Media Mentions

President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement Wednesday that he’ll transfer management of his business empire to his sons — but will not divest the assets — won’t ease concerns about his conflicts of interest, say legal specialists...“It does not solve any of the problems,’’ Harvard Law School professor Laurence H. Tribe said of the plan. “It’s a complete ruse.”...Harvard’s Tribe, a constitutional law professor, said Trump’s trust plan still allows foreign governments to curry favor with the president and enhance his wealth, in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause. This is a provision that bars presidents from receiving funds from foreign governments. “Everyone in the world knows when they play golf at one of his courses or pay a lot of money at one of his hotels, that they are benefiting him and benefiting his brand,’’ Tribe said.

The director of the US Office of Government Ethics has criticised Donald Trump's plan to hand control of his business empire to his sons before his inauguration on 20 January..."As I listened, my jaw dropped. Trump's workaround is a totally fraudulent runaround," tweeted Professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard University, one of the leading constitutional lawyers in the US. "Trump's announced structure is cleverly designed to dazzle and deceive, but it solves none of the serious ethical or legal issues. Trump's lawyer would flunk constitutional law at any halfway decent law school. At least if the lawyer wasn't just joking."

President-elect Donald Trump’s strategy on addressing his conflicts of interest seemed to be to throw out as many bells and whistles as possible, sprinkle some remarks from highly compensated lawyers and hope he could muscle his way through concerns that he is setting up a scheme that will invite corruption and run afoul of the Constitution...His lawyer also claimed that the emoluments clause does not cover arm’s-length transactions. This is blatantly false. In a detailed legal memo prepared by Laurence Tribe, Richard Painter and Norman Eisen, they found: To start, the text supports this conclusion; since emoluments are properly defined as including “profit” from any employment, as well as “salary,” it is clear that even remuneration fairly earned in commerce can qualify...Tribe separately commented to me, “The steps he is taking constitute at best a Potemkin trust, to coin a phrase. He remains a walking, tweeting violation of the Emoluments Clause from the moment he takes office.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. In New York and nine other states, merchants are barred from charging credit-card purchasers a surcharge, but are allowed to offer discounts for paying in cash. The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday took up the fascinating question of whether this requirement violates the merchants’ freedom of speech. It’s a juicy constitutional question: Are prices subject to the First Amendment at all? And it sweetens the pot with an intellectual problem in law and economics: Given that we know customers react differently to surcharges and discounts, even when they’re economically equivalent, should the state be allowed to ban one and require the other?

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. U.S. law can reach American sex offenders abroad so long as they haven’t resettled in another country, according to a federal appeals court. The decision, issued last week, extends U.S. law beyond its borders through an expansive interpretation of Congress’s authority under the Constitution’s commerce clause. It bucks the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent trend of limiting laws’ reach abroad, at least in part because of the powerful desire to condemn sex with minors. But as a precedent, the decision will apply to other, more ordinary crimes committed by Americans abroad, with potentially troubling consequences.

President Obama will deliver his farewell address to the nation this evening before a room full of supporters in Chicago. We discuss a little of the Obama legacy and look ahead to tonight’s speech with two historians, “NewsHour” regular Michael Beschloss, and Annette Gordon-Reed of Harvard University..."This is a chance to cement his legacy and talk about the kinds of things that he wanted to do as president. And he is facing a situation where people might try to undo a good amount of that. So, I think this is a good way for him to sort of lay a template, perhaps, for historians later on, even though that’s almost an impossible thing to do. But I think it’s a way for him to talk about his legacy, to sort of say to the American people what was important to him, what he thinks he accomplished as president."

Researchers from Harvard and MIT and philanthropists including the founders of LinkedIn and eBay are teaming up in a multimillion-dollar effort to make sure artificial intelligence is designed and used to make the world a better place...The Knight Foundation, the MIT Media Lab, Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar have combined to create a $27 million fund called the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund that will support research and development to make AI beneficial for humans. The Media Lab and Berkman Klein Center are the first “anchor institutions”...“There’s definitely urgency,” said Urs Gasser, executive director of the Berkman Klein Center. The concerns, Gasser said, are less a robot uprising and more about whether AI understands the concept of fairness.

Tonight President Obama will deliver his farewell address. He will use the opportunity to remind the nation of what he accomplished during eight difficult but historic years in office...I thought of this while waiting at a White House reception in September for the president to dedicate the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. I found myself with Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, who represented Anita Hill during her testimony to the Senate confirmation committee and who taught both President and First Lady Obama when they were in law school. Ogletree had recently gone public about his Alzheimer's diagnosis and its effects were becoming apparent. When the Marine Corps Band started to play "Hail to the Chief," everyone in the large crowd pressed forward, but Ogletree was the only one the president and first lady stopped to greet. The professor immediately assumed the role of teacher—speaking clearly, cogently, and with composure during his brief personal encounter with the Obamas.

They said they were defrauded, and now they want a seat at the table. Last week, a group of former ITT Tech students moved to establish themselves as creditors in the school's bankruptcy proceedings in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Indiana...The Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School is representing the students. Eileen Connor, director of litigation for the center's Project on Predatory Student Lending, is the lead attorney representing the students. She was unavailable for comment.

Some Harvard Law School alumni and officials are confident that the school’s fundraising success will continue “unabated” after Law School Dean Martha L. Minow steps down at the end of the academic year, building on momentum that has already carried the school past its capital campaign goal of $305 million....In an email, Steven Oliveira, the Law School’s dean for alumni affairs and development, declined to disclose the exact amount the Law School has raised in its campaign so far. He said the school “will not be setting a new goal but will continue to raise money for our ongoing campaign priorities.”

An essay by Norman Eisen, Richard W. Painter and Laurence H. Tribe. Never in American history has a president-elect posed more conflict-of-interest and foreign-entanglement questions than Donald J. Trump. Trump, the owner of a large real estate and licensing business with holdings around the world, has promised that on January 11, less than two weeks before he takes office, he will announce his plan to separate himself from his businesses. After repeatedly hesitating and delaying, will he finally do the right thing? Here are five key questions we must ask to evaluate whether the plan truly mitigates the risk of corruption and scandal.

eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman are among the backers of a new $27 million fund, announced today, that’s aiming to promote research into artificial intelligence in the public interest. Concern about the societal impact of AI is rising up political agendas as it becomes clearer how much power autonomous technologies have to shape behavior and outcomes at scale...the initiative will support an inaugural class of joint AI Fellows across the Berkman Klein Center and the MIT Media Lab...The MIT Media Lab and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University will serve as founding academic institutions for the new AI research fund initiative — meaning they will collaborate on research initiatives that could be funded. The aim is also for the fund to “complement and collaborate with” existing relevant efforts at the institutions, they say.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court on Monday decided a police immunity case that sounds small but carries a larger significance. The narrow holding was that a police officer who arrived late at the scene of a confrontation and then shot and killed the suspect without having heard other officers issue a warning is protected from a lawsuit. What really mattered was the reasoning: The court said the officer couldn’t be sued because there was no case on the books finding an officer liable under the exact same circumstances. This decision makes it much harder to sue the police, because almost all confrontations have unique features that could be used to block lawsuits. In essence, the court is signaling that it wants fewer suits against officers in the lower courts, and is chiding the appellate courts for allowing such suits.

At this time last year, all signs were pointing to a for-profit college industry in crisis, if not the death throes...In this context, James Tierney, a former Maine attorney general and now a Harvard Law School professor, called cash awards for individual students “a bonus.” Tierney said predatory industries practice “conscious and rational avoidance of strong enforcement,” meaning they hop across state lines to avoid lawsuits.

Harvard Professor Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. talks about his work on criminal justice reform, and the last minute clemency requests to President Obama.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Welcome to the period of “institutional flip-flops” -- sudden abandonment of seemingly firm institutional principles, prompted by just one thing: the political party of the current president. A few months ago, many Republicans were enamored with an eight-member Supreme Court, an idea that Democrats treated as a constitutional atrocity. Now that a Republican is about to become president, prominent Democrats have no problem with a short-handed court, while Republicans treat the very thought as an outrage.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. India’s constitutional democracy has always struggled to tame the country’s religious and caste divisions, especially during elections. The Supreme Court of India has now issued an important ruling that makes things worse, not better. On the surface, the court struck a blow for religious neutrality, holding that referring to religion or caste in a race for office will disqualify the results. In reality, the decision delivered a gift to the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party at the expense of India's minority faiths and castes. That’s especially worrisome in our present historical moment, when nationalist parties are challenging free democratic speech around the world.

When Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Donald J. Trump’s choice for attorney general, answers questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, he can expect to revisit a long-ago case that has followed him. In 1985, when Sessions was the United States attorney in West Alabama, he prosecuted three African-American civil rights activists, accusing them of voter fraud...Asked by a grand juror whether she’d voted absentee for the first time in the September primary, a Perry County resident named Fannie Mae Williams answered: “Uh-huh. First and last.” Two other women told the grand jury they were done with voting, according to the book “Lift Every Voice,” by Lani Guinier, a professor at Harvard Law School...Hank Sanders organized a team that included defense lawyers from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Southern Poverty Law Center, including Guinier.

It seems only right that victims of predatory for-profit education companies should have their student loans forgiven. After all, in addition to being left with mountains of debt, former students have worthless degrees from schools that no longer exist, such as those once operated by the defunct Corinthian Colleges or ITT Educational Services. Because taxpayers backed most of these loans, however, the Department of Education has been loath to forgive them. So it was gratifying to see five former ITT students take matters into their own hands this week by petitioning a federal bankruptcy court to consider loan forgiveness as part of the company’s liquidation...on Jan. 3, lawyers at the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard Law School filed to intervene in ITT’s liquidation, which is currently being overseen by James M. Carr, a federal bankruptcy judge in the Southern District of Indiana...“We’re trying all the angles, all the avenues,” Toby Merrill, founder and director of the Harvard project, said in an interview...“All of these students have filed their own claims with the Education Department,” said Eileen Connor, director of litigation at the Harvard project. “But the Department has been sitting on them, and they are not visible in any way.”

The makeup of President-elect Donald Trump’s trade team suggests he wasn’t joking when he promised voters to shake things up. On the campaign trail, Trump portrayed an America that has been shortchanged by bad trade deals and unscrupulous trading partners, leading to the hollowing out of the nation’s manufacturing sector. He promised to label China a currency manipulator and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico..."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."

An op-ed by Jacob Gersen and Jeannie Suk Gersen. Often with the best of intentions, the federal government in the past six years has presided over the creation of a sex bureaucracy that says its aim is to reduce sexual violence but that is actually enforcing a contested vision of sexual morality and disciplining those who deviate from it. Many observers assume that today’s important campus sexual-assault debate is concerned with forcible or coerced sex, or with taking advantage of someone who is too drunk to be able to consent. But the definition of sexual assault has stretched enormously, in ways that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. Indeed, the concept of sexual misconduct has grown to include most voluntary and willing sexual conduct.