Media Mentions

When President Trump chose the Oklahoma attorney general, Scott Pruitt, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, his mission was clear: Carry out Mr. Trump’s campaign vows to radically reduce the size and scope of the agency and take apart President Barack Obama’s ambitious climate change policies...Legal experts say they can see why opponents of climate change policy want to go after the endangerment finding — as long as it remains in place, any efforts to undo climate regulations can always be reversed. “As a matter of theory, they’re absolutely right,” said Richard J. Lazarus, a professor of environmental law at Harvard. “If you want to get rid of the climate stuff, you get rid of the root, not just the branches. They want him to uproot the whole thing.”

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences today announced the election of 228 new members. Members of the 2017 class include winners of the Pulitzer Prize and the Wolf Prize; MacArthur Fellows; Fields Medalists; Presidential Medal of Freedom and National Medal of Arts recipients; and Academy Award, Grammy Award, Emmy Award, and Tony Award winners. Among them are 13 Harvard faculty and two benefactors. Those elected from Harvard include Alan M. Garber, provost of Harvard University and the Mallinckrodt Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School; John A. Quelch, Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration; Jonathan L. Zittrain, George Bemis Professor of International Law...Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is one of the country’s oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers, convening leaders from the academic, business, and government sectors to respond to the challenges facing — and opportunities available to — the nation and the world.

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 professors Gerald Neuman and Alex Whiting and Middlesex University London professor William Schabas spoke on the panel...The event continued with references to essays written by members of the Harvard International Law Journal that organized the symposium. Marissa R. Brodney [`18], the 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.

Jacob Weisberg and Harvard law professor Noah Feldman discuss the three most pressing categories from which the articles of impeachment against Donald Trump may be drawn—corruption, abuse of power, and the violation of democratic norms.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. In the debate over whether U.S. President Donald Trump needed congressional authorization to bomb Syria after last week’s chemical weapons attack, one important reality is being obscured: The expansion of the imperial presidency is nonpartisan. Trump’s minimalist rationale for the cruise-missile strike marks a stronger version of the claim to executive power than any other president has invoked. But that claim is building on substantial extensions of unilateral power made by Bill Clinton in bombing Kosovo and Barack Obama in bombing Libya.

An op-ed by visiting fellow Jordan Brennan and Kaylie Tiessen. In 2015, hot on the campaign trail and seeking a way to differentiate themselves from their political opponents, the Trudeau Liberals made a political calculation: rather than raise taxes to finance their spending commitments, they would resort to deficit financing. The initial promise was to run two consecutive $10 billion dollar deficits before returning to budgetary balance in 2019, though once in office that commitment was promptly jettisoned. In Budget 2017 we learned that last year’s deficit was $23 billion, this year’s deficit will rise to $29 billion and, by 2019, the shortfall will still be $23 billion.

A U.S. agency ruling affirming President Donald Trump’s right to operate a hotel in a Washington building leased from the government has opened a potential new legal battle over whether the contract grants him benefits in violation of the Constitution...“He’s getting a major infusion of value from the General Services Administration,’’ said Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard University who represents a watchdog group suing Trump over foreign emoluments. “He can use his hotel in the heart of Washington as a way of attracting still more emoluments, both foreign and domestic.’’

Harvard Law School recently announced that it will no longer require the Law School Admissions Test, or LSAT, as its only admissions exam. Beginning this fall, students can either take the Graduate Records Exam, known popularly as the GRE, or the LSAT. Jessica Soban, associate dean for strategic initiatives and admissions at Harvard Law School, tells GoodCall® the change is designed to increase access for U.S. and international students...Also, Soban explains that some students who consider going to graduate school also consider going to law school. “Students with technology or other STEM backgrounds might also want to get (for example) a master’s degree in Computer Science, but it is burdensome and costly to study for and take one test to get in graduate school and have to repeat the cycle to get into law school.”

Last week, President Donald Trump signed a controversial new law, allowing internet providers to continue gathering sensitive information on their users and selling that data to advertisers. News sites erupted with recommendations for keeping browsing history private—but because all the data people send and receive online goes through their service providers, that’s easier said than done...Bruce Schneier, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center and the author of Schneier on Security, warned against underestimating internet providers’ ability—and drive—to see through data-obfuscation tactics. “The question is, after 100 years of coding theory, how good are those algorithms at finding the signal in the noise?” he asked.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. With the swearing-in Monday of Justice Neil Gorsuch, the U.S. Supreme Court’s configuration shifts to … a 4-4 balance with a single centrist justice as the swing vote. If that sounds familiar, it should. It’s been the normal state of affairs since 1986, when Justice Antonin Scalia joined, and on some issues all the way back to Richard Nixon’s administration.

In this podcast, John McDougall of McDougall Interactive and the www.legalmarketingreview.com blog speaks with Dr. Heidi Gardner of the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession about law firm rainmakers and collaboration following her keynote address at the Thomson Reuters Marketing Partner Forum.

On walls, pillars and billboards across Budapest, the far-right Jobbik party has plastered the face of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and assorted cronies above a simple slogan: "They Steal." Corruption has been an increasingly salient feature of Orban's rule, but the heist most recently contemplated by Orban and his Fidesz party, which dominates Hungary's parliament, is an unusual one: They want to steal a university...In an email interview, Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton University professor who has studied Hungary's constitutional transition from communism, provides some context. "Since summer 2015, Orban has been demonizing George Soros and blaming the refugee crisis on him. Orban has argued that the refugee crisis is Soros’s way of guaranteeing pluralism in Europe because Soros doesn’t support the current government’s defense of Christian Hungary."

An op-ed by Samuel Moyn and Stephen Wertheim. We now know how many cruise missiles it takes to turn you from pariah to respected member of the American foreign policy establishment: 59 — the number President Trump fired on a Syrian government airfield on Thursday. “I think Donald Trump became president of the United States,” the CNN host Fareed Zakaria gushed. And yet firing missiles at half-empty air bases does not make up for a lack of foreign policy acumen, let alone a strategy for dealing with a Middle East that has consumed American blood and treasure for at least 15 years. In fact, the good money says that Mr. Trump is, through plan or happenstance, likely to push us further into the fighting, whatever he promised on the campaign trail.

Jurors in the Aaron Hernandez double-murder trial began their second day of deliberations today, while behind the scenes the former New England Patriots player's lawyers and the judge were squabbling over perceptions of racism. Suffolk Superior Court Judge Jeffrey A. Locke, exhuming a fight thought buried Thursday, told Hernandez's defense team he found it "astounding" they would object to his selection of a white woman to serve as foreperson...But Hernandez attorney and Harvard Law professor Ronald Sullivan Jr. said what Locke did was make sure a white woman was put in charge and could not be removed as an alternate. "We find it offensive that with the jury predominantly filled with people of color, they cannot self-govern. We think it violates Mr. Hernandez's due process rights," Sullivan said.

A Miami-based neurologist who has treated Florida Panther players says a "turf war" is preventing neurologists from being represented on the National Hockey League's Concussion Subcommittee. Since 1997, the subcommittee has been advising the league on how best to treat players who suffer head injuries and brain trauma...One Harvard University law professor says that the NHL should overhaul its medical structure to free team doctors and trainers from any real or perceived conflicts of interest. Glenn Cohen, a Montreal native who is the director of Harvard Law School's Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics, published a report in November that urged the NFL to adopt new guidelines for team medical staff so doctors who treat players are not required to report to coaches and other team management. "For both the NFL or the NHL, whenever you have a club physician who is trying to serve both the interests of an injured player and management, there's a recipe for an ethically problematic state of affairs," Cohen said in an interview this week.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The “extreme vetting” proposals floated this week by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly include the idea of making visitors to the U.S. open their phones and disclose their contacts, passwords and social media handles to immigration authorities. This might potentially be constitutional, because visitors outside the U.S. don’t necessarily have privacy protection. But it’s a serious threat to Americans’ constitutional rights anyway. The intrusion into core privacy of visa applicants through the fiction of consent can easily be extended to U.S. citizens in a wide range of situations.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Forget Robert Bork. The confirmation of Neil Gorsuch after the rejection of Merrick Garland marks the new high-water mark in the overt, partisan politicization of the U.S. Supreme Court. After the Democratic Senate rejected Bork 30 years ago, President Ronald Reagan got to choose another appointee. After the Republican Senate refused to vote on Garland last year, President Barack Obama was denied the same chance. We’ve entered a brave new world, in which the party that controls the Senate can now control court appointments.

An op-ed by Bruce Schneier. Governments want to spy on their citizens for all sorts of reasons. Some countries do it to help solve crimes or to try to find "terrorists" before they act. Others do it to find and arrest reporters or dissidents. Some only target individuals, others attempt to spy on everyone all the time. Many countries spy on the citizens of other countries: for reasons of national security, for advantages in trade negotiations, or to steal intellectual property. None of this is new. What is new, however, is how easy it has all become. Computers naturally produce data about their activities, which means they're constantly producing surveillance data about us as we interact with them.

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."