Media Mentions

President Donald Trump on Tuesday will order the Environmental Protection Agency to dismantle his predecessor's landmark climate effort, backing away from an aggressive plan to cut emissions at power plants that had been the foundation of America's leadership on confronting global warming..."There is a real question of whether they can legally dismantle the Clean Power Plan and replace it with nothing," said Jody Freeman, who was Obama's adviser on climate change and now directs the environmental law program at Harvard. Before the plan was put in place, she said, utilities found themselves exposed to potentially costly nuisance lawsuits from states demanding they take action to limit exposure to the public health threat of carbon. Those suits could re-emerge, she said, if the revised EPA plan lifts greenhouse gas restrictions on power companies.

There has been no shortage of events at Harvard on the public’s loss of trust in journalism and the prominence of fake news stories and outlets. In many ways, Thursday’s panel at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, moderated by Harvard Law School dean Martha Minow, was a practical outcome of those discussions. The panel, titled “Fake News, Concrete Responses: At the Nexus of Law, Technology, and Social Narratives,” presented four Berkman Klein staff members who talked about existing and potential tools with which to combat the wave of misinformation that escalated during the 2016 election cycle and shows no sign of slowing down today. “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes,” quoted Bemis professor of international law Jonathan Zittrain, a co-founder of the center.

That “fake news” is both pervasive and dangerous is no longer in doubt. How best to respond, however, is still an open subject. Because of that, the topic made for a lively panel at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society...What is fake news? The range of possibilities, said Berkman Klein Fellow An Xiao Mina, is broad enough to render the term almost meaningless, and can encompass everything from “when an Onion article is cited as news to dealing with state-sponsored propaganda botnets.” Professor Jonathan Zittrain, George Bemis Professor of International Law and co-founder of the Berkman Klein Center, offered a definition based on intent, defining fake news as that which is “willfully false,” which he said means a story “that the person saying or repeating knows to be untrue or is indifferent to whether it is true or false.”

...Federalism is part of our government’s design — a vertical sharing of power between the national and state governments. Our Constitution outlines a separation of powers between the federal government’s three branches. The 10th Amendment holds onto the remaining balance of power for the states, which is often referred to as states’ rights. With the national government now in a Republican grip and President Trump rolling out executive orders, a conversation has begun about what a progressive federalism makeover might look like. Federalism — a vertical, ambiguous division of power — doesn’t have a particular political valence, says Kenneth Mack, a legal historian at Harvard Law School.

f you travel by air from certain countries – which happen to be Muslim-majority – to the US or UK, you will no longer be allowed to take your laptop or tablet in your hand baggage. You will probably have lots of questions, such as: why has the US banned them from flights operated by airlines based in those countries, but not on US carriers?...“It makes so little sense,” says Bruce Schneier, a security expert and author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World.

An op-ed by Richad Hirani `19. The world is watching, Canada. Given global circumstances, Canada has been uniquely placed to capture the world's attention and admiration. While Sweden, France, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States grapple with a political climate that has become more hostile to Islam, Canada has had the opportunity to affirm itself as a beacon of inclusivity and diversity. Canada has been positioned to send a symbolic message not only to its global allies, but more importantly, to the thousands of Muslim-Canadian families at home.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Charles Schumer, the leader of the Senate minority, has said that he will ask Democrats to filibuster the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch. In response to that request, the Senate Democrats have four options. Each of them has considerable appeal, but each also runs into significant objections.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer’s suggestion that Democrats will filibuster Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court might make sense as payback for the Republicans’ block on Judge Merrick Garland -- if the Democrats thought they could lockout any Trump nominee until 2020. If not, however, this seems like a bad moment to bring out the filibuster and subject it to the risk that the Republicans will use the so-called nuclear option to eliminate it for this and future Supreme Court fights.

An op-ed by John Goldberg and Benjamin Zipursky. On Monday, the Connecticut Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Munn v. Hotchkiss, a tragic personal injury case. The court will be sorely tempted to make bad law in Munn. It must resist that temptation. Cara Munn, 15, was bitten by a tick while hiking on a mountain in China during a summer trip organized by The Hotchkiss School, her private school. The tick transmitted encephalitis, which has left her permanently unable to speak. Cara and her parents sued Hotchkiss in a federal court, arguing that the school was negligent for failing to warn them that the trip might bring her into contact with disease-bearing insects and for failing to take steps to ensure that she used insect repellant, wore proper clothes while walking in forested areas and checked herself for ticks.

With all eyes focused on the Republican struggle to replace Obamacare on Thursday, a federal agency (overseen by President Donald Trump) told the Trump Organization (overseen by President Donald Trump) that a Washington hotel (owned by President Donald Trump) could continue leasing the land it sits on from the federal government...But Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor, described the GSA’s ruling in a Bloomberg News interview as “bizarre.” “It’s not hard to conclude that GSA is disinclined to displease the president of the United States,” Tribe added.

An op-ed by Berkman fellow Ivan Sigal. In his recent manifesto, Mark Zuckerberg asserts that the response to our dysfunctional and conflict-ridden politics is to build a stronger global community based on ubiquitous interconnection. We know of course that Facebook stands to profit from this utopian vision, and we should be skeptical of the motives underlying Zuck’s position. But it’s worth taking a second look at the idea of working on underlying economic and political issues in our societies, rather than focusing on the effects of online expression—particularly in the context of the moral panic over “fake news.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. It seems like a perfect storm: Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee were pounding Judge Neil Gorsuch for an opinion he wrote denying assistance to an autistic child, and while he was testifying, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected the standard Gorsuch relied on to do it. The justices’ opinion is the right one, and the standard Gorsuch’s court used was wrong. But unfortunately for Democrats, Gorsuch wasn’t wrong to apply it: It was the binding legal rule in the 10th Circuit, established in 1996, long before he joined the U.S. Court of Appeals.

President Donald Trump’s Washington hotel isn’t violating the terms of a lease with the U.S. government that appeared to ban elected officials from participating, according to the federal agency that serves as the hotel’s landlord. The General Services Administration, which oversees the lease for Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C., said in a letter Thursday that Trump’s company was “in full compliance” with the pact, which was signed in 2013...“It’s not hard to conclude that GSA is disinclined to displease the president of the United States,” said Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard University who’s part of CREW’s legal team. He called the agency’s determination “bizarre and hard to account for in terms of what the lease says.”

An interview with Nancy Gertner. Judge Neil Gorsuch faced his third long day of Supreme Court confirmation hearings with the Senate Judiciary Committee today. Yesterday, Gorsuch faced questioning about his judicial independence. Today, Republicans praised his calm demeanor and carefully worded answers. Democrats, however, appealed to Gorsuch's more personal side.

An op-ed by Bruce Schneier. On Monday, the TSA announced a peculiar new security measure to take effect within 96 hours. Passengers flying into the US on foreign airlines from eight Muslim countries would be prohibited from carrying aboard any electronics larger than a smartphone. They would have to be checked and put into the cargo hold. And now the UK is following suit. It's difficult to make sense of this as a security measure, particularly at a time when many people question the veracity of government orders, but other explanations are either unsatisfying or damning.

...The firm celebrates its 100 anniversary this year. Established by William Vinson and James Elkins, the two-person law firm has grown to about 700 attorneys with 16 offices across the world — with the largest office still in Houston...Henderson said a 2010 study of law firms showed many of the top-performing law firms in the 1940s had strong relationships with major commercial and investment banks. Almost 70 years later, those firms were still some of the largest firms, he said. In the early 20th century, many law firms located their offices in the banks they represented, according to David Wilkins, professor at Harvard Law School. “This is unusual in its origin story, but the basic story is very similar,” Wilkins said.

An op-ed by Helen Klein Murillo `17 and Susan Hennessey. The president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, is set to join his administration in an unspecified, but reportedly influential policy role. She claims she will not be a government employee despite having an office in the White House, holding a high-level security clearance and performing government work. In a statement, Ivanka Trump concedes that there is “no modern precedent for an adult child of the president” but pledges to “voluntarily” comply with ethics rules. What the first daughter fails to acknowledge is that the very nature of her proposed role breaches ethical standards to which previous administrations have adhered for generations.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. What if we held a confirmation hearing and the Supreme Court nominee actually answered the questions? Conventional wisdom considers that impossible in today’s political climate, but conventional wisdom is wrong. Politically, senators are going to vote the way they want regardless of what the nominee says. And ethically, there’s nothing wrong with a nominee speaking about Supreme Court precedent or issues that might come before the court in the future, unless the nominee commented specifically on the facts of a particular case.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s first list of so-called sanctuary cities produced a lot of names — and not a ton of immediate clarity. The reported inaccuracies notwithstanding, the list — released as part of ICE’s first weekly “detainer” report Monday — of self-identified sanctuaries was just that. It included no information about what might happen to the 118 listed localities — including Boston and four other Massachusetts cities — where law enforcement limits their cooperation with ICE efforts to deport undocumented immigrants...However, Phil Torrey, an immigration lawyer and Harvard Law School lecturer, says the report has another purpose. “Trump is trying to shame localities into using their resources to help ICE arrest and deport individuals,” he said.

Hal Scott, Harvard Law School professor and president of Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, discusses the Trump administration's approach to financial regulation and how it relates to the Federal Reserve and monetary policy. Scott is a potential candidate to be the next Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve.

Earlier this month, Harvard Law School announced that the Graduate Record Examination will be accepted in lieu of the Law School Admissions Test in applications, effective this fall. In the wake of this important announcement, we are glad to see the Law School taking bold, new action in its decisions to update admissions policies, and commend administrators for taking the risk in enacting far-reaching change that many other schools have not considered. This change will allow for greater flexibility for applicants while easing the process. With its prestige and respectability, Harvard Law School is in a unique place to affect change and to begin a national conversation among its fellow law schools and the American Bar.