Media Mentions

When Barack Obama and Neil Gorsuch were contemporaries at Harvard law school as the eighties rolled into the nineties, they found themselves on a tense campus riven with ideological discord...Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe called Gorsuch “a very, very bright judge” whom he also recalled from his university days was not just learned but “very personable”. He says he knew Obama better at the time, as he was his research assistant, and got to know Gorsuch better later on, after he became a judge...At Oxford, he studied under John Finnis, the controversial Catholic conservative professor and strident proponent of natural law. “That’s telling,” said Harvard law professor Charles Fried. Fried had taught Obama and knew Gorsuch because he was a prominent member of the Federalist Society at the university, of which Fried was a faculty adviser.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. When President Obama nominated Tom Wheeler as the 31st chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), some activists were wary because of his background as an advocate for cable and wireless interests. But as a friend of his, I was confident that he would be a strong leader, and he did not disappoint me. In fact, I consider Tom Wheeler the most consequential FCC chairman since the early 1960s, when a 35-year-old Newton Minow went to the Sheraton Park Hotel — to the lion’s den, the National Association of Broadcasters — and told those all-powerful broadcasters that they were supposed to be serving the public interest. For all the diversity of content that we have today, one can argue that in terms of concentrated power over communications, we’re not much different — four companies strive to dominate what we see and hear. As commissioner, Tom Wheeler told those four companies that they should be serving the public interest as well.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Two weeks into the Trump administration, progressives can be forgiven for starting to think that anything the president proposes is constitutionally suspect. Donald Trump’s call to repeal the Johnson amendment, a law that bars religious organizations from political action on pain of losing their tax-exempt status, is different. The Johnson amendment may arguably have relied on the idea that religion and politics can be strictly separated. But it’s always been difficult to enforce, and the basic premise is flawed.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The high-speed cycle of the first 24 hours after President Donald Trump’s executive order banned immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries is giving way to the long, hard slog of legal reality. A State Department memo made public in court proceedings Wednesday reveals that the Trump administration revoked all visas from those countries on Friday, Jan. 27, the day of the order. That revocation, the essence of the immigration ban, remains in place. As a result, the federal judicial orders against the ban are ineffectual -- because no one from the seven countries has been allowed to board a plane to the U.S. since the day the memo was issued. The lesson for the next four years is brutally clear. Excited resistance was inspiring, and the symbolic image of the courts working after hours to freeze the immigration order will persist. But the actual fight over the effects of Trump’s order, like the rest of his policies, is just getting started. And without slow, patient effort to work within the legal system, the fight cannot be won.

Donald Trump's suspension of refugee resettlement doesn't appear to affect the U.S. asylum system, negating any need for Canada to revisit how the two countries handle asylum claims at the border, the federal Immigration Department says...The orders call for increased detention and an expansion of the criteria for the expedited removal of undocumented immigrants. Critics say they also put undocumented immigrants at risk for criminal charges. "There is no way the U.S. is a safe third country of asylum," said Deborah Anker, the director of Harvard law school's immigration and refugee clinical program.

President Trump’s nominee to run the Environmental Protection Agency survived a rancorous committee vote Thursday, putting him on the path to full Senate confirmation and a confrontation with California. Scott Pruitt, who oil and gas companies are betting will help them reassert dominance over the energy economy, has cast doubt on California’s power to force automakers to build more efficient, cleaner-burning cars...Many such provocations by past administrations eager to flex their executive muscle have gone sideways. They have bogged previous White Houses down in years-long, politically bruising regulatory and legal disputes, during which the president who set out to teach an early lesson to assertive states ends up getting schooled by them. “Announcing that you are going to give your supporters what they want by picking off a few high-profile policies and rescinding them is really easy,” said Jody Freeman, a professor at Harvard Law who served as White House counselor for energy and climate change under the previous administration. “Doing it is much harder.”

An op-ed by Ian Samuel. Imagine you’re a midlevel staffer in a federal department—any federal department. You come into work one morning in your drab Washington office and learn that President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that directly affects your job. Reading the order, you realize that to fulfill it, you’d need to act in a way you’re not comfortable with. In fact, the thing Trump’s asking you to do might be illegal. What now?

Snap Inc. often likens its app to a new form of television. It’s also borrowing from the playbook of traditional media companies to create a small circle of power in its top ranks...“Snap is doing something I have not seen before: creating and issuing non-voting shares at the IPO,” said Jesse Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School. “After the IPO, Snap can issue additional non-voting stock to employees or other parties without eroding the founders’ control rights.”

The Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade is one of the most controversial the justices have ever considered. Since the 1973 decision, it has been a lightning rod, causing emotional and political reactions on a regular basis. But what did the high court’s decision actually do? And could Roe survive a more conservative court? We talked about that with Harvard Law Professor Glenn Cohen, an expert in reproductive technology and related topics.

...These were only two of the questions raised by members of the Harvard community on Wednesday afternoon when representatives of the Harvard International Office, the Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs, and Harvard Law School’s Immigration and Refugee Clinic held a town hall to offer information and perspectives in light of the new Washington administration’s executive orders on immigration and refugees....Elements of that action, as well as practical advice, were then presented by fellow panelists Maureen Martin, director of Immigration Services at the Harvard International Office, and Jason Corral of the Law School’s Immigrant and Refugee Clinic, who had originally been hired to represent students who are undocumented, with DACA support...Executive orders, explained Corral, cannot make new law. In fact, if they contradict an existing law, that “law trumps the order,” he said, to laughter.

An article by Maggie Morgan and Deborah Anker. All Maribel had wanted was to work in a beauty salon in her home country of Honduras, maybe one day doing well enough to open a salon of her own...Several years later, sitting almost 4,000 miles away in a legal office, on a gray day in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Maribel related her story to her attorney in preparation for her asylum hearing. She is one of many tens of thousands of Central American women and children who have fled to the United States since 2014, seeking safety from the unrelenting gang and gender-related violence roiling their home countries. Our attorneys and law students at the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic (HIRC) represent Maribel and many clients with similar stories from this region.

In his first two weeks in office, President Donald Trump's "America First" pledge has proven more than an idle slogan. In word and deed, the White House has signaled an aggressive unilateral stance toward the world that's antagonized allies abroad and divided supporters at home..."Treating the system like its optional, or that it doesn't have any important function at the moment, is more dangerous than trying to destroy it deliberately," Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor of international affairs at Princeton University [and visiting professor at HLS], said. "He doesn't use the international system to signal to others 'Hey, this is serious, this is not so serious,' so he becomes extremely unpredictable on the world scene."

From the Philippines to Britain, 2016 was a year of political shake-ups, with voters in several countries across the globe ushering populist candidates or policies into office to combat inequality and "politics as usual," often highlighting corruption in the "insider" system they opposed. But in the push to reform their countries, such politicians can play a role in further corrupting government offices, a new report cautions, leading to continued social disparities and decreased transparency...“We’re seeing a wave of voter anger sweeping across a lot of democratic systems,” Kim Lane Scheppele, a sociology and international affairs professor at Princeton University [and visiting HLS professor], tells the Monitor. “Sometimes they’re upset with corruption, sometimes it’s deadlock, sometimes the sense that whoever they vote for, nothing changes. Then, they become willing to vote for the appeals of these populist leaders who say, ‘I am the state, I am your voice.’ ”

An op-ed by Adrian Vermeule. Judge Neil Gorsuch is a walking, talking Hollywood writer's pitch: “I've got it! Antonin Scalia meets Jimmy Stewart!” Gorsuch, who famously resembles Stewart, complete with lanky charm, also has the intelligence, skills, and pen of a worthy successor to Scalia. His opinions are clear, amusing, pointed, and legally acute. Scalia could reach greater heights of prose style, sometimes with an acid brilliance that Gorsuch is perhaps too courtly to employ. On the other hand, lower-court judging is a cramped stage, and a Justice Gorsuch would have more scope to unfurl his indisputable talents.

Much of the response to President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Neil M. Gorsuch for the Supreme Court has centered on the 1991 Harvard Law School grad’s similarity to the justice he would replace, Antonin Scalia, who died last year. But the two diverge in at least one important respect, says Charles Fried, the Beneficial Professor of Law. “You won’t get any of the personalized attacks that Scalia was famous for,” said Fried. “He [Gorsuch] is not sarcastic and he is certainly not further to the right than Scalia was … his manner is much less aggressive and much more respectful of the people he disagrees with.”...Jane Nitze, J.D.’08, Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at HLS, clerked for Gorsuch from 2008 to 2009, getting to know both his judicial philosophy and his character. “What struck me was his real, genuine reverence for the Constitution and the rule of law that came through on a daily basis,” said Nitze...For Richard Lazarus, Howard and Katherine Aibel Professor of Law, Gorsuch was “the single most qualified person” on Trump’s list of 21 potential nominees, a judge “who is smart and has integrity.”

Revealing a scary judicial wolf under Mr. Nice Guy robes won’t be easy....Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge and Harvard Law School professor, said she fears Gorsuch will get the same treatment that Chief Justice John Roberts got during his confirmation hearings. She said his “ostensible nice demeanor caused the Democrats to pull their punches.” With Gorsuch, said Gertner, Democrats “need to stand up and do a searching confirmation process’’ — not just oppose, as Republicans did when they refused to hold hearings for Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee for the seat.

U.S. Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch has opposed giving broad deference to the EPA and other federal agencies during a decade on the federal bench, but his track record also indicates a reluctance to support “heavy-handed rollbacks” of Obama-era environmental rules, legal experts told Bloomberg BNA...And if confirmed, Gorsuch could also—if consistent in his reasonings—upend regulations promulgated by the Trump administration, Harvard Law School professor Richard J. Lazarus told Bloomberg BNA in an e-mail. “The challenge … is to have judges who in fact apply the doctrine in an even-handed way even when it goes against the policies they might personally favor or be favored by those who have nominated them to the Court,” Lazarus said...The cases in which he has made decisions on environmental or public lands issues are really more about his administrative law views, Harvard Law School professor Jody Freeman told Bloomberg BNA. “He seems to come down on both sides depending on the particulars of the case.”

The United States now has its most metropolitan president in recent memory: a Queens-bred, skyscraper-building, apartment-dwelling Manhattanite. Yet it was rural America that carried Donald Trump to victory; the president got trounced in cities...American cities seem to be cleaving from the rest of the country, and the temptation for liberals is to try to embrace that trend...Some states delegate certain powers to cities, but states remain the higher authority, even if city dwellers don’t realize it. “Most people think, We have an election here, we elect a mayor and our city council, we organize our democracy—we should have a right to control our own city in our own way,” says Gerald Frug, a Harvard Law professor and an expert on local government. “You go to any place in America and ask, ‘Do you think this city can control its own destiny?’ ‘Of course it can!’ The popular conception of what cities do runs in direct conflict with the legal reality.”

When applying to law school, chances are good the competition will be strong students with impressive accomplishments. The challenge of the admissions process is to stand out. One way to distinguish yourself is to craft an exceptional resume that tells your story in an eloquent way...Cameron Clark, a second-year student at Harvard Law School, provided U.S. News with a copy of the resume he used in his successful application. He used colorful wording in the resume to elicit interest from admissions officers and spark a conversation with his law school interviewer. Here is an annotated copy of Clark's resume, with his comments explaining its structure and feedback from experts about its pluses and minuses.

An op-ed by Mark Roe...Since the financial crisis, regulators in the United States and elsewhere have been preparing banks to weather a banking crisis like that of 2008 and 2009. They are now justifiably more confident that a troubled bank can be restructured effectively, and that depositors and other short-term creditors would not trigger a collapse by hastily withdrawing their money. Long-term creditors, they are confident, would take the hit. But disturbing evidence has emerged suggesting that, overall, the global financial system is no safer today than it was in 2007. When the 2008 global financial crisis erupted, America’s red-hot housing market had been operating as a money market for years. Companies’ chief financial officers (and others with excess, temporary cash) were using their cash to purchase securities backed by pools of mortgages, which they would sell back to the bank the following day, reaping attractive interest gains. This overnight market was – and remains – huge, rivaling the size of the entire deposit-based banking system.

...But, as Gerald Neuman — law professor and co-director of the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School — points out, that’s just one piece of the puzzle. The Immigration and Nationality Act has been updated since then, and the courts have long held that the Constitution applies to immigration matters, including the Establishment Clause (which prevents discrimination on the basis of religion) and the Equal Protection Clause (which guarantees the equal protection of law to all)...Some scholars argue the president’s order also violates the Constitution. In weighing that question, “it’s helpful to view the order in the context of the history that led up to it,” said Neuman, the Harvard Law School professor. “What the president said about the policies he wanted to adopt before the fact; the fact that there is no new emergency or change of circumstances that require such a change; the fact that procedures by which this were adopted were not the normal procedures by which executive orders are adopted; and the enormous contrast in magnitude between the number of people who are affected by this change and the size of the problem it’s allegedly dealing with.”