Media Mentions

An op-ed by fellow Delcianna Winders. The soon-to-shutter Ringling Bros. Circus just rolled into Brooklyn for the last time. On March 3, the curtain will close on the circus’ final New York City show. After the lights go down and Ringling finishes up its final national tour, what’s to become of the dozens of animals used in the circus?...These majestic animals, who have endured so much, deserve better than jail— much better. That means they also shouldn’t be shipped off to zoos to be used as breeding machines, as Ringling has recently done with a handful of elephants.

...Starting this week, Slate is partnering with Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project to create “Trials and Error.” Our collaboration will attempt to illustrate the reality of the justice system via thorough, fair, and accurate investigative journalism and policy analysis...Trials and Error will also feature academic voices, including Ron Sullivan...

As part of a bold effort at bail reform, the state of New Jersey replaced bail hearings with algorithmically informed risk assessments this year. Anyone’s eligible for release, no money down, if they meet certain criteria. To ensure unbiased, scientific decisions, judges use a machine-generated score. The automated recommendation serves as a guide and doesn’t replace judicial discretion. Still, the program raises questions about the claimed neutrality of machine reasoning, and the wisdom of reliance on mechanical judgment...Harvard Law School’s criminal justice policy program published a primer on bail reform (pdf) in 2016, laying out the legal and social dangers of economically premised release and calling for its widespread abolition.

Katie M. Derzon,the College’s recently-appointed undocumented student fellow, has partnered with other College administrators to present "a series of concrete recommendations" for supporting undocumented students by the end of the semester. Derzon, a sociology graduate student and tutor in Leverett House, assumed her position earlier this month. She said she meets with undocumented students “one-on-one to work to answer questions as they occur.”...So far, Derzon said she sees connecting students to legal resources as her first priority. She pointed to Jason M. Corral, a staff attorney at the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, as one of those resources.

The final two jurors were selected Monday in the double murder trial of former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez, paving the way for opening statements in the highly anticipated case on Wednesday...Ronald Sullivan, a lawyer for Hernandez, said outside court during the lunch break that his client is looking forward to the start of the trial. “He’s looking forward to vindication,” said Sullivan, a Harvard Law professor. “To demonstrate to this jury and to the public that he is not guilty of the charged crimes.”

It has been 27 years since the first black man, an older student by the name of Barack Obama, was elected president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. It has been even longer — 41 years — since the first woman, Susan Estrich, was elected to the position. Since then, subsequent presidents have been female, Hispanic, Asian-American, openly gay and black. Only now, for the first time in the history of the venerable 130-year-old journal, is the president a black woman. ImeIme Umana [`18], 24, the third-oldest of four daughters of Nigerian immigrants, was elected on Jan. 29 by the review’s 92 student editors as the president of its 131st volume...“It still feels like magic that I’m here,” Ms. Umana said in an interview, though her fellow students said it was not magic at all but her sharp legal mind, intense work ethic, leadership ability and generosity of spirit that catapulted her to the top.

The Harvard Law Review is among the most prestigious legal journals in the world, but the 130-year-old publication had never elected a black woman as its president — until now. That honor has gone to ImeIme Umana [`18], a 24-year-old daughter of Nigerian immigrants who has been voted president by the Law Review’s 92 student editors. Twenty-seven years ago, a Harvard Law School student named Barack Obama was elected the publication’s first black male president.

An op-ed by Jeannie Suk Gersen. Last week, the Trump Administration did exactly what many dreaded regarding transgender students. The Justice Department and the Education Department issued a letter that withdrew the Obama Administration’s letters directing schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity (rather than genitalia, chromosomes, or sex assigned at birth). The same day, the Office of the Solicitor General sent a letter asking the Supreme Court to take note of this about-face in the government’s position on what Title IX requires of schools. The Supreme Court was set to resolve two questions this term in the case of the Gloucester County School Board against Gavin Grimm, a transgender teen-age boy: first, whether the federal government’s view on transgender bathroom use was entitled to deference by courts; and, second, whether the government’s interpretation was correct.

An op-ed by Nancy Gertner. President Trump frequently complains about Washington leaks. But what he is really concerned about is that these leaks are not random. He believes that they are being deployed to harm his administration. (Of course, he had no problem with WikiLeaks’ leak of e-mails from the Democratic National Committee during the campaign. “I love WikiLeaks,” he said.) But the pattern of leaks is uneven and, in one area, that inconsistent pattern may well redound to Trump’s advantage: Despite all the information that has come out of this leaky administration, his tax returns remain confidential (except for a single year reportedly leaked by one of Trump’s former wives).

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. President Donald Trump’s war on the news media violates the spirit of the free press. How far can he go before he violates the letter of the First Amendment? Case in point: the exclusion of CNN, the New York Times, Politico and other media outlets from a White House press briefing Friday. It violates the basic constitutional ideal that the government can’t discriminate among various speakers on the basis of their viewpoints. Under existing case law, however, the exclusion probably doesn’t violate the Constitution, because the news outlets remain free to speak despite losing a degree of access.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Under existing doctrine, a federal district judge was probably right to temporarily block a California law designed to stop certain websites from listing actors' ages. But why shouldn't your age be a private fact you can keep to yourself? Not only can your age be used against you discriminatorily, but you also have a First Amendment right to lie about your age provided you aren’t engaging in fraud. This is an instance of a genuine, deep conflict between privacy and free speech. And in this instance, our system may have set the balance too far toward speech.

An article by Adam Aliano `17 and Nate MacKenzie `17. The growing separation between the military and society is dangerous for democracy. DoD is the government agency best equipped to address it. Since George Washington resigned his commission at Annapolis in 1783, the U.S. system has depended on the military’s subordination to civilian control. In the past, it was easy to maintain this control, as the military remained small in times of peace and then expanded its ranks with “citizen soldiers” during times of war. Drawn from all locations and walks of life, these citizen soldiers served because their country, not the profession of arms, had called. In addition, these citizen soldiers served in units organized by state and led by local officers, so their ties with their home populations remained strong. By World War II, however, the government opted for a nationally integrated military, and it did not disband it after the war. After Vietnam, the government went a step further, eliminating the draft and replacing the citizen soldier with the professional or career soldier.

Students and faculty gathered at Harvard Law School last week to discuss the difficulties and limitations that undocumented immigrants in the United States and the Middle East face as part of the Immigration Project's annual symposium. Co-sponsored by Law School organizations La Alianza and the Harvard European Law Association, the conference—themed “Undocumentation"—spanned three days. Poet Marlene Mayren, a leader of an Indianapolis movement for undocumented people’s rights, delivered the keynote slam poetry performance Wednesday...Harvard Law student Niku Jafarnia [`19], who helped lead the symposium, said that the conference covered multiple facets of immigration—from the international refugees to domestic undocumented issues.

A dozen years ago, when Jeff Foster first came to National Football Scouting, the company that runs the NFL combine, he surveyed all 32 teams. The sport’s biggest job fair has four components — an on-field workout, medical testing, player interviews and psychological testing — and Foster wanted to know what teams valued the most. “All 32 teams said medical was No. 1,” Foster explained recently. “All 32 teams said interviews were No. 2.”...While there could be a gray area between tests that measure performance and those that examine health, Glenn Cohen, a Harvard law professor who co-authored the study, says the list of questionable exams the NFL requires of draft prospects is long: heart tests, blood tests, X-rays and MRI exams, psychological tests, even exams measuring eyesight or range of motion.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration released a pair of memos authorizing federal authorities to deport undocumented immigrants more aggressively, directives that are in line with President Trump’s executive orders on border security and immigration. The measures laid out in the memos seek to shorten the sometimes years-long deportation process for many immigrants, often to the detriment of immigrants’ existing due process rights. As the changes roll out, they’ll reverberate throughout the deportation pipeline, affecting the numerous government agencies and courts involved...When government officials try to deport someone, there are two paths they can take. The expedited process, which bypasses the court system, is quicker — it typically takes about two weeks, according to Phil Torrey, the supervising attorney for the Harvard Immigration Project — and is used to deport people who haven’t been in the country very long.

The FBI rejected a request from White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus last week to publicly knock down media reports about communications between Donald Trump's associates and Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to multiple US officials briefed on the matter. The White House denies any inappropriate contact occurred, claims the FBI initiated the conversation and insists Priebus only discussed the news story, not the underlying pending Russia investigation...Harvard Law School professor Laurence H. Tribe said that "the important fact is that the White House and the FBI were improperly discussing an ongoing investigation, particularly one that directly involves the President's inner circle and possibly the President himself, regardless of who initiated the communications at issue."

The Trump administration has broadened its search for a key regulatory job at the Federal Reserve, according to people familiar with the matter, meeting in recent weeks with at least two people about the post of Fed vice chair in charge of bank oversight. President Donald Trump hasn’t announced who he will nominate to the currently vacant post, and his decision won’t be final until that happens...The administration is still said to be considering David Nason, a former Treasury Department official in the administration of President George W. Bush...President Trump’s team also recently met with Richard Davis, the chief executive of U.S. Bancorp, and Hal Scott, a professor at Harvard Law School, according to people familiar with the matter...Mr. Scott declined to comment.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Now that the Trump administration has reversed the Department of Education policy on transgender bathroom use, the Supreme Court will probably dismiss the case it’s hearing on the matter rather than issue a decision. But even if that happens -- and it isn’t 100 percent certain -- the result may be better for transgender-rights advocates than judgment on the merits would have been. In the long run, the movement would be better off with a decision that reads federal anti-discrimination law as protecting against transgender bias than with a decision that makes protection depend upon the whims of the administration charged with implementing the law.

Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending has sued the federal government in an effort to access documents from the Education Management Corporation, an operator of for-profit colleges that settled a case with the U.S. Department of Justice in November 2015...“The documents from this lawsuit regarding EDMC’s recruitment practices are likely to strengthen claims for reliefs of hundreds, if not thousands, of former students of EDMC-owned schools,” wrote Amanda Mangaser Savage ’10, the Project’s attorney who filed the lawsuit, in a press release...Savage said the Law School Project’s lawsuit aims to benefit students who incurred debt from EDMC schools and also taxpayers whose dollars are going to for-profit colleges. The $95.5 million the case was settled for was “less than one percent of the more than $11 billion in taxpayer-funded federal student grants and loans that the government alleged EDMC received between July 2003 and the suit’s filing,” according to the Project’s press release.

A member of southern Alberta's Blood Tribe has become the first Indigenous student to head Harvard Law School's Legal Aid Bureau in the history of the 104-year-old organization. Julian SpearChief-Morris [`18] was recently elected president of the bureau, the second largest provider of legal aid services in the Boston area. The University of Lethbridge grad and second-year law student told the Calgary Eyeopener Wednesday "it means a lot" to hold the prestigious position. "I've gotten a lot of great feedback from my friends and family back in southern Alberta and it's been truly humbling," he said, speaking from Cambridge, Mass. SpearChief-Morris became involved in the bureau late in his first year of law school. "I've learned so much from the people that I was working with and I just wanted to take on a bigger role," he said.

The state is helping hundreds of veterans by awarding $350,000 in grants to four Massachusetts organizations. The grant funding will go to Community Legal Aid, Inc., in Worcester; Montachusett Veterans Outreach Center in Gardner; The Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School in Boston; and Veterans Legal Services in Boston, Attorney General Maura Healey's office announced Wednesday...The Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School plans to hire an attorney to provide legal representation for discharge status upgrades and veterans benefits claims using the funding. That attorney will conduct outreach to veterans and present legal training on veteran and military law to services providers. The grant funding will provide nearly 50 veterans with legal representation. "Low-income and disabled veterans in Massachusetts have vast unmet legal needs," said Daniel Nagin, director of the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School. "We are honored to receive grant funding from the Attorney General's Office to expand our ability to advocate for the men and women who have the worn the uniform and now face barriers to care, financial stability, and other critical supports."