Media Mentions

An op-ed by Fellow Delcianna Winders. The recent attack of former Ringling exhibitor Vicenta Pages by her tiger Gandhi in front of dozens of schoolchildren reminds us, yet again, why banning wild animal acts is the right thing to do, not just for animals but for humans as well. Video footage of the incident shows Pages and her husband repeatedly beating Gandhi until he finally releases Pages, who was taken to the hospital for surgery. This is hardly the only incident of its kind. Just earlier this year, a Florida zookeeper was fatally attacked by a tiger. On average, captive big cats kill about one person every year in the United States and injure many more.

When the treaty creating the International Criminal Court was opened for signatories in 1998, Egyptian-born legal scholar Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni called it “a triumph for all peoples of the world.” Fast-forward 18 years, and the lofty ideal of establishing a court that would end impunity for atrocities and deliver justice to victims is reeling from the announced departures of three African member states: Burundi, South Africa and Gambia...But Alex Whiting, a professor at Harvard Law School and former ICC prosecution coordinator, said the court shouldn’t be blamed for the Africa focus. In six cases, the African countries themselves asked the ICC to investigate, and two others were referred to the court by the U.N. Security Council. “Could the ICC really have declined to move on these cases?” Whiting said.

An op-ed by Jack Goldsmith. Three years ago, the Guardian published the first story based on the huge archive of documents Edward Snowden stole from the National Security Agency while working as an NSA contractor. Then–attorney general Eric Holder’s Justice Department quickly charged Snowden with felonies for theft of government property and mishandling classified information. This May, however, Holder praised Snowden. “I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in and by the changes that we made,” Holder said. This seems like an improbable claim. Snowden compromised scores of surveillance techniques, representing billions of dollars of investments over many years. U.S. firms that secretly cooperated with government intelligence agencies stopped doing so to the extent they could, and public defiance became the business-compelled norm.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Donald Trump has taken a battering ram to longstanding political norms -- the unwritten conventions that make governance possible. But even before he decided to run for president, those norms were under assault. Immediately after the election, one of the most pressing questions will be how to restore them. To answer that question, let’s assume what philosophers call a “veil of ignorance.” If we didn’t know whether the president would be Democratic or Republican -- if it could turn out to be Clinton or Trump -- what are the minimal norms on which we might agree? Here are four suggestions.

Massachusetts child welfare officials are warning that a provision buried deep in the ballot measure to legalize marijuana could effectively tie the hands of social workers entrusted with protecting the state’s most vulnerable children. The little-noticed provision states that parents’ marijuana use, possession, and cultivation can’t be the primary basis for taking away custody — or other parental rights like visitation — unless there is “clear, convincing and articulable evidence that the person’s actions related to marijuana have created an unreasonable danger to the safety” of a child...Elizabeth Bartholet, a Harvard Law School professor, said she believes the section of the proposed law is comparable to the current standard in child welfare and she said she has no concerns about it. Still, said Bartholet, a child welfare expert, “it does reduce the likelihood that use and even abuse of marijuana would count in and of itself as grounds for state intervention to protect children.”

As the fallout from the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State continues to play out in the prosecution of former university officials, state investigators have begun examining whether the school mishandled the case of a student wrestler who went on to become a Hollywood actor and director. The wrestler, Nate Parker, was charged in 1999 with raping a fellow student. Despite his eventual acquittal, the case resurfaced in the fevered run-up to “The Birth of a Nation,” of which Mr. Parker is writer, director and star...“Just because the person to whom he allegedly exposed himself didn’t report it to the police doesn’t matter at all,” said Diane Rosenfeld, director of the gender violence program at Harvard Law School. “It doesn’t relieve the school of its responsibilities.”

Harvard University dining workers are celebrating a victory after a strike that gained them a $35,000 minimum yearly salary and stable health-care costs in their new contract. And Jewish students on campus are, by and large, celebrating with them after taking a prominent role at the forefront of the push to support their demands...At Harvard Law School, a new group, the Progressive Jewish Alliance, formed in the wake of the strike. According to Hannah Belitz, a third-year law student, its formation reflected “a desire on the part of a number of us to stand in solidarity with students of color and other minority groups in our capacity as Jews.”

One of Henry Steiner’s favorite images from his 50-plus years of taking pictures is of a massive boulder outside a Hindu temple in India. “The scene was all rock and sky, scorching sun, and deep shade, held together and dominated by the imperial boulder,” he writes in his self-published photography book “Eyeing the World.”...“Eyeing the World” features images from Bhutan, Brazil, Cambodia, Egypt, Italy, and Vietnam. When Steiner visited a farming village outside of Hanoi, a group of children stopped to watch him. One boy stood up and thrust his butt out, drawing laughter from his friends. Was it a show for Steiner? Was he being mocked? No matter, it made for a lively picture.

Harvard's Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) joined Jim to talk about the Supreme Court, and the 2016 election. Tribe said that the court is doing its job, and doing its best. However, with the court divided four to four, it means that some lower court decisions will have the last word. "An eight justice court cannot be allowed to become the new normal," he said. Tribe said that Merrick Garland would be a great justice, and deserves a most serious deliberation.

An op-ed by Collin Poirot `18. Last night, Harvard University Dining Service (HUDS) workers ratified a new contract with the university following a historic strike that lasted 20 days. “I can report, coming out of our contract ratification meeting, that we achieved every goal without exception,” said Brian Lang, president of UNITE HERE Local 26, the union represented the workers in the negotiations. The contract, which raises the minimum pay for dining workers, requires Harvard to pay for any increases in healthcare co-pays, and provides fair compensation for workers facing seasonal layoffs during the summer, is major victory for HUDS workers and their allies on campus.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. As a lawyer, I’m embarrassed that the American Bar Association commissioned a report about Donald Trump’s use of libel threats, then refused to publish it out of fear that Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, would sue the organization for libel. The episode, however, dramatizes how effective libel threats are in chilling speech -- and how they work in real life, driven by the professional caution that lawyers cultivate on behalf of their clients.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Two important Guantanamo military commission cases are hovering on the edge of review by the U.S. Supreme Court, and the bad news is, both involve claims of legal overreach by government prosecutors. One defendant says he can’t be tried for the USS Cole bombing in 2000, because the U.S. wasn’t at war with al-Qaeda until Sept. 11, 2001. The other says he can’t be convicted of a conspiracy that didn’t come to fruition because international law doesn’t recognize such a crime. So far, neither defendant has prevailed in the lower courts, and it’s hard to say exactly how the Supreme Court would rule if it takes either of the cases. But what’s noteworthy is that, no matter the outcome, these two Guantanamo trials are going to end up tainted in the eyes of future legal scholars and analysts.

An op-ed by Visiting Fellow Lynn Kuok. The U.S. Navy on Friday conducted a freedom of navigation operation (Fonop) near disputed features in the South China Sea, its fourth in the past year. A destroyer, the USS Decatur, sailed “in the vicinity of the Paracel Islands,” close to but not within the 12-nautical-mile territorial limits of land features in the Paracels. In past Fonops, U.S. warships sailed within the 12-nautical-mile zone of land features claimed by China and other countries in the region. Those operations challenged unlawful requirements that a warship seek prior authorization or provide advance notification to exercise innocent passage in territorial waters. The latest operation was different.

The first line of Cass Sunstein’s latest book, The Ethics of Influence, announces: “We live in an age of psychology and behavioral economics—the behavioral sciences.” For Sunstein, a Harvard law professor and former Obama administration official, this is as momentous a statement as saying we live in an age of antibiotics, steam engines, or the Internet. But just saying that nudges are here to stay does not make it so. In fact, if their future were not in doubt, why the need for yet another book on the topic—and so soon after his Father’s Day-gift-ready book on Star Wars—arguing that they should be here to stay? Like the president he served, Sunstein is now focused on cementing his legacy.

Charting a path toward becoming an international lawyer can be difficult without strong mentoring, experts say. Marissa Brodney, a second-year student at Harvard Law School with an interest in international law, says students like her need to attend a law school that has a full roster of potential career mentors who can guide students to options they might not have otherwise contemplated. "There's no one way to enter the international law field," she says. The key, Brodney says, is discovering a fulfilling personal path.

The International Criminal Court has begun investigating war crimes in Georgia, is looking into British soldiers accused of torture in Iraq and, in one of its most politically delicate missions yet, sent a team to Israel to discuss crimes in Gaza. But as the court tries to expand into new geography and investigate new types of crimes, it faces the most serious challenge to its existence: Three nations, all from Africa, have announced that they will no longer work with the tribunal, intensifying a longstanding debate over whether it is biased against the continent...Even in Syria, under extremely dangerous conditions, evidence is being collected with an expectation that people suspected of war crimes will one day have their day in court. “We are now at a point of no return on the question of international criminal justice,” said Alex Whiting, a Harvard law professor and a former lawyer at the international court. “It is because the principle of international criminal justice has been established over these last 20 years that we are now so aware of it not being realized in Syria and elsewhere.”

German doctors killed Anna Weiss as part of a Nazi euthanasia program directed at individuals they classified as disabled. The woman’s so-called disability, as recorded in trial documents: being an “unsympathetic Czech Talmudic Jewess.” “That ‘unsympathetic’ woman deserved to be named,” said Matt Seccombe, who has been the primary analyst for Harvard Law School Library’s Nuremberg Trials Project. “In these mass atrocities, the names become numbers. They deserve to have their names recorded and remembered.”...The recently relaunched website allows everyone from scholars and researchers to casual history buffs to access the materials...Stephen Chapman, manager of the project scanning teams, said his sense of responsibility to the project only increased as he spent more time with the documents...Along with Chapman and Seccombe, the small team on the project includes digital archivist Kerri Fleming, web developer Paul Deschner, and curator of modern manuscripts Edwin Moloy.

Its effect can be explosive and painful: Harvard University professor Randall Kennedy has traced the history of the N-word to understand the evolution of the infamous racial slur. Kennedy joins special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault to discuss this history, including reappropriations of the word and the complexities and damages of its usage today.

Twenty-five years after Anita Hill testified during the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, the acclaimed attorney and academic denounced a long list of sexual harassment and assault cases, illustrating that the national conversation about such issues continues to evolve. Hill’s comments came during a ceremony Monday night in which she was presented with UC Merced’s Spendlove Prize for social justice, diplomacy and tolerance...Charles Ogletree Jr., a Merced native and the first recipient of the prize, represented Hill during the hearings. He’s now a Harvard Law School Jesse Climenko law professor, among numerous other titles and accomplishments. He said Monday night that Hill is one of the strongest and most courageous people he’s ever met.

The Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights recently selected 13 students to participate in the inaugural Human Rights Studies Working Group, which will expose students to resources at Harvard and beyond that focus on human rights work, according to EMR administrative director Tessa L. Desmond. Of the 13 students, 10 are undergraduates and three are graduate students...Law student and working group member Michael Jung [`18]said he hopes to use his experience at the Law School to help undergraduate members of the group in their human rights studies pursuits and to interact with a broad range of Harvard affiliates. “I wanted to meet groups of students and faculty members from all around Harvard that were interested in human rights,” he said.

NPR's Kelly McEvers talks to Harvard Law Professor Alex Whiting about the future of the International Criminal Court.