Media Mentions

In today’s world, a computer can easily become a weapon and cyberspace a battlefield as cyber security becomes a growing national concern...“One immediately noticeable change [that took place at Harvard] is that there are multiple cybersecurity projects, both within Harvard and beyond,” Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, told the HPR. Currently, both Belfer and Berkman hold cyber security projects, in which scholars develop case studies and present research papers in workshops and publications.

As Law School activists continue their occupation of the Caspersen Student Center lounge—along with students from other schools—administrators have publicized a series of efforts to address problems of diversity and inclusion on campus...Third-year Law student and Reclaim Harvard Law member Bianca S. Tylek said the group hopes to expand its reach to other students within and beyond the Law School...Rena T. Karefa-Johnson, a third-year law student...said...“I’m excited that this is something that people are thinking about...“[But] I don’t think those specific initiatives are responsive to what this movement is about.” [Marcia]Sells said that she stands by her work to address problems of diversity and inclusion at the school, emphasizing that change takes time. “I am disappointed that the students think we aren’t working on these things, because we are,” she said in an interview. “I understand that they have their own vision and plan, but I’m just trying to work with what I think works best for all of us, and not expecting things to happen all at once.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. I found the movie "The Hurt Locker" so evocative of Iraq that I saw it six times. Apparently the verisimilitude wasn't an accident. According to a lawsuit brought by U.S. Army Sergeant Jeffrey Sarver, the film’s bomb-defusing lead character was based on him. The film’s screenwriter, Mark Boal, was embedded with Sarver’s company in Iraq and published an article on Sarver’s life and experiences in Playboy magazine in 2005. Sarver sued Boal and the film's producers under a California rule that prohibits appropriating a public figure's likeness for commercial purposes without consent. On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld the dismissal of the bomb-disposal technician’s case on the grounds that the film's First Amendment protections trumped any claim Sarver might have to ownership of his likeness. The holding is dubious under controlling U.S. Supreme Court precedent. But it reflects a trend in appeals courts in which the freedom of speech is being used to defeat a person's claims to their image or story. The law here is changing in favor of Hollywood and against individuals.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Until recently, the sophisticated view about calorie labels in restaurants was one of despair: A series of studies suggested that the practice, required by Obamacare and modeled on what has been done in New York and other cities, just doesn't succeed in promoting healthy food choices and reducing obesity. But comprehensive new research offers a dramatically different picture. It finds that if we divide Americans into subgroups -- the normal, the overweight, and the obese -- we’ll find that calorie labels have had a large and beneficial effect on those who most need them.

...Graduates of Harvard Law School and Yale Law School have dominated the court for the past two decades, and each sitting justice attended one of those schools...Harvard Law professor Charles Fried said that the preoccupation with where the justices attended law school is unhelpful, particularly because Harvard students come from a wide range of ethnicities, educational backgrounds and income levels—each of which are more important factors than the name on a judge’s law degree. “What’s more important [than their law alma matter] is their ability, their knowledge, how much they’ve learned and how good they are,” Fried said...“I certainly won’t say that having a lot of Harvard justices is a bad thing,” said Harvard law professor Richard Lazarus, who attributes the school’s long roster of high court judges to its large size, elite reputation, and commitment to admitting students with from a broad array of backgrounds and states who display leadership qualities.

A book review by Jeannie Suk. Mass incarceration is synonymous with criminal justice in the United States. We are the world’s top jailer, have among the longest sentences, and tolerate shocking racial disparities in imprisonment rates. Baz Dreisinger is an unusual combination of English professor, journalist and documentary producer whose travels to nine countries to meet with their prisoners led to “Incarceration Nations.” This journey into what she calls “global hellholes” sets an earnest American on a quest for insight into American criminal punishment, via structured encounters with foreign prisoners in situ.

...The student lawyers became involved in Ausmer’s case in 2013, while interning at the HLS Veterans Law and Disability Benefits Clinic, within the school’s WilmerHale Legal Services Center (LSC). Each year since 2012, when the clinic was established in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood, dozens of students have assisted veterans with legal cases, winning verdicts of local and national importance... “As we train students, we want to give them the opportunity to understand and appreciate the needs and sacrifices of disabled veterans,” says Daniel Nagin, clinical professor of law, faculty director of the Legal Services Center, and founder of the veterans clinic. “The work is complicated and demanding—it’s an uphill battle, and there are too few resources for people who need help….We are asking students to consider, ‘What is the role of lawyers in responding to this problem?’”

...What kind of patriarch did this American founder wish and imagine himself to be? ask two eminent Jefferson scholars. In their fascinating, subtle, and deeply insightful new book, Annette Gordon-Reed, Warren professor of American legal history at Harvard Law School and professor of history, and Peter S. Onuf, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, seek to understand, as dispassionately as possible, how Jefferson gave meaning to his existence, how he wished to be perceived by others, how he shaped his private and public lives, and how he reconciled in his own mind his status as a slave-owner with his immortal words that “all men are created equal.”

...“Animal welfare and animal rights are two different goals within the field of animal law,” explains law professor Kristen Stilt, who teaches the animal-law survey class—an annual course typically oversubscribed on the first day of registration... A gift from Bradley L. Goldberg, founder and president of the Animal Welfare Trust, has underwritten a new Animal Law & Policy Program intended to expand the animal-law curriculum, establish an academic fellowship program, and foster future academic gatherings and scholarship...That opportunity and responsibility fall largely to Stilt, the faculty director of the new program, and Chris Green, its executive director, who must decide how to design a curriculum that covers a topic intersecting with all other areas of legal study...This past May, Loeb University Professor and constitutional-law scholar Laurence Tribe submitted an amicus letter supporting NhRP’s request for an appeal in one of its first chimpanzee cases.

Medicaid patients in Washington state (a similar suit is underway in Indiana) have sued the state's Medicaid agency claiming they were denied treatment for hepatitis C because of the high cost of the drugs. Litigation director Kevin Costello with the Harvard Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation says his organization has joined the lawsuit. “We really view Washington as a first step in solving a problem in a much broader context," says Costello. "So it’s one small piece of a broader puzzle.”

Harvard Law School has filed a class action lawsuit against the state of Washington’s Medicaid program, challenging a provision that denies expensive Hepatitis C to many patients enrolled in the program. The university also has hinted that its Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation may also take legal action against Medicaid insurers in Massachusetts, where restrictions on using expensive hepatitis C drugs are common...“Washington is in our view a first step in solving a much bigger national problem,” said Kevin Costello, director of litigation for the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School. “It’s a small piece of a large puzzle. There are plenty of other points, both litigation and policy and regulation-based, that have to be worked on at the same time.”

“The proposal that I have seen erects significant and arbitrary barriers for borrowers who are entitled to relief,” said Toby Merrill, the director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard Law School, referring to the Education Department’s proposal. “This would be worse for borrowers.”

The Circuit Court of Cook County in Chicago has agreed to hear a lawsuit on Sen. Ted Cruz's eligibility for president — virtually ensuring that the issue dominates the news in the run-up to the South Carolina primary. ... One of the constitutional scholars who used to think that the definition of "natural born" ought to include Ted Cruz is Laurence Tribe, who was Cruz's law professor at Harvard. But Tribe is now the leading scholar raising questions about Cruz's eligibility.

A major backer of Harvard Law School has stopped sponsoring student events after its donation helped pay for a discussion supporting an independent Palestine. In 2012, the international law firm Milbank promised Harvard $1 million over five years to pay for scholarly conferences organized by law students. But after the money was used to support an event hosted by the student group Justice for Palestine, the law firm asked Harvard Law School to use the money for other purposes. ... Harvard says Milbank wanted to "avoid creating any misimpressions that the firm endorses the viewpoints expressed by any particular student organization or journal," according to the statement, provided by law school spokesman Robb London.

... In a newly unearthed 2012 interview on C-SPAN, Scalia revealed his preferred successor: Judge Frank Easterbrook, of the Chicago-based Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. ... Easterbook delivered the inaugural “Scalia Lecture” at Harvard Law on Nov. 17, 2014, lauding his pal as a fellow originalist, who relies on the intent of founding documents.

An op-ed Noah Feldman: A Houston man, Paul Aker, was arrested last week by U.S. marshals and hauled into federal court on charges that stemmed from his failure to pay a $1,500 student loan. How could this happen in a free country? We’re used to thinking that what makes a civil case different from a criminal one is that you can’t go to jail. But that isn’t exactly true. If you fail to show up in court after you’ve been ordered to do so, the judge can issue a warrant for your arrest on contempt of court -- which is a crime. In the light of Aker’s case and the viral attention it received, it’s worth asking both why an arrest doesn’t happen more often and whether the system ought to be changed so that it can’t.

A Los Angeles hospital has become the latest high-profile victim of a ransomware attack. Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center announced that it had paid $17,000 to hackers to regain control of its computer system. The hospital had been operating without it for 10 days. ... "Ransomware is basically an encryption program," said Bruce Schneier, a cybersecurity expert at Harvard's Berkman Center. "It breaks into your computer. It encrypts your files. And then it doesn't let you at them."

... Adding to the irony, the blocked lecture, which explains aspects of copyright law as it applies to music and licensing, is taught by William “Terry” Fisher, a noted copyright expert who is the WilmerHale Professor of Intellectual Property Law at Harvard Law School. “This was an annoyance last week for my Harvard Law School students and the 400 students from around the world taking the online class,” said Fisher. “But it’s also having a global impact because students enrolled in affiliated courses at universities and cultural institutions in other countries that use the same lectures and readings and are on a different academic schedule now are finding they can’t get access.”

Apple Inc.’s refusal to help the FBI retrieve information from an iPhone belonging to one of the shooters in the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., has thrust the tug-of-war on the issue of privacy vs. security back into the spotlight. As the legal wrangling to untangle the case widens, the Gazette spoke separately with George Bemis Professor of Law Jonathan Zittrain and cyber-security expert Michael Sulmeyer about the inherent tensions in the case, in which two important principles of American life are at odds.  ... ZITTRAIN: There are surely instances where a company should weigh the ethics of its decisions, and taken only on its own terms, this would appear to be such a case — especially because there’s no legal barrier to Apple helping out. But the circumstances here give rise to additional ethical and policy considerations. What are the second-order effects of Apple’s actively writing software to defeat its own security, and what might such practices do to the overall technology ecosystem? In other words, we need to stay focused on not just the urgent, but the important.

The late justice Antonin Scalia boasted that his United States Constitution was definitively “dead.” But in a mixed-up political season, what if our founding document wants a new lease on life? And what if we brought it, as a flawed and fungible 200-year-old wonder, back into the conventional conversation again? ...With that in mind, we’ve convened a panel of our favorite lawyers: Lawrence Lessig, a former Scalia clerk and an advocate-turned-candidate against money in politics; Jedediah Purdy, of Duke, a philosopher of modernity and democracy along with a professor of law; and Katharine Young of Boston College, in the business of comparing the world’s constitutions with an eye toward improving them.

An article by Josephine Wolff, an assistant professor of public policy and computing security at Rochester Institute of Technology and a faculty associate at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society: The electronic medical record was supposed to change everything. Human mistakes would be eliminated by the pharmacy’s ability to automatically check for dangerous drug interactions; hospitals would be able to retrieve data instantly and find out whether they were following best practices; the mysteries of medical handwriting would be replaced by clear, definite printed information. As we all now know, it didn’t quite work out that way. Patients complain that their doctors are looking at the screen instead of at them, doctors complain that life has become an endless series of boxes to click, and medical error hardly seems to have disappeared. There are still some bugs in the system—or, in the case of Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, one really big, particularly virulent bug: a ransomware program that shut down the entire hospital’s computer systems for more than a week until the hospital finally agreed to pay its attackers 40 bitcoins (currently worth about $17,000) this week.