Media Mentions

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, judging from the list of top contenders, will praise Justice Antonin Scalia and say he’s an originalist in the same vein. But will it be true? Or will the nominee be more like Justice Samuel Alito, a dyed-in-the-wool conservative who nominally adheres to originalism but doesn’t actually seem to decide many cases after a detailed examination of the origins of the Constitution? The difference may not matter in how the nominee will vote. But it does matter for the long-term development of constitutional doctrine -- and whether we continue to have justices who would bind us to the dead hand of the past rather than viewing the Constitution as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes did: as a living, breathing organism that must evolve or die.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. It’s beginning. The legal system’s constitutional defense against President Donald Trump’s policies won its first battle this weekend when several federal district courts blocked the implementation of his executive order banning immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries. The lawyers’ resistance won’t always succeed, and it will face many bumps in the road over the next four years. The resistance got a big assist this time from Trump himself, who ignored the Department of Justice and its first-rate lawyers. Eventually, Trump may figure out how to use the legal system to achieve his goals instead of work against it.

Did President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration ban Muslims from the country on the basis of their religion? That will be a central question when federal judges dig more deeply into the constitutionality of the order, signed on January 27. If the answer is yes, it appears vulnerable to a First Amendment challenge...Laurence Tribe, a prominent liberal constitutional scholar at Harvard University, called the order “barely disguised religious discrimination against Muslims and religious preference for Christians.” The order by its own terms establishes preferential treatment for refugees identified with “minority religions” in their country of origin.

In the age of revolution, wrote Gary Hamel, the management expert, “it is not knowledge that produces new wealth but insight — insight into opportunities for discontinuous innovation.” We all know businesses must innovate to attract customers with services and products and to update brands. Yet it is too often the big-bang disrupters and inventors that get the attention — the likes of Uber, Airbnb and Facebook. They are dramatic, after all. Yet Heidi Gardner, a former McKinsey consultant and Harvard Business School professor, now at Harvard Law School, argues that subtle innovations and insights from teams of consultants are just as important. Key to achieving these, writes Gardner, is “smart collaboration,” which is also the title of her book. There are two reasons for this, she argues: “Expertise specialisation and the increasing complexity of today’s problems.”

What price would you pay to keep the family pet healthy? The sky's the limit, say America's veterinarians, who are providing the increasingly extensive — and expensive — services to meet the growing demand...The key is do your research ahead of time -- before your animal friend needs care. "The worst time to make a decision is when you're in an emotional state and not thinking clearly and are eager to do whatever it takes to save the life of your animal and keep it healthy," said Chris Green, executive director of the Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School.

Joining thousands of academics worldwide, over 190 Harvard professors have signed a growing petition opposing President Donald Trump’s executive order barring immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. By Sunday evening, nearly 200 Harvard faculty members from across the University’s schools had signed the petition, entitled “Academics Against Immigration Executive Order.” More than 7,100 professors from across the country have signed the condemnation...As students and residents protested the executive order in Harvard Square Friday and Copley Square Sunday, Law School lecturer Ian Samuel, took to Twitter. In a post retweeted thousands of times, Samuel offered free legal support to government employees who considered refusing to obey the order. “Any government official who refuses to execute Trump’s orders on grounds of illegality will receive free representation from me. & I’m good!” Samuel tweeted Saturday. Samuel said he has since been approached by individuals asking for help and by fellow lawyers offering assistance.

At least two Harvard affiliates were barred from entering the United States after President Donald Trump suspended immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries Friday, and the University has warned international students not to leave the country...“There’s a lot of confusion and uncertainty about how this order is going to be implemented in the short and long term,” Maggie Moran, a fellow at the Harvard Law School Immigration and Refugee Clinic, said. “If you are a green card holder or on a valid student or employment visa from one of the affected countries, I think in general it’s advisable to exercise caution and postpone travel as much as possible outside of the United States until we have greater clarity as to how this order is going to be enforced.” Law professor Gerald L. Neuman, who specializes in immigration law, said the order grants officials some discretion in enforcement, adding to the uncertainty surrounding Trump’s immigration restrictions. Neuman said he believes the order violates the Constitution. “This executive order serves no valid purpose, and is incitement of discrimination against people on grounds of religion, and that should be unconstitutional,” he said.

People know Allison Dale Burroughs as fearless. As a prosecutor who cracked down on organized crime in Philadelphia during the 1990s at the US attorney’s office, Burroughs garnered a reputation as a whip-smart attorney who was attracted to challenging, demanding work, said John Pucci, who worked alongside her in Philadelphia...In 2014, Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge, was part of the committee that recommended Burroughs to her current position. “She is someone who knows her way around the US attorney’s office, knows her way around the Boston legal community, and more significantly,” she said, “we knew she would have guts.”...Alex Whiting, who worked with Burroughs as a prosecutor at the US attorney’s office in Boston, also said he was always struck by another thing. “She is fair, and she has great judgment,” said Whiting, now a professor at Harvard Law School. “Prosecutors have a lot of power, and she was always thoughtful of how that power was being used.”

On Friday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order restricting immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries, suspending the US refugee programme for 120 days, and banning Syrian refugees from entering the country until further notice. Ian Samuel, a lecturer at Harvard Law School, explained the executive order - and just what is wrong with it - to Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera: What is the problem with the executive order? Ian Samuel: The United States immigration statute had, for 50 years, prohibited the kind of discrimination that this travel ban engages in, and moreover, the US Constitution prohibits targeting people because of their religion, which this travel ban is a very lightly disguised attempt to do. No civil servant who is covered by ordinary protections of the meritorious protection board is obligated to do illegal things in the course of their duties, and that's exactly what this travel ban asks them to do, it asks them to do something illegal.

Commentary by David E. White, Jr. `17. Although walking the earth nearly a century apart, Frederick Douglass and Barack Obama each appreciated the transcendent power of an image to evoke emotion and spark progress. Douglass, a former slave, used photography as a tool of “moral and social influence” in his bid to persuade a country of his fellow black Americans’ humanity and thus the exigent need for their emancipation from slavery.[1] Obama, for his part, made his own likeness synonymous with “hope” and “change,” and incorporated such iconography as the cornerstone of his unlikely yet successful presidential campaign. Prominent orators of unquestionable intelligence and wit, Obama and Douglass both recognized that a carefully executed picture, more than the cleverest turn of phrase, left an indelible mark on its viewer—a picture required no fluency or literacy in a particular language, for its message was universally intelligible insofar as one could rest their eyes upon it.

President Donald Trump is still using an unsecured Android phone to send his tweets, according to The New York Times. One security analyst laid out the worst-case hacking scenario that Trump's unsecured likely Samsung Galaxy S3 could cause. "There are security risks here, but they are not the obvious ones," Bruce Schneier wrote on his website on Thursday. Schneier is a widely respected cryptography expert. He's a fellow at Harvard Law School, and he's written several books on information security.He says the "bigger risk" stemming from Trump's unsecured Android phone isn't that the data on it could be stolen, but that a hacker could compromise the device and turn it into a presidential spying machine.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says the Democrats will filibuster any U.S. Supreme Court nominee announced by President Donald Trump next week who’s “out of the mainstream.” The phrase harks back to the Democrats’ success in blocking Judge Robert Bork from the high court in 1987, an event that both gave the world Justice Anthony Kennedy and permanently politicized Supreme Court confirmations. The Republicans could eliminate the filibuster using the “nuclear option,” of course. But Schumer’s threat still poses two crucial questions: What’s the “mainstream” when it comes to judicial practice and philosophy? And would the Democrats be justified in trying to block Trump’s nominee for being out of it?

President Trump campaigned on sweeping promises to eliminate former President Barack Obama’s major environmental regulations and “get rid of” the Environmental Protection Agency. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump offered a down payment on those promises, with memorandums clearing the path to construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines. He is expected to roll back a few more rules, including some on coal production, in the next few weeks...A year ago, Mr. Obama incited the coal industry’s rage with a stroke-of-the-pen executive action banning new leasing of coal mines on public lands. Mr. Trump has the same authority to undo the ban. “That was Obama hitting the pause button, and Trump can unpause it,” said Richard J. Lazarus, a professor of environmental law at Harvard University. “Anything that was done without a lot of process up front can be undone without much process.”

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.