Media Mentions

In Massachusetts, both members of an unmarried couple can now be considered the parents of their children, even though only one is the biological parent. That's the unanimous decision of the state's highest court..."This decision, in the long run, points to the severance of parentage from biological obsession, that is, whether the two people are two men or two women or a man and woman really shouldn't matter in terms of who gets to at least make a case to a court that it's in the best interests of the child that that person have parental rights," said Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe.

It’s hard to know how to interpret food date labels. If it smells fine but it’s past the best-by mark, should you pitch it? And what does “sell by” really mean anyway? Professor Emily Broad Leib, director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic and deputy director of the Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, is on a mission to help decode the mixed messages sent by those puzzling stamps on our food. The professor was recently honored by Food & Wine and Forbes as one of the 20 most innovative women in Food and Drink for her work surrounding food waste.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. “I'd like to buy a new boomerang please. Also, can you tell me how to throw the old one away?” Never mind whether you think that joke is funny. Do you think your best friend would like it? You might think you know the answer; after all, people like each other partly because they make each other laugh. At the very least, you might be confident that a mere machine, equipped with data about how other people react to jokes, couldn't do better than you in answering the question of what your best friend will find funny. If so, think again.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The first Monday in October this year is also the first day of Rosh Hashana -- so oral arguments for the new Supreme Court term will begin instead on a Tuesday. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who was reputedly unsympathetic to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s request to turn the court’s Christmas party into a holiday party, must be spinning in his grave. But Rehnquist’s former law clerk, Chief Justice John Roberts, is apparently more ecumenical -- and it’s a different era, with three Jews on the court and a fourth nominated to it. Nevertheless, the Jewish New Year is two days long (or, one long day according to the rabbis). And perhaps it’s appropriate that on the day when, according to tradition, God sits in judgment of his flock, the court will consider one case about crime and one about punishment. The first is about whether it’s federal bank fraud to rip off a customer rather than the bank itself. And the other, more subtle case is about whether double jeopardy allows charges to be retried when the original jury acquittal was logically irrational.

Donald Trump tax documents were published without his permission in The New York Times, but that doesn't necessarily make for a clear-cut criminal case against the newspaper or its source...Yet the Trump tax disclosure also comes at a time when waves of hacks and leaks are inuring people to the idea of invading privacy, notes Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard Law School professor whose specialties include privacy. It may be one thing when journalists are revealing information about as public a figure as Trump, but if everyone's information and communications come to be seen as fair game, "at some point, this is not, then, a phenomenon that is about public accountability," he said. "It's a phenomenon that could be chilling."

The United States Supreme Court today declined to hear the case of Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger. A jury in 2013 convicted Bulger for his role in 11 murders, extortion and drug offenses in the 1970s and 1980s. Because of the decision, the 87-year old will continue to serve his life sentence. Guest: Nancy Gertner, former Massachusetts federal judge, senior lecturer on law at Harvard Law School and WBUR legal analyst.

An op-ed by Jack M. Balkin and Jonathan Zittrain. We tell online services what we like, who we love, what we are doing, and where we live, work, and play. And they in turn provide us with a window to the world, shaping what we see and suggesting what we should do. As we use these services, they learn more and more about us. They see who we are, but we are unable to see into their operations or understand how they use our data. As a result, we have to trust online services, but we have no real guarantees that they will not abuse our trust. Companies share information about us in any number of unexpected and regrettable ways, and the information and advice they provide can be inconspicuously warped by the companies’ own ideologies or by their relationships with those who wish to influence us, whether people with money or governments with agendas. To protect individual privacy rights, we’ve developed the idea of “information fiduciaries.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The last Supreme Court term was strange by accident. Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in February left the court with only eight members, and several 4-4 decisions left major issues unresolved. Anticipated decisions on religious liberty, union dues and presidential power over deportation will have to wait for the court to return to nine justices. The big-ticket cases that were decided, on abortion and affirmative action, were products of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s move to the left. The Supreme Court term that starts Monday will be strange by design. The Senate’s refusal to vote or even to hold a hearing on President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland means the court enters the term shorthanded.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The fate of the Sept. 11 families’ lawsuit against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia may depend on the Partridge family. The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, enacted by Congress on Thursday over President Barack Obama’s veto, is supposed to let the suit go forward. But for the federal courts to have legal authority, the families will most likely have to show that the Sept. 11 attacks were “effects” of actions taken by the Saudi government. And the leading U.S. Supreme Court case governing what counts as effects involved the actress Shirley Jones, known for her role as Shirley Partridge in the 1970s show “The Partridge Family.” Jones sued a writer and editor for the National Enquirer where she lived in California over a libelous article that was written in Florida.

The New York Times’ publication of part of Donald Trump’s tax returns only revealed a thin slice of the real estate mogul’s finances — not enough to draw conclusions about how much he’s paid in taxes over the years and nothing indicating any illegal nonpayment, experts said...But without seeing his returns from those years, or returns leading up to 1995, there’s no way to determine what he paid, said Stephen Shay, a Harvard Law professor and tax expert. “There still remains a large amount of information that would be needed — not the least of which would be the rest of his tax returns — in order to understand what to make of it,” Shay said.

Dean Baquet wasn't bluffing. The New York Times executive editor said during a visit to Harvard in September that he would risk jail to publish Donald Trump's tax returns. He made good on his word Saturday night when the Times published Trump tax documents from 1995, which show the Republican presidential nominee claimed losses of $916 million that year - enough to avoid paying federal income taxes for as many as 18 years afterward..."The courts could say, if the public thinks the tax returns are so important, let it demand that the candidate authorize the IRS to release them on pain of losing votes," said Jonathan Zittrain, a privacy expert and professor at Harvard Law School. Zittrain told me that "if the New York Times received the return information not from the government after it was filed but from a private citizen, such as one working for Trump, and from Trump's own records, criminal liability may be less clear. Which could mean that ascertaining where the material didn't come from is as important as where it did."

...The international adoption system can be murky. Critics say it is not in the best interests of children to be adopted by families from another country and to grow up outside their native culture. But supporters insist if children are given a loving home, that in itself is in a child’s best interest...On this episode of The Stream, we speak with...Elizabeth Bartholet, Director, Child Advocacy Program at Harvard Law School.

The threat of rain did not deter nearly 400 Harvard affiliates from marching in front of Massachusetts Hall Friday afternoon in support of Harvard’s dining workers, who announced earlier in the day that they intend to strike next Wednesday should the University not comply with their demands...Following the rally Friday evening, workers, union representatives, and students converged on Harvard Law School’s student lounge for a "speakout” event hosted by the Harvard National Lawyers Guild. Several HUDS workers shared with supporters their personal experiences of working at Harvard in a discussion moderated by Law student and Reclaim Harvard Law member Marco R. Castanos [`18]...“We recognize that the struggles of people from marginalized communities and people of color are universal, they’re not just confined to students. So it wouldn’t make sense for Reclaim and the strike not to stand in solidarity with one another,” Castanos said in an interview. “The struggles that they’re going for, to me at least, they’re synonymous.”

Since 2008, Darryl Dewayne Edwards has been a guest of the federal prison system, serving a sentence of life without parole. Though he had a fairly minor criminal record at the time of his arrest on drug and weapons charges, he received a mandatory life sentence after rejecting a plea bargain, and exercising his right to go to trial...Edwards’s release — and those of two other federal prisoners so far — was won by a group of young legal advocates. A group of Harvard Law School students, supervised by attorneys from the law firm of Goodwin Procter, has filed clemency petitions for more than a dozen federal prisoners who could qualify for release under guidelines set forth by the Justice Department...Among those answering the call was Larry Schwartztol, director of the Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School...Two of his students, Lark Turner and Molly Bunke, have worked on successful petitions...Turner said she went to law school with the hope of eventually influencing policy on mass incarceration. “The idea that you can go to law school and in your first year you can start working on things that matter so much it’s pretty incredible,” she said...“I think this experience taught me a lot about being an effective advocate,” Bunke said. “That’s why I came here, and that’s what I want to do when I leave.”

...the Gazette asked scholars from across Harvard to reflect on the leadership of our 44th president: what they most admired, what was disappointing, and what most surprised them...Carol Steiker: Most admire: The Affordable Care Act was a signal achievement — seemingly impossible at the outset but now the law of the land and making a huge difference in the lives of millions. The ACA will be remembered as one of Obama’s most important legacies. Disappointing: Obama did not make criminal justice reform a major priority, and his administration has made only modest contributions to addressing this area of gross injustice and shameful waste of capital, both financial and human. Surprising: I would not have predicted the utter impasse that Obama has reached with Congress, in which both ordinary legislation and the Senate’s confirmation of Supreme Court nominees have ground to halt, despite the president’s efforts to seek bipartisan solutions.

The prospects for a more competitive broadband market have grown grimmer of late, if it's even possible. Americans already have little, if any, choice when it comes to broadband providers...AT&T is also front in center in another fight aimed at forestalling competition: denying would-be competitors access to utility poles. Many cities do not have authority over their own poles, which are often controlled by utilities or the telecom companies. If a new service provider wants to move into an area and string fiber, it faces two bureaucratic nightmares: getting an agreement in place with the pole owners, and then getting the physical access to the poles to string a new wire. Susan Crawford calls these two sources of delays and spiraling costs Swamp One and Swamp Two. "A handful of companies  --  the usual villains in the internet access story  --  is very interested in keeping the status quo in place by quietly making sure that access to these vertical conflict zones is fraught with difficulties," Crawford says.

Nearly 80,000 students of defunct for-profit giant Corinthian Colleges are facing some form of debt collection, even though the U.S. Department of Education unearthed enough evidence of fraud to forgive their student loans, according to an investigation by the staff of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)....“The department knows that these borrowers, who have already been cheated of an education, are entitled to relief,” said Deanne Loonin, an attorney at Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, who is working on the case. “Williams is asking for a court decision that the widespread fraud of Corinthian is a bar to the collection of defaulted loans from former Corinthian students through the mechanism of Treasury offset.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. A federal appeals court this week upheld an Alabama law that bans political action committees from making donations to other political action committees. That should be good news for Democrats, who generally oppose the Citizens United decision and the flood of political spending it released. But the twist is that the law was devised to interfere with the work of the Alabama Democratic Conference, and it was the losing party in the lawsuit.

On Wednesday, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in the case of Commonwealth v. White that police do not have blanket authority to seize cellphones in criminal investigations. The case had to do with police officers investigating an armed robbery and fatal shooting in 2010. The officers seized a suspect's cellphone from his high school without a search warrant. In order to do so, the officers needed probable cause that a warrant would have been approved, but the court ruled the suspicion that a phone may have contained evidence of the crime is insufficient. Guest: Nancy Gertner, former Massachusetts federal judge, senior lecturer on law at Harvard Law School and WBUR legal analyst.

For the first time, the world’s highest criminal court ruled this week that destroying cultural antiquities is a war crime. The case, handled by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, spotlights the risk to historic sites in places controlled by Islamic extremists, who have traded plundered antiquities on the black market or destroyed them in a twisted interpretation of religious law. Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, a member of a jihadist group linked to Al Qaeda, was sentenced to nine years in prison for organizing the destruction of centuries-old Muslim shrines in Timbuktu, Mali...The case against Mr. Mahdi “does signal that these sorts of cases are on the court’s radar,” said Alex Whiting, a professor at Harvard Law School and a former senior official in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. “The court is very much a court of opportunity,” he added. “It’s a court with very little power, little resources to investigate and very few tools to collect evidence. Is cultural heritage something the court will now focus on? Now that they’ve done one case, a second, similar case is unlikely.”

In seeking to defuse the firestorm over its sham accounts, Wells Fargo & Co.’s board turned to an old, but obscure gambit – getting its top leader to pay up. John Stumpf, the bank's chairman and CEO, will forfeit about $41 million of unvested stock awards and forgo his salary while the company investigates its retail banking sales practices...Companies’ general reluctance to claw back pay may stem from their desire to retain top executives, avoid litigation by departed executives, and minimize bad publicity, says Jesse Fried, professor of law at Harvard Law School. Some companies may choose to reduce a CEO’s current pay rather than claw back already-received pay. “It is much less embarrassing for the CEO,” Fried says. Dodd-Frank “will require companies to recoup excess pay arising in connection with a (financial) restatement. There will be a lot more clawbacks because companies will not have discretion to forgo recoupment when a covered executive has received excess pay,” Fried says.