Media Mentions

Falls Church’s own Pete Davis [`18], now a Harvard Law School student, will appear on the popular ABC-TV show, “Shark Tank,” this Friday night to pitch a company he and some of his fellow students set up to build and sell “tiny houses.” The growing popularity of the concept has earned it the title of a movement, the “tiny house movement,” and the cable TV airwaves are full of discussions about it. Tiny houses, most with a footprint of less than 300 square feet, have the potential to solve a myriad of social and family problems, and we urge decision makers in Falls Church to pick up and run with the idea.

An op-ed by Nancy Gertner. President-elect Trump will soon announce his nominee to fill the vacancy of Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, and he may have to opportunity to further reshape the court during his administration. But Governor Charlie Baker of Massachusetts has the chance to reshape the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court right now; he is about to fill five vacancies in a seven-person court because of mandatory retirement at age 70.

Since Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election, Harvard affiliates have voiced concerns about his stances on a number of issues, including immigration, federal research funding, and climate change. But some alumni and tax experts say that Trump’s administration could affect another important—if less public—aspect of University affairs: charitable giving...Harvard Law School professor Thomas J. Brennan, who teaches tax law, said he thinks the proposed changes could affect high income individuals, but not the “Warren Buffetts and Bill Gates” of the world. “The people who are itemizing—aren’t extremely wealthy but are well enough off and generous—are the ones whose behavior will be most affected,” Brennan said.

Chuck Cooper is a veteran of the culture wars with a long legal career arguing hot-button social issues cases before the Supreme Court. In 1982, he wrote a brief on a case arguing in favor of giving tax breaks to private schools that discriminated based on race; in 2013, he defended California’s ban on same-sex marriage. George Conway, by contrast, is the consummate New York corporate lawyer. With a long career at the white-shoe firm of Wachtell Lipton, Conway has specialized in the very cosmopolitan area of securities litigation. He has only argued before the Supreme Court once, winning a unanimous decision on an important but decidedly un-sexy securities law case involving an Australian bank. Now the two men are embroiled in a quiet but fierce competition behind the scenes for one of the most important but least known positions in the Justice Department: Solicitor General...Charles Fried, who served as Solicitor General under President Ronald Reagan from 1985 to 1989, says he’s “very fond” of Cooper, who worked in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice and then in the Office of Legal Counsel at the time. “He’s a true movement conservative, no question about it,” Fried said. “We had a lot of fights, because he wanted to go much further than I did… So we shouted at each other. But it’s all right, I always liked it.”

An executive order apparently drafted by the Trump administration calls for a policy review that could authorize the CIA to reopen “black site” prisons overseas and potentially restart an interrogation program that was dismantled in 2009 after using methods widely condemned as torture...“The president would get a huge symbolic boost with his base while not violating the law and while changing nothing of substance,’’ Jack Goldsmith, a former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and a Harvard Law School professor, said in an interview. “He would get maximum symbolic value while doing nothing. Trump’s a genius at this.” But Goldsmith, who as the OLC chief rescinded some of the Bush administration’s torture memos, also predicted that Trump would “regret” this executive order, if it is issued, and that the “symbolic bang that Trump sought would backfire” on the administration.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The U.K. Supreme Court’s judgment on Tuesday requiring Parliament to authorize Brexit was conservative in the deepest and best sense of the term. Allowing the government to withdraw from the European Union without a parliamentary vote would have enabled the prime minister and her cabinet to change U.K. law on their own, a violation of Parliament’s traditional sovereignty. In practice, if Parliament votes in favor of Brexit, the judgment may not slow down the process very much. But the court nonetheless imposed a respect for orderly constitutional forms -- and required Britain’s elected representatives to take full and individual responsibility for their epochal decision.

The Trump administration is looking into bringing back torture, according to a draft order published by the The New York Times and the The Washington Post on Wednesday. ...Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law professor and former Bush Justice Department official, wrote on the legal blog Lawfare: “I am confident that the report that Trump gets from his top intelligence officials will advise him that a return to the bad old days is not legally available,” adding that “I am also confident that if President Trump ordered waterboarding, neither the CIA Director nor the Secretary of Defense would carry out the order.”

An op-ed by Hal Scott. The Trump administration's top financial regulatory priority should be a review of government-mandated bank capital requirements. In order to achieve economic growth, President Trump should adopt a more market-based approach. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, bank capital in the United States stands at a record high of $1.9 trillion, an increase of $630 billion, or 50 percent, over the pre-crisis amount. This increase is almost double the equity raised from all IPOs in the United States since 2008. Academic research shows that high capital requirements reduce bank lending and economic growth.

Just weeks after University President Drew G. Faust launched the search for the next Dean of Harvard Law School, student groups at the school have started organizing to make themselves “an indispensable part of the process.”...The Law School’s student body president Nino Monea wrote a letter to Faust Jan. 18 requesting that Faust and Garber attend a student forum about the dean search, a student become a member of the committee leading the search, and that students help interview candidates for the position.Monea said he was disappointed with the level of student involvement in the search Faust originally described...Kristin A. Turner, the president of the Black Law Students Association, shared Monea’s concerns about how the search will incorporate student voices..Natalie D. Vernon, the president of the Women’s Law Association, said she she hopes the next dean continues to improve gender equity at the school and adapts the curriculum to the changing legal profession.

Tom Wheeler, the recently departed chairman of the FCC, took aim at an idea to streamline the agency, saying that it was a “fraud” to say that it was “modernizing” the agency and suggested that it is really a way for major internet service providers to escape substantive oversight. Speaking on Tuesday at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, Wheeler was referring to reports that the Trump transition team was looking to restructure the FCC and move functions like competition and consumer protection to other federal agencies like the Federal Trade Commission. “It makes no sense,” Wheeler said at the event, moderated by Susan Crawford. “We are talking about 1/6 of the economy, but more importantly, we are talking about the networks that connect 6/6 of the economy.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The headline issue in the first lawsuit against President Donald Trump is whether it is a violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution for his hotels and properties to be paid by foreign governments. But if a court actually decides this tough question, that will already be an accomplishment for the watchdog organization that brought the suit and the distinguished lawyers and academics representing it. First, they have to get past two legal hurdles just to have their arguments considered. Although they have strong arguments to make on both, a skeptical court could easily throw out the case before reaching its heart.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. On his first day in office, President Donald Trump issued a “regulatory freeze,” in the form of a memorandum, signed by chief of staff Reince Priebus, that appeared to halt new regulations in their tracks...But the Priebus memorandum does make two noteworthy changes, which means that it is a more muscular document than Emanuel’s. The changes are a bit technical, but please bear with me; they matter.

The Gun Owners' Action League and other plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit challenging the state's ban on assault weapons. They argue that the ban is unconstitutional. The lawsuit also involves a directive that Attorney General Maura Healey issued in July that cracks down on copies or duplicates of forbidden guns, where gunmakers alter a weapon slightly to comply with state law. But the tweaks don't limit how lethal the weapons are...Guest: Nancy Gertner, former Massachusetts federal judge, senior lecturer on law at Harvard Law School and WBUR legal analyst.

On Monday, ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sued President Donald Trump for violating the Emoluments Clause, a constitutional provision that prohibits federal officials from accepting “any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever” from a foreign state without congressional approval....But in a conversation on Monday, [Laurence] Tribe told me he’s optimistic that the courts won’t punt on the case. “This is a perfect example of something where the courts are quite ready to weigh in,” he said. “It’s clear that the old approach—treating every politically sensitive question as a potential ‘political question’—is gone. Once we get to the merits, the court will not say, ‘Ah, but we can’t decide that question; it’s only for Congress to decide.’ The Constitution states very clearly that foreign emoluments are absolutely forbidden unless Congress chooses to give its consent. And Congress has not given consent.”

When students move back into a renovated Winthrop House this fall, they’ll find transformed spaces and modern amenities as well as design touches that celebrate the residence’s rich history...In a statement, Winthrop Faculty Deans Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. and Stephanie Robinson said: “We are thrilled beyond belief that all of Winthrop will be returning home in the fall of 2017. It will be a wonderful celebration to have our entire community together under one Winthrop, something that we’ve never experienced before. We are extraordinarily grateful for the generous support of Robert M. Beren for helping to make this possible. We further wish to thank all of the people — especially the renewal team and the construction workers who have worked tirelessly to finish Winthrop ahead of schedule.”

When millions of demonstrators gathered across the country on Jan. 21 to march for women’s rights, many criticized the protest for its lack of diversity. Some Harvard students who participated in the Boston’s Women’s March agree, saying that the protest could have represented a wider variety of perspectives...Students from Harvard Law School organized a breakfast and rally before the march, featuring speakers from several of the school’s cultural affinity groups such as La Alianza and the Black Law Students Association. According to Kristin A. Turner, president of the Harvard Black Law Students Association, the rally garnered a crowd of about 200 students. Turner said she was pleased to see an emphasis on issues affecting people of color, even though some said the Boston march was predominantly white...Paavani Garg, vice president of the Harvard Law Women’s Law Association, agreed, adding that going forward, she hopes to see continued support for non-white women...Natalie D. Vernon, president of the Harvard Law Women’s Law Association, also noted that involvement of people from all racial backgrounds might promote a more unified charge for women’s rights and that differences in background may account for better activism in the future.

Harvard Law School professor Laurence H. Tribe has joined a legal team suing President Donald Trump, arguing that Trump’s ownership of the Trump Organization violates a clause of the United States Constitution...Tribe said in an interview that current arrangements fails to fix violations of the Emoluments Clause. “The Emoluments Clause has nothing to do with how busy you are managing, it’s about whether you own something,” Tribe said. “As long as he maintains ownership of this vast business empire that can be benefited financially in dozens and hundreds of ways by many countries that want to gain his favor, he hasn’t avoided the Emoluments Clause.”

First came the fashion police. Now come the fashion lawyers. While the fashion police playfully expose the dos and don’ts of style, fashion lawyers draft contracts and provide legal advice behind the curtains, far from the spotlight and glamour of the red carpet. Still, the job can be exhilarating. Students who took “Fashion Law Lab,” a nine-day course offered at Harvard Law School (HLS) during the January term, caught a glimpse of the allure of the fashion industry, and most couldn’t get enough of it...“It was mentally exerting but rewarding,” said J.D. student Keith Thomas. “It was … so different from other courses at HLS. It was so practically focused, and the skills we learned are transferable to other industries outside fashion. It was fantastic.” That was exactly what the instructors, Jeannie Suk Gersen, the John H. Watson Jr. Professor for Law, and Nana Sarian, general counsel of Stella McCartney, had in mind when they thought up the experiential course.

Unlike his predecessor, Donald Trump did not teach constitutional law before becoming president. Yet owing to some of his positions on individual rights, Mr Trump’s ascension to the presidency promises new opportunities for Americans to become more familiar with their founding document. A lawsuit filed on January 23rd in a federal district court in New York may add a rather obscure constitutional provision to the layman’s legal vocabulary: the foreign emoluments clause...The formidable team assembled to pursue this legal action includes...Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor. The 45th president’s plan to hand his businesses over to his two adult sons rather than selling them off, according to Mr Tribe, makes him subject to “the patronage of foreign powers”. Just days into his presidency, “[i]t is already clear that nothing short of judicial force” will resolve Mr Trump’s conflicts of interests, Mr Tribe added.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The Texas Supreme Court has agreed to reconsider a case about whether married gay city employees must be given spousal benefits. That’s a terrible sign. The briefs openly urge the court to resist the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark gay marriage decision by reading it narrowly to say that gay people have a fundamental right to marry but no right to equal benefits. It’s a legally deceptive argument, which the current justices in Washington would summarily reject. But it’s dangerous all the same, because it shows that Donald Trump’s election is spurring outright resistance to federal law and precedent. And the Texas justices, who are elected, have no excuse for agreeing to reconsider the case.

Now that he’s president, Donald Trump is laying the groundwork to drastically reshape the Environmental Protection Agency in the weeks and months ahead. All signs indicate that Trump will soon issue a flurry of executive orders as part of the process of weakening various air and water pollution rules and cutting agency budgets...The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to regulate many different pollutants, including greenhouse gases. So Trump’s team can’t just say, “We don’t like this regulation; it’s too expensive.” They’d have to come up with a legally sound argument for why, say, the Clean Power Plan is an inappropriate way to regulate CO2 from power plants and what they’d do differently. “If they try to shortchange this process and rush out a brand new rule, it really will not go well for them when they get into court,” says Jody Freeman, a Harvard law school professor and former climate adviser to Obama.