Media Mentions

Enforcement of the U.S. law against foreign bribery, considered a hallmark in the global fight against corruption, may drop during the Trump administration, some experts said. Others disagreed, however, saying it was too early to tell or that the new administration may want to show it’s serious...Matthew Stephenson, a professor at the Harvard Law School, wrote a post on the Global Anti-Corruption Blog this week saying the “era of vigorous FCPA enforcement…is over.” “It’s hard for me to imagine that the attorney general of a Trump administration…would make prosecuting foreign bribery a significant priority, or would devote substantial resources to this area,” he wrote. “It might take a little while for the change to become apparent–there are still some cases in the pipeline, after all–but I’d be shocked if the U.S. maintained anything like its current level of FCPA enforcement.”

An op-ed by Glenn Cohen, Dan Pedrotty, Jason Schmitt and Mario Nguyen `17. Midway through the first semester of the school year is a time when many college students begin struggling with exams, roommate disputes, and career plans. But the one-third of college students who are first in their families to attend college (“first-gens”) face a different formidable set of challenges. For two-thirds of these first-gens, college reality likely involves living at home and working while commuting to local community colleges or earning online degrees. Only 40 percent of first-gens will graduate from four-year colleges within six years, earning that critical degree that helps open doors to higher earnings and good jobs. This trend can be reversed but requires addressing challenges faced specifically by first-gens.

President-elect Donald Trump's vows to single-handedly gut Obama administration environmental regulations will be more difficult than he has portrayed, legal experts say. And any effort by Trump's U.S. EPA to rescind or revoke major scientifically based rules — like the air standard for ozone pollution — would be met with a barrage of lawsuits. "Lots of threats of this kind have come in the past," said Jody Freeman, a Harvard Law School professor and former climate adviser to President Obama. "Virtually every Republican administration comes in and says they want to deregulate. But when the rubber hits the road, there is little of it."

A letter by Simon Hedlin `19. The Nov. 9 editorial “If ‘boys are boys,’ they can’t play men’s soccer” was correct that the “boys will be boys” norm has helped enable sexual assault, especially on college campuses. But another crucial reason behind the high prevalence of sexual assault is simple ignorance. Other unwanted conduct is better understood and, therefore, easier to combat. People know, for example, that taking property directly from another person by force is robbery. By contrast, research shows that many people are unaware that sexual assault encompasses any type of sexual contact that occurs without consent.

An op-ed by Adrian Vermeule: In transitional justice, the "thick line" is a deliberate policy of forgetting what went before. I want to suggest a version of the thick line for the 2016 election campaign; more specifically, a one-year moratorium on pointing out the inconsistency or even hypocrisy of others, based on statements they made during the campaign.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. The Donald Trump presidency, coupled with the new Congress, is likely to produce major changes in federal law. But for the Supreme Court, expect a surprising amount of continuity -- far more than conservatives hope and progressives fear. If, as expected, Trump is able to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, the court will look a lot like it did until Scalia died in February: four relative liberals (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor); two moderate conservatives (John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy); and three relative conservatives (Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and the new justice).

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The financial markets thought Donald Trump’s conciliatory victory speech early Wednesday morning meant something. That interpretation seems plausible. If nothing else, Trump’s tone suggested that he realized the markets were getting volatile and that he wanted to calm the waters by giving the most conventional speech he’s ever delivered.

In November 2000, as the Florida recount gripped the nation, a newly elected Democratic senator from New York took a break from an upstate victory tour to address the possibility that Al Gore could wind up winning the popular vote but losing the presidential election. She was unequivocal. “I believe strongly that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the people,” Hillary Clinton said, “and to me that means it’s time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president.” Sixteen years later, the Electoral College is still standing...Some states have discussed a possibility that would not necessarily require amending the Constitution: jettisoning the winner-takes-all system, in which a single candidate is awarded all of a state’s electoral votes — regardless of the popular vote — and instead apportioning them to reflect the breakdown of each state’s popular vote. Two states, Maine and Nebraska, already do this. But even that approach could face a constitutional challenge from opponents, said Laurence H. Tribe, a professor at Harvard Law School.

Time spoke with Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and former Assistant Attorney General in the George W. Bush Administration, about the role of executive power in a Donald Trump presidency. What checks will there be on a Donald Trump presidency? The potential checks are many, including Congress and the Courts, the free press and many internal Executive branch watchdogs like inspectors generals, lawyers and the permanent bureaucracy. And of course the people in the next election.

...For some perspective on what, exactly, Obama can do between now and January 20 to make life trickier for Trump, I called up Mark Tushnet. He's a professor at Harvard Law School who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and specializes, among other things, in constitutional law and legal history. Here's what he had to say about what to expect over the next few weeks...Professor Mark Tushnet: As a formal matter, no, he hasn't exhausted his authority until noon on January 20 next year. As a practical political matter, of course, it's very unlikely he'll be able to do anything substantial during that period because he could do it and President Trump on the 21st could revoke all that he had done. As a technical matter, though, he still has all the power that a president has.

Jo B. Laird, a lawyer known for her work on art sales, cautioned Harvard Law School students Wednesday that legally defending artistic creation has become more urgent after the 2016 presidential election...Kate Wiener, a student at the Law School, said she enjoyed hearing Laird speak. “Laird struck an incredible tone about an interesting subject in a very important moment in history,” Wiener said. “I really appreciated the conversation that Laird led since it was so relevant in the political world.” Heather Lee, another Law School student, echoed this sentiment. “It was refreshing that Laird connected what happened in the presidential election to art, and that this connection can be seen throughout the past as well,” she said.

In the wake of Donald Trump's election, several Big Law leaders are calling on the profession to take a more vocal and visible stand to protect the rule of law. "Given the election and its many implications, there has been no moment in recent memory when it has been more important for lawyers to fulfill their professional responsibilities," says William Lee, former co-chairman of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr. "As a profession, we must ensure that the rule of law that is our fundamental core value is our highest priority and applicable and available to everyone."...Two years ago, Wilmer's Lee and two other prominent lawyers made a clarion call in an article entitled "Lawyers as Professionals and as Citizens." Lee and the two other authors—former General Electric Corp. general counsel Benjamin Heineman Jr. and Harvard Law School professor David Wilkins—argued that law firms should play a bigger role defending the rule of law. The article, published by the Center on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School, called for the emergence a new generation of leaders in the mold of Robert Fiske of Davis Polk & Wardwell and the late Lloyd Cutler of Wilmer.

An article by Zalman Rothschild `18. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik (1903-93) has long been considered the spiritual and intellectual leader of American Modern Orthodoxy in the 20th century. His extensive command of the Talmud, Jewish codes and Jewish philosophy, coupled with a doctorate from the University of Berlin (now Humboldt University of Berlin), made him the natural figurehead of a movement that identifies with the currents of both modernity and tradition. Soloveitchik’s concurrent loyalty to Jewish orthodoxy on the one hand, and rigorous modern philosophic thinking on the other, has spurred much debate regarding where his “true” allegiances lay.

An article by David E. White Jr `17. Sean Rayford, a freelance photojournalist and commercial photographer based in Columbia, South Carolina, captured this photograph of a woman smearing blood on a police riot shield during a protest in downtown Charlotte, North Carolina at about 9:00pm on September 21, 2016. Citizens were protesting the death of Keith Lamont Scott, a black man, who was shot and killed by the police the previous day. Married for more than twenty years, and a father of seven children, Scott was forty-three years old and had worked as a security guard at a local mall. Mindful that photographs must be “composed to be readable” by his audience, Rayford often relies on his subjects’ faces to capture the emotion of a moment...This photograph of a bloody hand on the police shield underscores that black citizens have yet to attain full American citizenship in that blacks still suffer an equal protection deficit.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. No matter the outcome, this Election Day marks a signal moment in the history of women’s suffrage. The Founding Fathers had a bad conscience about slavery, but no such qualms about women’s rights. The movement for women’s suffrage didn’t begin until the 1840s. And after the Civil War, when the 15th Amendment was proposed to give blacks the vote, women’s groups splintered over whether the denial of voting rights to women was a reason to oppose the amendment. Today, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, a moderate, centrist reformer, is the political descendant of the women’s suffrage movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. It’s all about the Constitution now. Republicans will control the White House and both chambers of Congress. They will be able to pass -- or repeal -- their preferred laws, because that’s democracy. But to the Donald Trump opponents worried about what his presidency will bring, know this: There will still be limits to congressional or executive action, limits dictated by the Constitution and enforceable by the courts. The Constitution is designed to resist the tyranny of the majority. James Madison’s machine of constitutional protection is about to kick into gear.

Stop checking fivethirtyeight.com. Sign off of Twitter. Say goodbye and good riddance to those vitriolic political ads. The presidential election is over. But four years can pass quickly, and if colleges can’t lead productive discussions of sensitive topics in their classrooms, can we expect the discourse in future elections to be any better? At Harvard Law School, where admission is a veritable pass to a life of leadership, longtime professor Charles Nesson says the Internet has been “crippling” for classroom discussions. “Even when laptops are closed, you still feel the danger of being in a completely connected environment,” he observes. “People are cautious on issues that engage real diversity and real difference. I think it’s tremendously challenging to law teachers, to socratic teachers. A lot of faculty are feeling that we weren’t trained for this.” Nesson recently started experimenting with an approach he hopes will help.

...Here are some snapshots from the day...Megan Fitzgerald, J.D. ’18, said she had mailed her ballot to Louisiana, where she’s registered to vote. Fitzgerald said she found this tumultuous election “unprecedented.”...At Harvard Law School’s Wasserstein Hall, Tracey Daley, the School’s student activities coordinator, wanted to ensure that the night brought the community together, whatever the electoral outcome...Students among the crowd of about 30 who gathered to watch early returns said they learned a lot about the country during the campaign, and not all of it good. “It has been helpful to see the core values of the American electorate,” said law student Emanuel Powell.

Our social lives are conducted on the Internet, along with purchases, entertainment and cab hailing. So why are we still using paper ballots to vote for elected officials? ...Online voting “makes it hard to forestall vote-selling, because people could much more easily prove for whom they've voted,” says Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard Law School professor. “ Countries unlike the United States that do not emphasize ballot secrecy might be better able to embrace Internet voting.”

The health law prohibits insurers from discriminating against people with serious illnesses, but some marketplace plans sidestep that taboo by making the drugs that people with HIV need unavailable or unaffordable, complaints filed recently with the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights allege. The effect may be to discourage people with HIV from buying a particular plan or getting the treatment they need, according to the complaint. The complaints, brought by Harvard Law School’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, charge that plans offered by seven insurers in eight states are discriminatory because they don’t cover drugs that are essential to the treatment of HIV or require high out-of-pocket spending by patients for covered drugs.

A classroom in Hauser Hall was filled to capacity Monday afternoon as Tom Hardin, a white collar felon and subsequent FBI informant, recounted his experiences with insider trading and federal investigations to about 100 Harvard Law Students. The Harvard Association for Law and Business hosted Hardin after he approached the organization about his desire to speak at the Law School. Hardin is currently visiting elite institutions across the country to share his “cautionary tale” about insider trading and white collar crimes, event coordinator David Kafafian ’18 said. “Tom actually reached out to us and was quite frank in his introduction around who he was, that he was a convicted white collar felon, and what he did,” Kafafian said.