Media Mentions

An op-ed by Tommy Tobin `16. "The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court." With this one line, the U.S. Supreme Court recently gave us a clarion call why the country needs to fill the vacancy caused by the passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia...Harvard Law’s Crystal S. Yang found that judicial vacancies affect the administration of our criminal justice system. Her forthcoming article in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy found that judicial vacancies induce prosecutors to exercise their discretion in deciding whether to prosecute a case after an arrest. Professor Yang found that prosecutors may be up to 17 percent less likely to move forward with a case during a vacancy rather than a full-member court. For those cases that are prosecuted, Dr. Yang found that defendants were significantly more likely to plead guilty and avoid a trial, possibly because of better deals offered in a period of overbooked judicial calendars, or a desire of defendants to speed up a process. Professor Yang’s study suggests that judicial vacancies do not simply affect judges, they can change the behavior and outcomes for other actors in our criminal justice system.

If state Rep. Byron Rushing, a Democrat from Boston's South End, has his way, laws that criminalize adultery, vagrancy, fornication, sodomy, blasphemy, Communism, and more will soon be repealed...Getting rid of the outdated laws is low on the list of priorities currently being juggled by the Legislature, Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe told WGBH News. "The danger that such laws will be pulled out of the drawer and enforced against unwitting members of disadvantaged groups is often overlooked," Tribe said. "The effort to clean up and update outmoded and partly or wholly unconstitutional laws as Byron Rushing is doing remains an important one, not least because the presence of dead wood in our lawbooks contributes to a corrosive cynicism and a scofflaw attitude," Tribe said.

Clyde Prestowitz, Economic Strategy Institute, and Hal Scott, Harvard Law School, discuss the potential outcomes should the U.K. vote to leave the European Union.

Law schools, in the face of marked declines in enrollment, revenue and jobs for graduates, are beginning to adopt innovative new ways of delivering legal education. Some law schools are moving away from relying solely on classic settings and instead are blending classroom learning with online instruction...To attract new and broader audiences, she advised law schools to categorize offerings by subject matter rather than by course or by degree program. One example is a copyright law course developed in conjunction with Harvard Law School. In addition to law students, roughly 500 other people have been attracted to the online course, which is offered in the spring semester and was developed by Harvard using existing technology. The course allows both categories of students to interact via weekly webcasts featuring guest speakers and an online discussion forum, according to Prof. William W. Fisher, known as Terry, who teaches the course, which is also licensed to 18 universities worldwide to generate revenue.

It’s no secret that many of today’s young people could use a little more money in their pockets. Between student loan payments, sluggish wages and historically high rent costs, 20-somethings are often struggling to make ends meet. And yet, many don’t do the one thing in their control to change that...Often they’re just happy to land that first job and don’t want to rock the boat, says Robert Bordone, the director of the Negotiation and Mediation Clinic at Harvard Law School...Bordone and a team of his students are working with the White House to develop a suite of tools to help students, particularly those at community colleges, negotiate salaries at their first jobs...MarketWatch spoke with Bordone about how young people can make sure they get paid fairly, even when they think they don’t have a ton of leverage.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe and Scott Greytak. The Federal Election Commission, the federal agency charged with overseeing US elections and yet paralyzed by partisanship, will host a first-of-its-kind public forum Thursday on the threat posed by foreign-influenced corporations that spend on American elections. The meeting comes less than one month after the kingdom of Saudi Arabia announced it would make a $3.5 billion investment in Uber, the US-based ride-hailing service and ubiquitous election spender. Now, as the specter of foreign influence comes to haunt even our local elections, the government entity with the most to do — at a time when its power is declining — has put the issue squarely before the public-policymaking consciousness.

An op-ed by Jeannie Suk...We are now seeing a very public judicial-recall movement in response to a sexual-assault case in California. More than a million people have signed petitions demanding the removal of Aaron Persky, the California state judge who sentenced Brock Turner, a Stanford swimmer convicted of three felony sexual-assault counts, to six months in jail, three years of probation, and lifetime registration on the sex-offender list. ...The strong public reaction and organizing after the Stanford case has expanded public engagement with the largely campus-based efforts to change how sexual assault is treated in our society. It also reflects a tension between the crime of sexual assault and the generally progressive social-justice movements criticizing harsh criminal penalties.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld a ruling that Minnesota’s 2007 clean energy law illegally regulates out-of-state utilities, the latest and perhaps final chapter in a five-year legal battle between the state and North Dakota. The appellate court decision is a win for the state of North Dakota and its utility and coal interests, which argue that the Minnesota law hampered their ability to sell electricity from coal-fired power plants and build new coal generators...Even more difficult would be an appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. “It’s unlikely the Supreme Court takes this case,” said Ari Peskoe, an energy fellow at Harvard Law School’s Environmental Policy Initiative.

A UK departure from the European Union could trigger a massive panic for financial markets, similar to what took place after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, according to one expert. "It could be [a Lehman event]," said Hal Scott, a professor at Harvard Law School and author of "Connectedness and Contagion: Protecting the Financial System from Panics." "I don't think we will see that, but there's not an insignificant possibility that would happen -- we need to be worried about that." Scott said a Brexit could prompt investors to ditch short-term bonds in favor of safer, longer-term Treasuries and cut off liquidity to banks and nonbanks, including money market funds and broker-dealers. "In 2008, that's what we saw after the Lehman collapse," he added. "That was part of the panic -- a run on the financial system."

...Like a growing number of schools nationwide, Houston Elementary in Washington, D.C., is using mindfulness and other therapies to help children manage the stress they encounter in their daily lives...“The brain cannot focus when it’s not calm,” said Susan Cole, a Harvard Law School professor and director of the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative, which advocates for “trauma sensitive” schools. “Children have to feel safe enough to learn.”

Already the pound is dropping, money is moving into bonds, London stocks are declining, and central banks in the U.S. and Europe are looking at contingency plans to stave off market shocks if Britain votes Thursday to leave the European Union....“What I’m concerned about is the unpredictable,” said Hal Scott, a Harvard law professor and expert on international finance and securities regulations. His biggest worry about a Brexit is the possibility that it could set off a panic that leads to a global financial crisis, something akin to what happened in 2008 after the Wall Street firm Lehman Bros. filed for bankruptcy. Big banks may be better capitalized than a decade ago, but Scott argues that the U.S. is less equipped today to respond to a run on the financial system. That’s because the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, adopted in part to prevent future bailouts of big financial firms, would prevent some of the moves government officials had available in 2008 to rescue broker dealers, hedge funds, insurance firms and other so-called non-banks, which are vital to the stability of the financial sector.

A high-stakes trial will open on Monday to determine if Dallas billionaire Kelcy Warren's Energy Transfer Equity can back out of a $20 billion agreement to buy rival pipeline operator Williams Cos Inc...John Coates, a professor at Harvard Law School and former M&A lawyer, said Williams needs to prove to the judge, Vice Chancellor Sam Glasscock, that the tax issue was just an excuse. "Does the judge, in the end, see a pattern of bad faith and refusal to move as quickly as reasonably possible? If so, then Williams wins," Coates said.

An op-ed by fellow Delcianna J. Winders. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently levied the largest fine in the history of the Animal Welfare Act, which will turn 50 this summer. In an unprecedented settlement agreement, Santa Cruz Biotechnology agreed to $3.5 million in penalties and to surrender its Animal Welfare Act license. Animal protection groups have lauded the settlement, and, to be sure, getting this chronic animal welfare violator out of the business is huge. But it is also too little, too late. While $3.5 million is nothing to scoff at, it is less than 1 percent of the more than $20 billion in potential fines Santa Cruz Biotech faced. And the Department of Agriculture made itself complicit in untold animal suffering when, year after year, it renewed the company’s Animal Welfare Act license despite knowing of chronic egregious violations.

This week’s conclusion of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue marks the twilight of high-level engagement between the two trading powers under the Obama administration, leaving experts with questions about how best to tackle thorny policy squabbles with Beijing in the coming years...To the extent that results have been mixed in recent years, Harvard law professor and former U.S. trade negotiator Mark Wu said that the meeting is sometimes at the whim of the political circumstances surrounding it. “I think the success of the S&ED is highly dependent upon both the prevailing domestic politics as well as the relationship between the leading principles,” Wu told Law360. “It’s not surprising that at the end of an administration and also in the run-up to a critical Communist Party Congress that the outcomes at the S&ED are not as significant, but that’s not to say that the S&ED isn’t serving its role.”

On World Blood Donation Day and in the wake of the Orlando mass shooting, a leading bioethicist Tuesday called for a change in the FDA’s policy regulating blood donations from gay men. Professor Glenn Cohen who studies bioethics and the law at Harvard told KCBS radio that the policy in place since December is based in fear and not facts...“We are talking about a policy more based on fear than a policy based that makes sense based on the facts,” he said. Annually, the Harvard bioethicist said the policy is robbing blood banks around the country of more than 300,000 pints of much needed blood. Cohen said the one-year restriction tells gay men “not to donate blood.”

As part of the summit, the Education Department plans to announce a new toolkit for community college students that helps them successfully negotiate their first salary. The toolkit, which is a collaboration with Harvard Law School’s Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program, is aimed at arming new workers — especially women — with the negotiation training they need to succeed as they enter the job market.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Who's better, Michael Jordan or LeBron James? (Jordan, because he'd rip your heart out.) Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Delano Roosevelt? (FDR, because he saved the country twice, and because he was cheerful rather than melancholy, and more characteristically American.) Taylor Swift or Adele? (Swift, by a million miles, because her sense of mischief and fun ensures that she is never, ever saccharine.) Ronald Reagan orBarack Obama? (Obama, but I worked for him for four years, so I'm biased.) "Star Wars" or "Star Trek"?

Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain has been searching tediously for answers involving impact websites like Google and Facebook may have on the election, according to Huffington Post. Zittrain has been floating around ideas about modified search results and customizing the news available to users, which could potentially sway undecided voters. Looking at all the dimensions of this picture makes one realize; this is one of those puzzles that came with some missing pieces.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Congress is in the midst of a breakdown in longstanding institutional norms. The latest example is the Senate’s refusal to hold confirmation hearings for Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court -- a refusal that is probably without precedent. But something broader is occurring, and it threatens to undermine the federal government’s ability to carry out its central functions. To see what has happened and what might be done about it, we should say something about norms in general.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Unless you followed professional wrestling in the 1980s, you might be tempted to confuse Hulk Hogan with Jesse “The Body” Ventura. To make matters even more confusing, both have been involved in high-profile defamation suits. But while a Florida court’s $140 million verdict for Hogan against Gawker still stands, Ventura hasn’t fared so well in his lawsuit against the estate of Chris Kyle, the former SEAL who wrote the book “American Sniper” and was depicted in the movie of the same name. On Monday, a federal appeals court overturned the jury’s judgment in Ventura’s favor.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. In what has become a U.S. Supreme Court ritual in recent years, the justices Monday smacked down a patent-law precedent created by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the unusual appellate court that specializes in patent law. The high court’s decision makes it easier for patent holders to get higher damages against willful patent infringers.