Media Mentions

An op-ed by Derecka Purnell `17. I named my son, who was born just days before the election, after Marcus Garvey, a West Indian revolutionary most celebrated for leading the “Back to Africa” movement in the 1920s. Garvey believed that by returning to the motherland, black people, who were oppressed in the United States, would have a greater chance at liberation. I admire Garvey and understand that perspective, and I know that black people today face many similar injustices to the ones he was reacting to. But, in the wake of the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, I don’t want or plan to go anywhere: I’ve decided to stay here and fight as a political organizer, the same way I have for the past several years.

The Electoral College polarized Americans from its inception. Created by the framers of the Constitution during the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the College was put forth as a way to give citizens the opportunity to vote in presidential elections, with the added safeguard of a group of knowledgeable electors with final say on who would ultimately lead the country, another limit on the burgeoning nation’s democratic ideals..."[Southerners] wanted slaves to count the same as anyone else, and some northerners thought slaves shouldn’t be counted at all because they were treated as property rather than as people," says author Michael Klarman, a professor at Harvard Law School. In his recently released book, The Framers’ Coup, Klarman discusses how each framer’s interests came into play while creating the document that would one day rule the country. “One of two biggest divisions at the Philadelphia convention was over how slaves would count in purposes of apportioning the House of Representatives," he explains. The issue vexed and divided the founders, presenting what James Madison, a slave owner, called a “difficulty…of a serious nature."

An op-ed by Winston Shi `19. It is Nov. 22, 2016, and the newly minted Senior Counselor to Donald Trump is angry. Even if Asians are navigating America fairly, Steve Bannon doesn’t like the fact that there are so many Asian CEOs in Silicon Valley. “A country is more than an economy,” he explained. “We’re a civic society.” Apparently Asians still tear apart the social fabric of this country if we do too well. It is Nov. 22, 2016, and Harvard is about to break for Thanksgiving. And for many people at Harvard, there seems to be awfully little to be thankful for. But let’s just remember that Donald Trump won the election because a lot of white Americans don’t think there’s very much to be thankful for too.

An op-ed by Delcianna Winders, fellow. On the centennial of San Francisco native son Jack London's death, it’s worth reflecting on his legacy for animals. Most known for his writings about animals in the wild, London also cared deeply about their captive counterparts. Shortly before his death, London, having observed — and been appalled by — circus training methods, wrote from Glen Ellen that “behind ninety-nine of every hundred trained-animal” acts lies “cold-blooded, conscious, deliberate cruelty and torment. … Cruelty, as a fine art, has attained its perfect flower in the trained-animal world.” He urged “all humans” to “inform themselves” of the “inevitable and eternal cruelty” inherent in animal acts, and to walk out during animal performances. “Show the management” that animal acts “are unpopular,” and they will stop offering them, London promised. And he was right.

The increasing dominance of Republicans inside statehouses across the nation has spurred talk that a constitutional convention — the very meeting that crafted the US Constitution — could be more than just a Hail Mary thrown to conservatives. Conservative groups and Republican lawmakers have been planning for the possibility for years, although it picked up steam three years ago after a group of state lawmakers met at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, just outside Washington...Under the current Constitution, if they could get enough states to approve opening a convention, any changes made in the convention would still have to be approved by at least 38 states — the three-fourths majority of states. But they could also rewrite the rules entirely — like the original framers of the Constitution did in 1787. Mike Klarman, Kirkland and Ellis professor of law at Harvard Law School and a constitutional historian, notes that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 had rules they had agreed on and were only supposed to tinker with the existing Articles of Confederation.

President Barack Obama will award Chicago’s legendary Newton Minow a Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday, coming full circle from when Minow met him as a law student spending a summer at his Loop law firm...He is the former Federal Communications Commission chairman who famously called television a “vast wasteland” in a 1961 speech about broadcasting and the public interest. “He found a path that dealt always with mass communications as a way to enhance democracy,” Martha, one of Minow’s three daughters, told me on Monday.

A commentary by David E. White, Jr. `17. Sometime around 1903, an unknown artist framed this map from the U.S. Census in 1900 with gray cardstock matting and superimposed a new title, “Extent of the Negro Problem: Social Conditions, United States Census of 1900, Composition and Distribution of Population.” This re-imagination of chief geographer Henry Gannett’s illustration of the population density of black Americans offers a cartographic diagnosis of an endemic disease: poor social conditions in the South, chiefly caused by Jim Crow’s relegation of black Americans to less than full citizenship despite the recent passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments during Reconstruction. History proves that en masse migration to the North and West, popularly known as the Great Migration, emerged as the preferred course of treatment for such a debilitating disease.

Not long after he took office, President Obama sought advice from the Justice Department about a potential conflict of interest involving a foreign government. He wanted to know whether he could accept the Nobel Peace Prize. The answer turned on the Emoluments Clause, an obscure provision of the Constitution that now poses risks for President-elect Donald J. Trump should he continue to reap benefits from transactions with companies controlled by foreign governments...Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, said that he found Mr. Tillman’s argument “singularly unpersuasive” and that it “would pose grave danger to the republic, especially in the case of a president with extensive global holdings that he seems bent on having his own children manage even after he assumes office.”

Three African countries – Burundi, South Africa, and The Gambia –recently announced their intentions to withdraw from the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC)...What needs to be addressed, instead, is the truth of the matter: African leaders with credible evidence of their involvement in atrocities fear the ICC. They fear that the airing of their criminality will delegitimize them and push them out of power (as Alex Whiting argues, the withdrawals show the power of the rule of law to intimidate). Given that they cannot control the ICC’s independent judicial process or the evidence that will be publicized, they take the fight outside of the courtroom.

From border to border and coast to coast, hundreds of cities, counties and police departments that have resisted compliance with federal immigration laws are girding for a showdown with the Trump administration over so-called "sanctuary cities."..."There is a lot at stake, but I don't think these cities would be in jeopardy of losing their money because of their sanctuary policies," says Phil Torrey, a lecturer at Harvard Law School who specializes in criminal and immigration law.

UMass Amherst officials, under pressure from students, said on Friday they were committed to making the campus a safe haven for undocumented students, faculty, and staff. But they stopped short of meeting the students’ demand that the school be declared a sanctuary campus...Debbie Anker, a professor at Harvard Law School and director of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic, said that while there has been significant amount of research into the issues that crop up in sanctuary cities, a group of Harvard law students is just starting to tease out the details of what it will mean for schools to become sanctuaries. “This is all so new, ” said Anker. “It’s only been a week since the election but already students are coming together to have these conversations, which is heartening.”

Students at more than 100 colleges and universities throughout the country - including in Massachusetts - staged a walkout on Wednesday, protesting the election of Donald Trump and standing in solidarity with undocumented students who could face deportation under President-elect Trump's immigration policies...“I think there is a balance between not fueling panic because we don’t know specifically what he is going to do, but I think it is important to have an action plan and to start looking at different procedures that can be put into place,” said Philip Torrey, a lecturer with the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program and the Supervising Attorney for the Harvard Immigration Project. One step colleges could take, Torrey said, is to prevent federal officials from arresting students on campus by requiring a warrant.

Shortly after he became president-elect, at a time when most incoming leaders are greeting well-wishers and pondering their plans for the nation, Donald Trump reportedly tried to leverage his new status against a foreign leader to enrich himself. Argentine President Mauricio Macri was one of many such leaders to call Trump and congratulate him on his electoral college victory over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. According to a report in the Argentinian paper La Nacion...Trump asked Macri during this call to “authorize a building he’s constructing in Buenos Aires.”...Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe agrees. “If this report is accurate,” Tribe told ThinkProgress, “it’s both alarming and disgraceful and clearly implicates the principles at the core of the Emoluments Clause.” Though Tribe notes that “some scholars have made serious arguments to the effect that this Clause contains a loophole for the highest official in our Government,” Tribe finds those arguments unpersuasive. “In my view, the language of the Clause literally covers financial benefits foreign powers might bestow on the American President, and the anti-corruption and anti-divided-loyalty purposes of the Clause apply even more clearly to the President than to any less august officer.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Should President-elect Donald Trump decide to appoint his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to a White House post, there are two potential nepotism problems: one legal and one moral. Neither should block the appointment. The law likely doesn’t cover White House appointments, and the ethical concern is outweighed by the value of transparency among the president’s closest advisers.

Donald Trump’s most senior advisers said on Sunday that he would not illegally use the White House for personal profit, as concerns mounted that he was already mixing business interests and official duties....Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard who taught Barack Obama, said on Twitter that Trump was risking legal action from business competitors if he did not move to stop the presidency benefitting him financially. Tribe described Trump as “uniquely suable” thanks to his current corporate setup.

The Philippines and Russia became the latest countries this week to announce their plans to turn their backs on the International Criminal Court — a move that's worrying experts who say it delegitimatizes the institution's quest for justice...Alex Whiting, a former prosecutions coordinator at the ICC who now is a professor at Harvard Law School, said Duterte's rationale is likely to avoid prosecution himself. For Russia, it's a signal that the country will not be supportive of any potential court investigation having to do incursions in Ukraine or Georgia.

On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to formally withdraw the country from the 124-member ICC, which is the world's only permanent court on war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. As African nations increasingly reject the work of the ICC, Russia's withdrawal may have some clout in undermining the organization's prestige, according to legal experts...Alex Whiting, a professor at Harvard Law School who formerly worked in the Office of the Prosecutor at the ICC, mentioned that after a spate of departures “all eyes were on Kenya and Uganda because leaders in both countries have talked about leaving.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The Republican Senate has blocked or delayed many of President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees; his Supreme Court pick of Judge Merrick Garland is just the most visible. Now President-elect Donald Trump will be able to capitalize by filling those slots. And because of the Senate Democrats’ 2013 decision to exercise the “nuclear option” and eliminate the filibuster for all judicial nominees except for the Supreme Court, they won’t be able to filibuster Trump’s candidates.

For environmentalists and climate activists, the dangers of a Donald Trump presidency are myriad, particularly when his recent victory is combined with Republican Congress....“There’s no question there will be a regulatory rollback, the rhetoric will change dramatically, and climate change as an issue will not be as high on the agenda,” says Jody Freeman, director of the Environmental Law Program at Harvard University. “But we should be cautious and wait and see how dramatic the rollback will be… No administration can do everything at once. They’ll have to prioritize.”

Few people have had a more tumultuous 18 months than Nebraska’s ten death-row inmates. In May 2015 the Nebraska legislature voted to abolish capital punishment, which would have converted their sentences to life imprisonment. The governor, Pete Ricketts, vetoed the legislation but was overridden. He then poured $400,000 of his family’s money into financing a referendum to reinstate the death penalty, which appeared on the ballot on November 8th and passed with 61% of Nebraskans’ support. The proposition was one of three pro-death-penalty measures on state ballots. Two passed with ample margins, and prospects for the third look promising...Carol Steiker, a professor at Harvard Law School and co-author of a new book entitled “Courting Death: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment”, says people rarely take the time to understand ballot initiatives (one voter in Palo Alto says it took him hours to educate himself about the 17 measures on California’s ballot). A better bellwether of what will happen to the death penalty, Ms Steiker says, is sentencing. In 1996, 315 convicts were given death sentences. In 2015 only 49 were. This suggests that prosecutors, jurors and judges have all grown warier of capital punishment.

...DuPont is one of dozens of American companies that have abandoned a long-term approach to doing business after being the target of so-called activist investors...Activist investors have some supporters. Lucian Bebchuck, a Harvard professor who is known as one of the most devout defenders of activist shareholder campaigns, says that activist interventions target underperforming companies, and that they improve the company’s performance in the long-run. “Policymakers and institutional investors should not accept the validity of the frequent assertions that activist interventions are costly to firms and their shareholders in the long term,” he writes, in a 2015 paper, “The Long-Term Effects of Hedge Fund Activism.”