Media Mentions

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.

It's been a busy few days for the Trump Administration—the latest executive order he has signed formally withdraws the US from the TPP trade deal. But Donald Trump is also having to contend with continued criticism over his business dealings—with a group of leading constitutional and legal experts slapping him with a lawsuit overnight...Guest: Larry Tribe.

The President is being sued for allegedly violating the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution because his hotels may accept payments from foreign governments. Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit, joins Lawrence.

An op-ed by Urs Gasser. Artificial intelligence is everywhere, at times obscured and sometimes fully hidden...In this particular moment, the research, development, and deployment of AI is primarily taking place in the private sector, while governments around the world are increasingly contracting out their own use of these powerful technologies. In this context, the future role of universities emerges as one that is particularly meaningful when it comes to addressing these questions of social impact, ethics, and governance of AI.

...Politico Magazine asked historians to identify which moments in history most resemble this one, and what those moments can teach us about the presidency and the country today...Kenneth W. Mack, professor of law and affiliate professor of history at Harvard University...It is perilous, in the extreme, to compare our present to any past moment. But that has not stopped many commentators, and our new president himself, from invoking the inauguration of Andrew Jackson as historical precedent. There are real reasons for this. Jackson is, depending whom you ask, either our first populist president or a border ruffian who left us the Trail of Tears and a financial crisis that bankrupted ordinary Americans. He was, of course, both. Less prominent has been the comparison between Donald Trump and Andrew Johnson, the first president to be impeached in the House. Both of these comparisons, however, are difficult.

The New York Times reported Sunday evening on the first of likely many lawsuits attacking President Trump’s apparent violation of the Emoluments Clause...The ACLU, which already filed a Freedom of Information Act request for any documents relating to Trump’s potential conflicts, reportedly is seeking entities more directly harmed (for example, a hotel competitor) for a separate suit...[Laurence] Tribe told Right Turn that if Hotel X in competition with Trump has to negotiate arm’s-length leases while Trump does not, then “there’s a good argument that both Hotel X and its employees are at a competitive disadvantage caused by Trump’s cozy violation of the terms forbidding leasing of that federal building to a federal official, which obviously includes POTUS Trump.”

One of Donald Trump’s first acts as president was to announce a rollback of two Obama administration environmental efforts, one to protect waterways from pollution and the other to curb heat-trapping gases in the planet’s atmosphere. But while the Trump administration made the announcement on day one of his presidency, it may be years before his wishes can come to fruition, legal experts say. “He cannot roll all this back with the stroke of a pen,” Jody Freeman, professor and founding director of the Environmental Law and Policy Program at Harvard Law School, told BuzzFeed News.

Forty-four years ago, the Supreme Court made a surprise ruling in favor of a young attorney, declaring abortion legal nationwide. Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who argued Roe v. Wade, says now that her legacy — and the law itself— has never been more at risk. ..."There's no immediate threat to Roe v. Wade, even with a single Trump appointment to the court, but in the long run, with the possibility of a second or third Trump appointment, there is a substantial threat to the core of Roe v. Wade," Mark Tushnet, a professor at Harvard Law School, told NBC News.

An op-ed by Randall Kennedy. I am appalled by Donald J. Trump, particularly his willingness to elicit and exploit destructive social prejudices, including sexism, racism, and nativism. I see his ascension to power as a threat to the best features of American life. I applaud those who have committed themselves to resistance to Trumpism. Here I think especially of those, like Representatives Katherine Clark and Mike Capuano, who, at some risk, defied tradition and refused to attend the inauguration as a protest against the incoming president. Still, I must confess a certain grudging admiration for Trump’s performance of his inaugural address even as I loathe the baleful politics that his words simultaneously obscure and announce. Trump’s address was succinct, only 17 minutes, and benefited from the channeling of attention that brevity facilitates.