Media Mentions

President Obama is spending his final few weeks in the White House trying to do what he can to preserve his legacy. ... Which is why, when the Harvard Law Review published this week “The President’s Role in Advancing Criminal Justice Reform” by Barack Obama — the first time a sitting president has written for the esteem legal publication — it seemed as though this, too, might be a part of that concerted campaign to remind the public what Obama has accomplished. But, it turns out, the idea didn’t come from the president of the United States. Instead, it was the far-fetched pipe dream of the president of the Harvard Law Review, Michael Zuckerman, and the publication’s articles chair, Colin Doyle.

Scientists have shown conclusively that treatment not only improves the health of people infected with HIV, it also stops transmission of the virus that causes AIDS. ...Policy experts say the delay to an Obamacare replacement may give insurance companies little incentive to stick with the Obamacare individual insurance plans. Insurance companies have asked lawmakers to keep subsidies in place and make changes they hope will help stabilize the market, such as delaying deadlines for 2018 plan submissions. "It creates a really difficult environment for insurers to commit to the market," said Carmel Shachar of the Center for Health Law & Policy Innovation at Harvard. Shachar co-wrote a letter signed by 174 national, state and local HIV organizations urging members of the senate not to repeal or modify the Affordable Care Act without a clearly defined replacement plan.

Former ITT Tech students filed a lawsuit against the now defunct for-profit college. The students are seeking participation in the company’s bankruptcy proceedings, using testimonials from hundreds of students that claim they were deceived and abused by ITT Tech. In the past ten years, the company has taken over $11 billion from its students in the form of taxpayer-financed grants and loans. ...Former students have applied to the Department of Education to have their federal loans forgiven. Their testimonials have been gathered up by the group Debt Collective and are being represented by the Project on Predatory Lending at the Harvard Law School Legal Services Center.

The makeup of President-elect Donald Trump’s trade team suggests he wasn’t joking when he promised voters to shake things up. ... Since the election, Trump has taken aim at individual companies, warning General Motors Co. this week that it could face a "big border tax" if it doesn’t shift production to the United States from Mexico. And the track records of his top trade officials signal that his administration will take aggressive steps to boost exports, according to trade experts. "It’s clear this wasn’t just campaign rhetoric. The team that the president-elect has put in place was at the core of advising him during the campaign and has a clear playbook of what it wants to implement," said Mark Wu, an assistant professor at Harvard Law School who worked in the office of the U.S. trade representative under George W. Bush. "They’ve been pretty straightforward about their view of the status quo, which is that it undermines American economic interests."

President Obama penned an article published online Thursday by the Harvard Law Review in which he lays out the criminal justice reforms his administration has made and outlines the continued path to reform as he sees it. The article, which spans 55 pages of the January print edition, lists specific accomplishments of the past eight years and advocates for more near-term action on key proposals that have earned bipartisan backing in recent years, as well as related issues such as gun control reform and efforts to address the opioid crisis.

In recent weeks, Casey Affleck’s performance in Manchester by the Sea has gone from acclaimed awards contender to near-Oscar lock. The soft-spoken, scraggly-bearded actor has taken the stage at a number of ceremonies already—the Critics’ Choice Awards, the Gotham Awards, the New York Film Critics Circle—ahead of what’s looking like an increasingly likely victory at the Academy Awards. The surge of publicity has brought renewed attention to two sexual harassment lawsuits filed against him in 2010 that alleged he had manhandled women, was verbally abusive, and generally behaved outrageously on the set of his film I’m Still Here, which he directed. Both cases were mediated and eventually settled out of court for undisclosed sums. ...“People carelessly conflate rape with the entire range of sexual misconduct that can occur,” the Harvard Law School professor Jeannie Suk Gersen told the Times. “It’s all repulsive. But both morally and legally there are distinctions—degrees of behavior. Parker was accused of something far more serious.”

President Barack Obama took to the Harvard Law Review to tout his administration’s reforms of the criminal justice system, in an article published Thursday. It’s the second time he’s made history with the legal journal: He was its first black editor as a law student in 1990. And now, Obama is the first sitting president to publish a work of “legal scholarship,” according to the law review’s current editor. ...Obama’s article marks the “first work of legal scholarship of a sitting president,” said Michael Zuckerman, the current editor of the Harvard Law Review. Zuckerman described “an editing experience that we’ll never forget” on the conference call with reporters Wednesday. “We edited the piece in a couple of very quick turnarounds,” he said – during finals.

Barely two weeks remaining before he’s due to leave office, President Barack Obama, J.D. ’91, has written an emotional plea for criminal-justice reform in the January 2017 edition of the Harvard Law Review, arguing for the role of the presidency in reducing mass incarceration. Obama was president of the Law Review in 1990-91, as a third year at Harvard Law School. “Those privileged to serve as President and in senior roles in the executive branch have an obligation to use that influence to enhance the fairness and effectiveness of the justice system at all phases,” he writes in the article’s introduction. “How we treat citizens who make mistakes (even serious mistakes), pay their debt to society, and deserve a second chance reflects who we are as a people and reveals a lot about our character and commitment to our founding principles.”

After eight years as the head of Harvard Law School, Dean Martha Minow is stepping down from her role to return to teaching and research at the Law School. Her resignation is effective as of this July. The Record talked to Dean Minow about her thoughts looking back and looking forward. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and organization. The Record: What made you decide to step down as dean? Dean Minow: I made the decision just before the holidays. I want to participate in the events of the day. And I’m late in a contract for a book. So I’m looking forward to working on all of that.

The Harvard Law Review, one of the most prestigious legal journals in the country, often receives submissions from some of the country's top lawyers and law professors. Never, though, has a sitting President of the United States published a piece in the Law Review—until Thursday. In an article titled “The President’s Role in Advancing Criminal Justice Reform,” President Barack Obama reflects on the Obama Administration's efforts to limit the use of solitary confinement and start mentoring programs to guide young people away from committing crimes, among other criminal justice reforms. ... In a call with members of the press organized by the White House, Michael L. Zuckerman ’10, the president of the Harvard Law Review, said that editing a piece by written by the President was particularly engaging, especially considering Obama’s ties to the Law Review. “For our team, the President’s piece provided an editing experience we will never forget,” Zuckerman said. “We put all of our pieces through a rigorous editing process, and this piece was no exception, just on a compressed timeline given the President’s schedule.”

An op-ed by John Stubbs, former Senior Advisor to USTR in the George W. Bush Administration and is currently an affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University: President-elect Donald Trump was elected by a wave of populist sentiment with promises to aggressively renegotiate deals in place, litigate grievances and fundamentally change the way the United States looks at trade policy. While the process for progress on the trade agenda is uncertain, it is clear that the incoming Trump administration is preparing for major changes. Among these changes should be making trade policy more transparent and inclusive for the people who elected Trump.

Harvard Law School has confirmed that dean Martha Minow will step down from her post at the end of the current academic year. Ms Minow has served at the helm of arguably the most prestigious law school in the United States for the last eight years. A statement released via a spokesperson said that Ms Minow intends to remain an ‘active member’ of the Harvard Law faculty after she steps down from her role as dean in May: ‘I also want to devote more time studying and speaking about issues of inequality, access to justice, and discrimination in the current economic and social climate – issues that have been at the centre of my life’s work and are more pressing than ever,’ she said. Harvard University president Drew Faust said in a statement released yesterday that the university would ‘welcome advice from across the law school community’ as the search for Ms Minnow’s successor begins.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: In a major blow to civil liberties, an appeals court has upheld the Minnesota system that civilly commits sex offenders after they’ve served their prison terms, a confinement from which no one has ever been fully released. The decision, filed Tuesday, used the wrong legal standard, making it too easy for the state to lock people up indefinitely for future dangerousness. Worse, the U.S. Supreme Court might not review the decision, despite its being egregiously wrong, because there is no clear disagreement among the circuit courts.

President Barack Obama returns to his roots at the Harvard Law Review on Thursday, penning an article about progress his administration made in reforming the criminal justice system — and the challenges that remain for the next administration. His commentary, "The President's Role in Advancing Criminal Justice Reform," addresses how presidents can exert influence over the criminal justice system, and how those who serve the president have a responsibility to translate that vision into practical results.

An op-ed by Elizabeth Bartholet and Chuck Johnson: The outgoing and incoming administrations are battling over pending regulations and appointments. The Obama administration wants to solidify its policies, and the transitional Trump team wants a free hand implementing new policies. Understandably, there is little room for agreement on many of these issues. But there is one area where the president and the president-elect should be able to unite — protecting children globally against the horrors of institutional life, and enabling prospective parents to bring those children into their homes and hearts.

This was supposed to be the awards season when Hollywood, having been scorched by consecutive #OscarsSoWhite years, avoided tumult over race. Not so. ... Jeannie Suk Gersen, a professor at Harvard Law School who teaches criminal law and sexual harassment law, said the reason could be far simpler: Mr. Parker’s case was criminal and Mr. Affleck’s was civil. “People carelessly conflate rape with the entire range of sexual misconduct that can occur,” Ms. Suk Gersen said. “It’s all repulsive. But both morally and legally there are distinctions — degrees of behavior. Parker was accused of something far more serious.” (Ms. Suk Gersen is particularly attuned to Mr. Parker’s case, having contributed an article in September to The New Yorker, “The Public Trial of Nate Parker.”)

An article by Michael Zuckerman ’17, president Harvard Law Review: Since its founding in 1887, the Harvard Law Review has been a student-run journal dedicated to advancing conversation about the law. Doing this work is a privilege — it offers us a collaborative education in legal thinking, writing, and editing, as we begin our own legal careers. We are enormously proud to publish The President’s Role in Advancing Criminal Justice Reform, which explores vital questions of crime, punishment, and redemption. These issues are central to any legal system, and a rising chorus from across our political spectrum emphasizes how much they matter now. As we consider the future of criminal justice in America, understanding our system’s complex web of stakeholders and decision-makers is crucial for charting the best path forward.

An op-ed by Charles Fried. I was one of many Republicans who stated publicly and vehemently that we considered Donald Trump so unsuited to be president that our duty to the country required that, holding our noses, we support his Democrat opponent. We did not prevail. Donald Trump is our president for the next four years. The correct response to this fact is the one Barack Obama took after he met with the president-elect at the White House: We must hope that he succeeds. This reaction is the opposite of what the once good and patriotic politician Mitch McConnell told his party during the midterm elections in 2010: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Of course, if Obama failed, so did the country.

On Tuesday, Harvard Law School announced that Martha Minow, its 62-year-old dean, would step down from her role after the end of the academic year. Minow, over an eight-year tenure, was known for adding clinics in areas such as criminal law, policy, immigration and needs of military veterans, the school said. Over the past year, a group of law students protested the school’s logo, a shield which is modeled on the family crest of an 18th century slaveholder. Minow recommended to retire the shield in 2016 and the school approved the change. Big Law Business posed a number of questions to Minow, via, email about her career, diversity in the legal profession, her future plans and more.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. The last time progressives were this alarmed about a presidential transition, there were just two Star Wars movies, "Dallas" was the most-watched show on TV, and Ronald Reagan, dismissed by many as an actor and an extremist, was about to become commander-in-chief. At the time, I was a young lawyer in the Department of Justice, fortunate enough to witness important aspects of Reagan’s first year up close. Reagan and his team did two exceedingly smart things early on, providing a remarkably stable foundation for the first term of his transformative presidency.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The stealth Republican move Monday night to weaken the ethics oversight office in the House of Representatives is a good reminder that the U.S. Constitution provides only limited protections when a single party rules. But the swift rollback of the plan on Tuesday is also a good reminder that the Constitution does have an oversight mechanism built in: the press. When one party controls the legislature and presidency, the “Fourth Estate” isn’t just a metaphor. It’s a necessity for functioning free government.