can local law enforcement agencies detain someone at the request of federal immigration authorities, or is that in violation of the Massachusetts state constitution? That was the question before the state's highest court on Monday in the case of Commonwealth v. Lunn — a Cambodian national who was detained by state court officers at the request of federal immigration officials, even though Lunn's state criminal case had been dismissed.

In February 2017, Microsoft announced Skype Lite, a brand-new edition of Skype just for India. A more spartan version of Microsoft’s marquee messaging service, Skype Lite is designed to run well on cheap Android phones and to handle calls over flaky 2G data networks — the trappings of an app made by a large, wealthy corporation for a large and largely poor emerging market. But that’s not all it does. Skype Lite also taps into a giant government-owned database filled with the demographic and biometric records — names, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers, photographs, iris and fingerprint scans — of more than a billion Indian citizens...Cryptographer and cybersecurity expert Bruce Schneier echoed Hunt’s assessment. “When this database is hacked — and it will be — it will be because someone breaches the computer security that protects the computers actually using the data,” he said. “They will go around the encryption.”