Media Mentions

The Affordable Care Act 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 health plan or getting the treatment they need, according to the complaints. 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.

...In 2009, the American Law Institute—the most prestigious organization in the country engaged in improving the law—removed the death penalty from the options it had long recognized that states could choose from to punish a convicted murderer...The genesis of that change was the strong sentiment among the institute’s membership to formally oppose capital punishment. Lance Liebman, then its director, turned to the sister-and-brother team of Carol S. Steiker ’82, J.D. ’86, RI ’11, and Jordan M. Steiker, J.D. ’88, for counsel. They were “the most influential legal scholars in the death penalty community,” wrote criminal-justice scholar Evan J. Mandery in his book A Wild Justice...In the past seven years, the report has played a quiet yet decisive role in helping shift debate among scholars and policymakers about the death penalty. The focus has moved from whether the penalty is just, which cannot be answered empirically, to an emphasis on whether states apply it fairly and consistently, which can. The Steikers’ approach shaped the policy of America’s most respected legal organization. With its imprimatur, their report has influenced decisions of people who shape American law.

Last August the US Department of Justice released a statement that they would begin the process of phasing out private prison contracts in federal prisons, some 30 years after the Bureau of Prisons began its experiment contracting beds to for-profit facilities. The decision, according to the Justice Department, came in response to a declining prison population - down from 220,000 inmates in 2013 to fewer than 195,000 inmates today, as well as an acknowledgement of the often lower safety and security standards of the private prison industry..."They [private prison companies] are very careful about not publicly stating what they support; but if you follow the money, it becomes pretty clear," says Philip Torrey, a professor at Harvard Law School. Torrey notes how private prison companies, particularly the nation's two largest private prison companies, Geo Group and Correction Corporation of America (CCA), have supported controversial bills such as the three-strikes laws and minimum mandatory sentencing, as well as Arizona's controversial anti-immigration law - each acknowledged as drivers of incarceration, particularly of immigrants and people of colour.

Hillary Clinton’s top campaign aide asked a billionaire donor to enlist a leading environmental activist to stage protests against a Harvard legal scholar arguing against environmental regulations in court, hacked emails show. In a March 2015 email to environmentalist and hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta asked him to solicit the help of radical environmentalist Bill McKibben to organize protests at Harvard. Podesta hoped to target Harvard Law professor and constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, who was representing coal company Peabody Energy in federal litigation challenging Environmental Protection Agency regulations on carbon emissions from power plants...In an emailed statement, Tribe, a liberal legal scholar whose students have included a young Barack Obama, pushed back against Podesta’s suggestion that he had taken a position against EPA regulations at the behest of Peabody Coal. “I have long liked John Podesta (and am working hard for Hillary Clinton’s election) but I strongly disagree with John’s supposed reaction to my role in challenging the legality and constitutionality of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which I doubted before agreeing to represent the Plan’s industry opponents,” he wrote.

A group of prominent tech writers and bloggers raised $13,117 in a crowdsourcing campaign on Sunday to help repair the firebombed and vandalized Republican headquarters in Orange County, N.C. David Weinberger, a technology writer at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, said he and several colleagues were horrified by the vandalism and wanted to “go high” in response. “Even though we disagree thoroughly with the Republican Party on most things, and with the North Carolina Republican Party especially,” Mr. Weinberger said, “that only made it seem like a better occasion to try to get past the political differences and to remember the democracy that unites us all.”

In one of the biggest death penalty decisions in years, Florida's Supreme Court ruled on Friday that only a unanimous jury may sentence a defendant to the death penalty. According to the Orlando Sentinel, the court's decisions mean that the state "effectively has no death penalty."...“Our latest research has shown that non-unanimous jury verdicts can lead to the conviction of persons with intellectual disabilities, mental illnesses, and even those who are innocent," said Harvard Law Professor Ron Sullivan, co-founder of the Fair Punishment Project. "The Florida Supreme Court’s decision validates our concern about the constitutionality of these verdicts.”

We all know that life’s but a walking shadow and a poor player, but in the Hyperion Shakespeare Company’s production of “Macbeth,” Shakespeare’s most famous characters revealed much more. ...Harvard Law School student Patrick Witt played Macbeth with curious dichotomy of violence and vulnerability that exposed his character’s tortured psyche. He delivered his bout of madness and guilt following Duncan’s murder with a tangible mix of confusion, insanity and fear.

An op-ed by Simon Hedlin `19. As a potential means to displace sex trafficking, legalizing prostitution has an obvious appeal. In addition to being a desirable policy among many of those who engage in prostitution on a consensual basis, legalization is assumed to help the market crowd out violent clients, abusive pimps and evil traffickers. Advocates argue that making it legal to sell sex increases the supply of consensual prostitution whereas making it legal to buy sex attracts better-behaving consumers—both of which should make the market for commercial sex less exploitative. This line of reasoning makes sense, and is also what basic economic theory would predict. But in reality, the effects of legalization are much more complex and harder to foresee.

While policy questions have taken a back seat to controversy over the past weeks, the presidential election still offers a stark choice for those in the energy industry..."Those with an energy-themed bingo card have not been doing well," said Kate Konschnik, the founding director of Harvard Law School’s Environmental Policy Initiative. Konschnik was part of a team of experts who assembled a report on the energy issues that will be faced by the next administration, and the decisions they will need to make. From the appointment of federal regulators to the legal defense of rules and regulations, the next President's impact will be significant. And yet, said Konschnik, the myriad decisions will also meet the existing momentum of market trends, meaning direct presidential control over the energy narrative will be limited.

Democrats joined together on Sunday night to raise funds to rebuild a GOP office that was firebombed in North Carolina over the weekend. Vandals attacked the Hillsborough, North Carolina GOP office late Saturday night, throwing a Molotov cocktail through one of the building’s front windows, according to a statement released by the town...North Carolina is a key swing-state in the general election, but that didn’t stop a group of Democrats from launching a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for the GOP office. According to David Weinberger, a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, the GoFundMe campaign was inspired by this tweet from writer and University of North Carolina professor Zeynep Tufekci...Donations quickly poured in and the campaign’s $10,000 goal was surpassed within a couple hours, Weinberger said. In total, organizers raised $13,167 from 552 donations before closing the fund.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. By law, the federal government is supposed to manage the wild horse population in the West. But what happens if, despite an overabundance of the beautiful beasts, the government does nothing about it? The official answer is not much, according to a federal appeals court that turned down Wyoming’s challenge to federal inaction. The decision follows familiar principles of deference to agency action (or, in this case, inaction). But it leaves farmers or others negatively affected by the overpopulation with essentially no recourse, a result that seems at odds with the intent of the law.

An op-ed by Mark Roe. An often-heard refrain, increasingly voiced in US politics, is that corporate America is excessively influenced by short-term stock-market considerations. While the US presidential election is not particularly focused on policy at the moment, the campaign will soon end, at which point people will govern and policies will be adopted. Given that both Republicans and Democrats have criticized short-termism, it is possible that some of those policies might aim to address it. They are unlikely to make any difference. Not only has the problem of short-termism been woefully exaggerated, but the policy proposals for addressing it are severely lacking. Consider Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s proposal – which Vice President Joe Biden has endorsed – to use the capital gains tax to encourage shareowners to hold on to their stock for a longer time.

A letter by Charles Fried. In “The Supreme Court Is Being Hypocritical” (Op-Ed, Oct. 11), Gabe Roth criticizes the justices for playing by their own rules instead of heeding their decisions in suits before them “that have parallels with how they act as stewards of their institution.” He writes that “surely Justice Kagan’s experience in the Obama administration constituted ‘significant involvement’ in the Affordable Care Act cases” and that the justice should have recused herself. Justice Elena Kagan’s “significant involvement” was as solicitor general, a position that is primarily concerned with managing the administration’s appellate litigation.

Leaders of Harvard’s renewed “Living Laboratory” initiative, designed to engage students and faculty in sustainability efforts, say the program reflects growing interest in environmental action on campus. The core idea of the Living Laboratory initiative, which will be housed in the Office for Sustainability, is to use the Harvard campus as a test bed for new ideas related to combating climate change and improving public health. The Climate Solutions Living Lab Course and Research Project, led by Law School clinical professor Wendy B. Jacobs, will launch in spring 2017. The interdisciplinary course will discuss various approaches to reducing greenhouse emissions at Harvard and beyond. “The object of the course is for the students to do some real life problem solving about climate change,” Jacobs said. Jacobs also talked about the importance of collaboration and a multidisciplinary approach in the course. “The class is specifically designed to bring together faculty and students across campus,” she said.

Christian business owners are pursuing a new legal strategy to oppose laws they say would force them to use their artistic talents to promote same-sex marriage...ADF hopes to win with pre-enforcement challenges, which have been an effective legal maneuver for decades on several high-profile cases involving abortion, campaign financing and the Affordable Care Act. "They require that there (is) a realistic possibility that the plaintiff would actually be subject to some enforcement action," said Harvard Law School professor Mark Tushnet. He said this generally happens when a government agency announces that a policy — such as a non-discrimination law — will be enforced, or when someone has been denied service and threatens to sue.

An op-ed by Hal S. Scott and John Gulliver. A new Securities and Exchange Commission rule goes into effect Friday that can restrict investors from withdrawing their cash from the money-market funds that were at the heart of the 2008 financial crisis. If the G-20's international regulator (the Financial Stability Board) has anything to say about it then a similar rule will soon apply to the $16 trillion invested in all U.S. mutual funds. This would be a dangerous mistake. The FSB's proposal is to charge investors' penalty fees if they try and sell their mutual-fund investment during a crisis and would even include a complete prohibition of such sales in extreme circumstances. It is expected to finalize its proposal later this year and then the SEC, U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve are expected to promptly implement them in the U.S.

An op-ed by Jeannie Suk Gersen. Last year, in holding that states must allow gay and straight couples alike to enter civil marriage, the Supreme Court extolled the “transcendent importance of marriage,” its beauty, nobility, and dignity. That was the fulsome culmination of the decades that led to marriage equality. But, just as two people must enter marriage with the law’s blessing, they need the law in order to exit it. As legal marriage is now universally available, so, too, is legal divorce. Marking the start of a period in which divorce may well get more attention is the new HBO series “Divorce,” which began airing this month. Sarah Jessica Parker, the show’s star and executive producer, has explained that her desire to tell the story of an ordinary suburban couple’s divorce was motivated by fascination with the inside of a marriage. The show, written by Sharon Horgan, of “Catastrophe,” understands that how people divorce can reveal more about a marriage than anything one could see before its unravelling.

"I feel very strongly about our Constitution," Donald Trump told Fox News in January. "I'm proud of it, I love it, and I want to go through the Constitution." It must be a love/hate relationship that the Republican presidential nominee has with the Constitution of the United States, because many of his plans and statements would violate many of its most important amendments. "It would take more time than I can spare today to list all the provisions of the Constitution, and all the principles underlying it, that contradict Trump's various pronouncements about what he wants to do," Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School, told ATTN: in an email.

Chester Finn, co-founder of the charity Community Empowerment Programs, talked about overcoming the judgments of others through self-advocacy at Harvard Law School on Friday. Finn currently works with Michael A. Stein, executive director of the Law School's Project on Disability, developing storytelling projects so that people with disabilities can talk about how they make their own choices and where they fit in the world...Stein lauded the work Finn has done as a self-advocate while introducing Finn. “In all those places, Chester has lent his wisdom, his smarts, his savvy to programming and work,” Stein said. Alice Osman [`17], a student at the Law School, said she enjoyed listening to Finn’s personal narrative.

Current and prospective students, activists, and legal experts explored how legal strategy and international human rights advocacy influences indigenous rights in the U.S. at Harvard Law School’s Indigenous Rights Movement conference last week. Kristen A. Carpenter, an Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor of Law at HLS, said the conference sought to give students access to conversations on federal Indian law, a subject for which Harvard has no permanent professor. “It seems important to really do a lot of programming when we’re lucky enough to be here teaching for a short time, and really make an impact on the community and the students’ educational opportunities, as well as to note particularly what’s going on in the present moment of advocacy around American Indian issues,” Carpenter said. Carpenter co-chaired the event with Robert T. Anderson, another Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor of Law; Angela R. Riley, law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles; and Lorie M. Graham, law professor at Suffolk University Law School.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. There’s no need to believe the Russian propaganda that says the U.S. agreed to let 9,000 Islamic State fighters flee Mosul to go fight President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. But the story “reported” Wednesday by Russia Today (on the basis of a single anonymous source) does capture a strategic truth in the run-up to the attack on the Islamic State-controlled city: The fighters have good reason to flee -- and the Iraqis and the U.S. have good reason to let them.