Media Mentions

Ken Gormley kicked off his official start as president of Duquesne University with good news for his employees: They're all getting a 2 percent raise...“With his new responsibilities,” said David Wilkins, Gormley's longtime associate and Harvard Law School professor, “he is destined to become a central figure in the world of higher education generally, at a time when universities desperately need the kind of subtle intelligence, openness of mind” and perseverance Gormley demonstrates.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe. In the early days of our nation, it was a crime to teach slaves to read. And through the first half of the 20th century, segregation funneled their descendants into inferior schools. Like the ugly attempts to disenfranchise African Americans through so-called literacy tests calculated to make them seem illiterate, these efforts were a perverse tribute to literacy’s power, which was recognized by the many people of color who fought so hard, against the odds, to educate themselves. Now, at least in theory, literacy is universally regarded as a human right. Every state makes K-12 education mandatory, and basic education has been recognized unanimously by the Supreme Court as “necessary to prepare citizens to participate effectively and intelligently in our open political system if we are to preserve freedom and independence,” to quote what Warren Burger, appointed chief justice by Richard Nixon, wrote in 1972. Yet as a carefully crafted lawsuit filed this month by seven Detroit schoolchildren reveals, deliberate indifference to public schools in already disadvantaged communities means that many children of color still do not receive an education — at least not an education that will prepare them to participate effectively and intelligently in our system.

When an Oreo-flavored chocolate bar hits the shelves in the U.S. soon, most consumers will look at it as just another treat. But Wall Street being Wall Street, this innocent indulgence is way more than that. The little chocolate bar is really a howitzer in a rolling 15-year battle by a parade of suitors to take over one of the great iconic brands: Hershey Co...As if that weren’t bad enough, an unusual Pennsylvania law gives the state’s attorney general power to block Hershey takeovers, even when the trust wants to sell. Hershey is a big employer in Pennsylvania. Locals, perhaps rightly, fear that they could lose their jobs in a takeover as a result of cost cutting. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania attorneys general, who oversee the trust by law, have a habit of running for governor. This means they’re often tempted to do what’s “considered expedient locally,” says Harvard Law School professor Robert Sitkoff, an expert on charitable trusts.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Can the government block the online publication of files that let anyone make an assault rifle on a 3-D printer? In a defeat for free speech and a win for gun-control advocates, an appeals court has said yes. The court declined to suspend a State Department regulation that treats posting the files as a foreign export of munitions. Although the impulse to block the easy creation of untraceable weapons is admirable, the court got it wrong. The First Amendment can’t tolerate a prohibition on publishing unclassified information -- even if the information is potentially harmful.

Even if the Russian government was behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and various other political organizations and figures, the US government's options under international law are extremely limited, according to Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and former US assistant attorney general. Goldsmith, who served at the Justice Department during the administration of George W. Bush and resigned after a dispute over the legal justifications for "enhanced interrogation" techniques, spoke on Tuesday about the DNC hack during a Yale University panel. "Assuming that the attribution is accurate," Goldsmith said, "the US has very little basis for a principled objection." In regard to the theft of data from the DNC and others, Goldsmith said that "it's hard to say that it violates international law, and the US acknowledges that it engages in the theft of foreign political data all the time."

The recent special, “The Case Of: JonBenét Ramsey,” which aired on CBS earlier this week, has drawn widespread attention for exploring the 20-year-old unsolved mystery of the 6-year-old girl’s death. In the show, investigators examined evidence and came to the conclusion that JonBenét’s brother Burke Ramsey, who was 9 at the time, was the likely culprit. While not everyone bought into the theory that the boy killed his little sister — perhaps by accident — , and then his parents covered it up to protect him, it’s gotten a lot of people talking...On top of those elements, Harvard Law Professor John Goldberg said that because Ramsey has spoken about the case, like he did in an interview with Dr. Phil, a court would likely consider him a ““limited purpose public figure.” This means that when it comes to statements made about Burke in connection to the case, he would be considered a public figure, which carries an additional burden. Goldberg said, “Burke could only prevail on a defamation claim against CBS or the investigators by proving not only that the allegations against him are false, but also that CBS and/or the investigators either KNEW that they were false when they made them, or were RECKLESS with regard to the truth or falsity of the allegations.”

China has been shoveling excess amounts of steel onto global markets, playing a major role in driving down global prices and rankling American producers and government officials. Now a massive shakeup is taking place in China’s juggernaut steel industry, and the question on many people’s minds is what effect this will have on that country’s ongoing trade dispute with the U.S....“China has to deal with supply-side reforms on the one hand and on the other hand be sensitive to labor issues,” Mark Wu, assistant professor at Harvard Law School who specialized in international trade law, told Salon. “There’s a need to reform in China regardless of what types of trade measures are being imposed by China’s trading partners.” Consolidating the Chinese steel industry into a smaller number of players might lead to more effective planning, Wu said, comparing the move to having three airlines flying a specific route instead of 20. “Consolidating these players makes it easier for the Chinese industry to try to monitor overall supply in order to mitigate the scale of an overcapacity problem in the future,” he said.

Fifteen student groups from Harvard Law School issued a statement on their website reproaching Harvard’s bargaining record with its dining service workers, characterizing the ongoing stalemate in HUDS’ most recent round of contract talks as a class and racial justice “struggle.”...“We the students of Harvard Law School refuse to abandon HUDS workers in their struggle for justice!” the groups wrote in the page-long statement. The signatories include groups such as Reclaim Harvard Law—whose members spent the past year rallying the school’s administration for, among other demands, increased diversity faculty and students—as well the BGLTQ group Lambda at Harvard Law School and Harvard’s chapter of the National Lawyer’s Guild.

An op-ed by Emily Broad Leib. Multiple policies could be implemented to address food waste and its impacts on the environment, food security, and our climate. In particular, we should eliminate laws that cause healthy food to go to waste, incentivize food donation and, when needed, enact penalties for senseless food waste. Let's start with consumer confusion, and the misguided laws regarding food date labels. Eighty four percent of consumers report they frequently throw food away after the sell-by date has passed, despite date labels being indicators of freshness, not safety. What's more, in the absence of federal law on date labels, no two states have the same date label rules. Several states even restrict or ban the sale or donation of past-date foods. Federal legislation is needed to eliminate state laws that require past-date — but still safe — foods to be wasted, and to standardize date labels so they are clearer to consumers.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Plenty of local governments open their meetings with a quick, generic prayer from a member of the clergy. But is it different when the lawmakers themselves say “Let us pray” and then supplicate God to open everyone’s heart to the message of Jesus Christ? Does that violate the Constitution? In a significant defeat for religious liberty, a federal appeals court has upheld a continuous practice of sectarian, public prayer by the members of a North Carolina board of county commissioners. The dissenting judge, the distinguished conservative J. Harvie Wilkinson, said the “seat of government” in the case was made to resemble “a house of worship.” The court’s majority said it was just following Supreme Court precedent.

The state’s highest court, tossing out a Boston man’s gun conviction, ordered judges Tuesday to consider whether a black person who walks away from a police officer is attempting to avoid the “recurring indignity of being racially profiled” — and not because the person is guilty of a crime. The Supreme Judicial Court overturned the conviction of Jimmy Warren, citing studies by the American Civil Liberties Union and Boston police, both of which found that black people were more likely to be stopped and frisked by police between 2007 and 2010...Retired federal Judge Nancy Gertner described the ruling as “an extraordinarily significant decision” because the courts will be forced to consider an officer’s actions in these cases. “Up until now it has been too easy for courts to legitimize, after the fact, police decisions on the ground, giving them deference under circumstances where deference is not warranted,” said Gertner, a senior lecturer at Harvard Law School. “It should affect police behavior going forward.”

Donald Trump has maintained for seven months that he cannot release his tax returns because he is being audited by the Internal Revenue Service, making him the first major-party nominee for president since President Gerald Ford to withhold such records from the public. Last week, his son Donald Trump Jr. gave a different excuse for not releasing the documents, saying the returns would be “distracting.” With so much speculation surrounding them, the GOP nominee and wealthy businessman’s tax filings may just be the most wanted information of the 2016 campaign...“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.

Bioethics, the law, and how they pertain to health information technologies, reproduction, and research have raised questions, and often hackles, since humans began to debate the boundaries of life. Should physicians assist in the death of a patient? Or create embryos and destroy them in the service of creating stem cell lines? Under what circumstances should the state be allowed to involuntarily hospitalize individuals, and what procedures are in place to protect the rights of those individuals? Harvard Law School Professor Glenn Cohen brought those questions, and an approach to consider them, to an interactive, one-night class at the Harvard Ed Portal that delved into the intricacies surrounding the legal, medical, and ethical aspects of bioethics. The Sept. 13 lecture, attended by nearly 60 people and audited online by more than 100 viewers from all over the world, was held in conjunction with Cohen’s HarvardX course, “Bioethics: The Law, Medicine, and Ethics of Reproductive Technologies and Genetics.”

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. Lincoln made sure we had railroads; FDR made sure we had electricity; Eisenhower made sure we had highways. What U.S. president will make sure we make a national upgrade to competitive, last-mile-fiber-plus-advanced-wireless connections? The question has become even more vital after a disappointing recent court decision that gave the thumbs up to a tactic of big communications companies who, for business reasons, refuse to extend service to rural communities: they can continue to lobby for laws that prevent those communities from setting up their own networks.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Last Wednesday was a historic day for behavioral science. The White House released the annual report of its Social and Behavioral Sciences Team. The U.K.’s Behavioural Insights Team released its own annual report on the same day. With the recent creation of similar teams in Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and Qatar, the two reports deserve careful attention. Outlining dozens of initiatives, the reports offer two general lessons about uses of behavioral science by governments. First, both teams are enlisting behavioral science not for controversial purposes, but to encourage people to benefit from public programs and to comply with the law. Second, governments are constantly testing the tools to see whether they actually work.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The secrecy rules for grand juries contain no exceptions for cases with historical importance. In an important victory for historians, however, a divided appeals court is unsealing testimony from a 1942 leak investigation after the Battle of Midway. The decision, which was opposed by the Obama administration, sheds some light on the debate about whether the leaks by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden were justified by historic importance or were an inexcusable violation of national security.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. If Hillary Clinton wins in November, will the lame-duck Republican Senate confirm Judge Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court? Last week, Clinton said she would look for diversity and wouldn’t feel bound to renominate Garland, which in theory should give Republican senators more reason to confirm Garland, before Clinton can nominate a more liberal candidate. Yet a careful analysis of Republican senators’ incentives in the case of a Democratic win in November points the other way. If Republicans lose the presidency, the party will enter an intense period of self-reflection and disarray. And if they also lose the Senate, the disarray will be greater still. Under those conditions, it seems most likely that Republican senators wouldn’t want the final act of their majority session to be acquiescence to the judicial candidate nominated by President Barack Obama. Instead, looking to future primary challenges, they’ll have reason to reject Garland by denying him a vote -- even if that may lead to a more liberal Supreme Court in the long run.

Anyone paying attention to Tuesday's Senate Banking Committee hearing over Wells Fargo's sales tactics is likely to hear a lot about a single word: "Clawbacks." It's the practice of doing just what it sounds like: Taking money back from an executive for compensation they've already been paid for things such as misconduct, gross negligence or "material" errors...Jesse Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School who studies corporate governance, says "it's still extremely rare to hear of a public company using its own voluntarily adopted clawback provision" to go after their own executive's pay.

Harvard Law School first-year students arrived on campus last month to an orientation program redesigned to better help them understand the educational road ahead and foster an inclusive atmosphere...We spoke with dean of students Marcia Sells about the revamped orientation and what was new at the Cambridge, Massachusetts, school this year.

Make no mistake, the Clean Power Plan is almost certainly heading for an ultimate showdown at the U.S. Supreme Court. The stakes are so high that virtually any lower court decision will be challenged. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit slated to consider the case first, with oral arguments beginning Sept. 27. So is that court's decision just a mere formality? Absolutely not, say experts..."The lower court decision sets up the case," said Ari Peskoe, senior fellow in electricity law at the Harvard Law School Environmental Law Program Policy Initiative. "The D.C. Circuit decision is going to be important regardless."

The IDF’s war crimes probes in the 2014 Gaza war are a thinly veiled attempt to appear to investigate while providing a whitewash mechanism to clear all the soldiers, commanders and politicians involved of wrongdoing, a B’Tselem report said on Tuesday....In a recent posting on the influential Just Security blog, top ICC commentator Alex Whiting (along with Ryan Goodman) wrote that “where military forces follow targeting practices that repeatedly result in unjustified civilian casualties...‘or is aware that it will occur in the ordinary course of events’ – could provide a hook for prosecution.” While not addressing Israel specifically, he added, “The Office of the Prosecutor has indicated that it might argue that failing to correct a process that results in repeated unjustified civilian casualties could satisfy the intent requirement in the Statute.”