Media Mentions

...Gladwell: I would actually go further: Players should be limited to 15 of 17 games. Football has lent itself to complication, and two “bye” games for every player just doubles the fun. Also, surely the goal here is to materially decrease the injury burden. Which leads me to my first issue: In mid-November, a group at Harvard University issued a 493-page report on health care in the NFL. Their main recommendation was that the physicians who take care of injured players should no longer report to the clubs. That’s a clear conflict of interest.

With Hillary Clinton’s lead surpassing President-elect Donald Trump by two million in the popular vote, the role of the electoral college is being debated everywhere. Constitutional law scholar and Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig made the case in a recent Washington Post piece that the electors should reflect the people’s choice, and avoid “loophole presidents.” Lessig spoke to Jim Braude and Margery Eagan on Boston Public Radio over the phone while on a trip to Iceland. Highlights below.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. When a federal judge in Texas last week froze a regulation extending overtime pay to thousands of workers, the holding had an extra sting. The hit to President Barack Obama’s legacy came from his own appointee, not a Bush-era holdover. And the decision will make it much simpler for President-elect Donald Trump’s Labor Department to scrap the regulation than it would have been without the judge’s activist ruling.

Donald Trump also sparked controversy on Tuesday when he made two unconstitutional proposals in a single tweet, writing, "Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag–if they do, there must be consequences–perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!" The Supreme Court has ruled twice that flag burning is protected under the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has also ruled it’s unconstitutional to strip people of citizenship for most crimes, including desertion. We speak to Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig, who once clerked for Antonin Scalia.

There’s a push underway to change the way that most sperm is donated in the United States — which is to say, anonymously. That’s largely because anonymity can prevent donor-conceived kids from getting important information about their genetic heritage, and any predispositions to medical conditions. But a new study suggests that banning anonymous sperm donation could have the unintended effect of dramatically reducing the pool of donors, hiking up prices, and, potentially, forcing sperm banks to become less selective. “Donor-conceived children across the world have clamored for the right to have identifying information on their sperm and egg donors,” said co-author Glenn Cohen, a professor at Harvard Law School, in a press release. “To understand whether systems requiring the sharing of that information are a good policy, we need considerable data on the effects of such law changes and our study fills that gap.”

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. As the 2016 presidential election made clear, we live in the era of the echo chamber. To escape their own, progressives need to be reading the best conservative thought -- certainly Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, but also more contemporary figures such as Antonin Scalia and Robert Ellickson. The same is true for conservatives, if they hope to learn from progressives. Here are five books with which they might start.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. President-elect Donald Trump says he will make “sanctuary cities” help deport immigrants by taking away their federal funding if they don’t change their policies. The good news is that he and Congress can’t do it -- not without violating the Constitution. Two core rules of federalism preclude Trump’s idea: The federal government can’t coerce states (or cities) into action with a financial “gun to the head,” according to Supreme Court precedent developed by Chief Justice John Roberts in the 2012 Affordable Care Act case. And federal officials can’t “commandeer” state officials to do their work for them under a 1997 decision that involved gun purchases under the Brady Act.

The Embassy of Bahrain plans to host its annual National Day celebration at President-elect Donald Trump’s lavish Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C....“They know that they will be currying favor with Donald Trump,” said Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School. “Around the world it’s regarded as an ordinary way of business that you favor the enterprises and businesses of the head of the government in order to get ahead of everybody else.”

Recent withdrawals from the International Criminal Court have raised questions about the court’s future...Alex Whiting is a law professor at Harvard University in Massachusetts. He once supervised investigations and legal action against suspects for the International Criminal Court. He expects the court to survive. “I think there will be some difficulties, but that the court is not going to collapse,” Whiting told VOA. He said one reason is the court’s special power to bring action against the world’s worst kinds of crimes.

When counter-protesters ripped up an American flag at a White Lives Matter rally last month in southwest Houston, their actions - though repugnant to many - were protected by the First Amendment, thanks to a landmark Supreme Court case out of Texas decided in 1989. With an early-morning tweet on Tuesday, President-elect Donald Trump reignited the debate over whether to punish those who burn, rip or otherwise desecrate the flag. However, constitutional scholars said his suggestion of imprisoning flag-burners or stripping their citizenship was outside the mainstream of contemporary legal thought...If Trump got to pick another justice or two after Scalia's replacement, then the 1989 decision might face a reversal, said Richard D. Parker, a criminal justice professor at Harvard Law School...Parker, the Harvard Law professor, leads the Citizens' Flag Coalition, which advocates for a constitutional amendment to let governments outlaw flag-burning. He said popular will should overrule the Supreme Court justices.

Four professors debated the First Amendment implications of the College’s plan to penalize members of single-gender social organizations on Tuesday, reframing a controversial campus issue in constitutional terms...David L. Howell, a professor of Japanese history, and Diane L. Rosenfeld, a lecturer at the Law School and founding director of the Gender Violence Program, argued in favor of the constitutionality of the policy at the debate, while computer science professor and former Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 and visiting Harvard Law professor Sanford V. Levinson argued the sanctions violated First Amendment values.

Anti-Trump forces are preparing an unprecedented assault on the Electoral College, marked by a wave of lawsuits and an intensive lobbying effort aimed at persuading 37 Republican electors to vote for a candidate other than Donald Trump...“There might well be a clamor to get rid of the Electoral College altogether, a move that would have some disadvantages (like eliminating Hamilton's safeguard) but many advantages as well,” said Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University. “Anyhow, clamor and anger have become par for the course in this loony election year.”

...This fall, a new Harvard course has helped students become part of the effort to reform the nation’s criminal justice system. Schiraldi, Harvard Law School lecturer Nancy Gertner, and Harvard sociologist Bruce Western are teaching a graduate seminar examining the origins of U.S. mass incarceration and helping students craft workable solutions for getting, and keeping, people out of prison...“Each of us in different ways has been teaching and working on the problem of criminal justice policy,” said Gertner, who served as a federal judge in Massachusetts for 17 years. “We thought there would be some unique value in bringing together three perspectives: the social science on problems of crime and criminal justice, the perspective of policy research and analysis, and law.”

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to cancel all federal funding for immigrant-friendly “sanctuary cities” — a move that could put him on a collision course with not just New York, but hundreds of jurisdictions around the country...“In terms of him completely defunding sanctuary cities by not giving them any funding whatsoever, it would be virtually impossible to do,” said Phil Torrey, a lecturer at Harvard Law School.

As President-elect Donald Trump puts together the administration that will help transform his campaign pledges — including those on immigration — into action, Harvard’s community is coming together around members who might be affected...The Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, based at Harvard Law School, is also planning a series of “know your rights” information sessions in the weeks to come, as well as specific sessions for students who want to fill out their DACA renewal paperwork, according to Deborah Anker, clinical professor of law and director of the program...Anker advised students to understand their personal situation, as they may qualify for different programs and alternate deferrals. One encouraging fact, Anker said, is that there is a strong pro-immigrant community in the area, with legal clinics not just at Harvard, but also at Boston University, Suffolk University, and Boston College. That community has mobilized quickly, she said, and she expects that as the weeks pass and Inauguration Day nears, a lot of resources will become available for those who need them.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Donald Trump promises to impose, soon after his inauguration, a new requirement on federal agencies: If they want to issue a new regulation, they have to rescind two regulations that are now on the books. The idea of “one in, two out” has rhetorical appeal, but it’s going to be extremely hard to pull off. In the abstract, of course, it sounds like a gimmick, and it’s a pretty dumb idea. As presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama have recognized, the real question is whether regulations, whether new or old, are justified. That requires a careful analysis of their costs and their benefits.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. When my colleague Lawrence Lessig argued at Medium that members of the Electoral College should break faith and vote for Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump, I chalked it up to the brilliantly contrarian Larry being brilliant and contrarian -- even if wrong. But when, over the holiday weekend, the Washington Post published his op-ed making the same argument, it made me think serious people might take his argument seriously -- which would be dangerous for democracy and bad for the republic. So with great respect for Larry’s ideals and values, here’s why faithless electors would subvert, not sustain, the democratic values that underlie the U.S. presidential election system.

A letter by fellow Delcianna Winders. The U.S. Department of Agriculture must accept responsibility for facilitating cruelty at places like Black Diamond Kennel instead of making specious appeals to due process...Due process doesn’t require trial-type hearings before the revocation of an Animal Welfare Act license.

Once sworn into office, Donald Trump will be in a strong position to dismantle some of President Barack Obama's efforts to reduce planet-warming carbon emissions. But experts say delivering on campaign pledges to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency and bring back tens of thousands of long-gone coal mining jobs will likely prove far more difficult for the new president...Dismantling EPA regulations is difficult, especially if the rules have already been finalized and implemented. "The agency has already built up a very strong record to support those rules," said Jody Freeman, director of the environmental law program at Harvard Law School. "It can be very hard to do an about-face."

Jill Stein is on track to raise twice as much for an election recount effort than she did for her own failed Green Party presidential bid. Fueled by the social media hashtag #recount2016 and millions of dispirited Hillary Clinton voters, Stein's recount drive had already netted $6.3 million by Monday, according to her campaign website. That's close to the $7 million she posted as a goal and millions more than the roughly $3.5 million she raised during her entire presidential bid...Laurence Tribe, a Harvard constitutional law professor, said that although recounts are "entirely within the law," Stein's effort is probably aimed more at "trying to gain attention and establish herself as a national player."

Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig sparked a national debate with a Nov. 24 Washington Post op-ed arguing that members of the electoral college should choose as president popular vote winner Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump on the grounds that everyone's vote should count equally. A number of his colleagues within the legal academy have now weighed in with their own opinion pieces and blog posts, and most warn that such a move by the electors would be unfair and damaging—or at least contrary to the intentions of the Founding Fathers.