Media Mentions

Mary T.W. Robinson, a former president of Ireland and current United Nations Special Envoy on El Niño and Climate, spoke about widespread human displacement due to climate change at a discussion at Harvard Law School on Thursday evening. Law School Dean Martha L. Minow moderated the discussion in front of a packed audience. “There is nobody on earth who is more involved, who has done more on the subjects that bring us here today,” Minow said when introducing Robinson. ... “The piece that really stood out to me was the need for us to most recognize the problem, but to think about it in a way that is proactive so that we are doing things that are active,” clinical professor of law Tyler R. Giannini said.

U.S. securities regulators are set to soon propose dramatic changes to how investors choose between board candidates offered by activist investors and those offered by a company. The Securities and Exchange Commission is expected as early as next week to propose rules that would make it easier for shareholders to vote on board candidates nominated by investors, in competition with those pushed by the company’s management, according to people familiar with the matter...The current rules’ limit on choosing from both slates may have resulted in the wrong candidates being elected inasmuch as 22% of all votes conducted from 2008 through 2015, according to a forthcoming study by Scott Hirst, a professor at Harvard Law School. The study, aimed at providing the first set of data to the debate about universal proxies, looked at what would happen if shareholders were able to vote freely for their favored candidates by reviewing “withhold” votes. These withhold votes come up when a shareholder votes on one card, either from management or the dissident, but doesn’t cast shares for one or more of those candidates in what amounts to a protest abstention.

Representatives from NASA, Space Systems Loral, and SpaceX discussed the future of laws governing outer space during a panel at the Law School Wednesday. As technology advances and the possibility of humans populating other planets comes ever closer, panelists proposed potential methods of expanding current law practices to fit a new frontier that is not on Earth—a sort of “space law.” Stephen F. Meil, a Law School student and editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, the organization that organized the event, said there were few formal programs in "space law" in the country. For NASA Chief of Staff Michael J. French, it was precisely this unknown territory that drew him to the industry in the first place. “I foresaw an upcoming intersection of business, law, politics, and all those unique things in a new and undefined way,” French said.

Fatima Al Qubaisi [LL.M. `17] has gone from being the first Emirati female student to graduate with a law degree from Paris-Sorbonne University in Abu Dhabi to the first Emirati woman to join Harvard law school in the US. It’s probably no surprise because she comes from a family of pioneers known for their achievements. "I belong to a family that likes to break records. My aunt, Amal Al Qubaisi, is one of my role models as she is the first female President of the Federal National Council," says Ms Al Qubaisi, 25.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Compared with the rest of the third presidential debate Wednesday night, the opening conversation about the Constitution was practically Lincoln-Douglas-like as the candidates answered questions and didn't interrupt each other. But the discussion of the seminal gun control case D.C. v. Heller was borderline incomprehensible unless you've recently taken constitutional law. And in giving an answer intended to express moderation on gun rights, Hillary Clinton missed a chance to express support for the original meaning of the Constitution.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. An extraordinary poll released Wednesday showed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump both losing in Utah to Evan McMullin, a conservative Mormon ex-CIA officer only on the ballot in 11 states. The best explanation for the rise of this independent candidate is that Mormons, who tend to have deeply conservative values, are genuinely repulsed by Donald Trump. And not just by the crude comments and allegations of sexual assault that recently came to light, but also by Trump’s anti-Muslim sentiment, which the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints implicitly condemned 10 months ago.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Is Brexit unconstitutional? That’s the key issue in a suit argued this week before the High Court in London. What makes the question especially piquant is that Britain doesn’t have a single written constitution, but rather a complex tradition of constitutional law made up of principles, precedents and practices accrued over generations. Under those principles, the answer to whether the U.K. can leave the European Union without a parliamentary vote is … maybe. It seems most likely that the High Court -- or the Supreme Court, which will hear an appeal next -- will say that Brexit can be accomplished without it. But to reach that conclusion, the British courts will have to expand existing principles, and grapple with the meaning of the referendum as a political tool. It’s a sad day for the country that arguably invented representative government.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The Israeli press and government are in an uproar about a resolution submitted to UNESCO, the United Nations’s cultural agency, by seven Arab states that, they say, denies the connection between the Jewish people and the Temple Mount. The resolution, ratified Tuesday, is hopelessly one-sided, which is not a shock for a UN entity that operates on a majority vote and without a Security Council veto. But what’s fascinating is that the Israelis are treating the resolution as an assault on their religious-historical claims to the site, which the report addresses only obliquely. This is a deepening problem on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the slow transformation from a national struggle into a religious one. And the religious struggle never seems more intractable than when the topic is the Temple Mount.

One junk-bond trader at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. earned more than $100 million in trading profits for the firm earlier this year, an unusual gain at a time when new regulations have pushed Wall Street to take fewer risks. The gains were the work of Tom Malafronte, a managing director on the bank’s high-yield-bond desk in New York. The 34-year-old trader bought billions of dollars in junk corporate debt on the cheap starting in January, then locked in profits as prices recovered, according to people familiar with the matter...It is difficult—if not impossible—to define clearly the difference between trades made to meet clients’ demands and those conducted just to make money, said Hal Scott, a professor with Harvard Law School who has testified before Congress about efforts to regulate the banking industry. “No one has been able to distinguish between market making and prop trading,” Mr. Scott said.

Lawrence Lessig is a professor at Harvard Law School, a leading advocate for campaign finance reform, and short-lived presidential candidate. He was also, in the view of the Clinton campaign, circa August 2015, a “smug,” “pompous,” loathsome guy whom a reasonable person might wish “to kick the shit out of on Twitter.”...On Tuesday, these private barbs became public, thanks to WikiLeaks. And so, as Lessig made his way to New York to see his sick father, his inbox filled up with notifications about how much Neera Tanden once claimed to despise him. Reading through the email, Lessig was outraged — on Tanden’s behalf. Per Lessig’s blog: I’m a big believer in leaks for the public interest. That’s why I support Snowden, and why I believe the President should pardon him. But I can’t for the life of me see the public good in a leak like this — at least one that reveals no crime or violation of any important public policy.

On Aug. 11, 2015, the news media picked up on the plans of Larry Lessig, the Harvard Law professor and anti-corruption activist, to run for president in the Democratic primaries. Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, apparently was not pleased. “You know what average Americans need?” Tanden appears to have written in an email allegedly obtained in a massive hack of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's account. “The smugness of Larry Lessig.”...“I can’t for the life of me see the public good in a leak like this — at least one that reveals no crime or violation of any important public policy,” wrote Lessig. “We all deserve privacy. The burdens of public service are insane enough without the perpetual threat that every thought shared with a friend becomes Twitter fodder. Neera has only ever served in the public (and public interest) sector. Her work has always and only been devoted to advancing her vision of the public good. It is not right that she should bear the burden of this sort of breach.”

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.