Media Mentions

Last week, human rights group Fortify Rights called on the Myanmar government to drop charges against Muslim men on discriminatory grounds. There has been continued persecution of the Muslim community in the country – particularly against the Rohingya, who are subject to arbitrary arrest, institutional discrimination, detention, harassment, and killings. ...One of the defendant’s lawyers, Nandar Myint Thein, told The Intercept that the prosecution didn’t submit any “real evidence.” Matthew Bugher, a Fortify Rights representative in Myanmar and formerly a Global Justice Fellow at Harvard Law School, told The Diplomat, “Frankly, we have no clue what motivated the government to arrest these individuals… the only thing that we can be certain about is that the government failed miserably to support its case against the defendants.”

The debate over whether tech companies should be required to break encrypted Internet communications for national security reasons has heated up since the Dec. 2 attack in San Bernardino, California, and reports on Friday that suspects in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks used the encrypted platform WhatsApp to plan their deadly rampage. ...In that light, the debate over encryption “doesn’t seem like a tailored response to the threat" but rather, "something law enforcement have been trying to pursue" for some time, said Andy Sellars, a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and an advocate for digital rights. "Encryption is how we bank online, share medical records, private emails, etc.,” he added, so what lawmakers are proposing “could compromise our daily activities in a way ISIS never could.”

The U.S. government is sitting on a growing pile of debt backed by little more than parental love. That’s because parents can borrow tens of thousands of dollars a year for their kids’ college education without showing they can pay it back. About 3 million parents have $71 billion in loans, contributing to more than $1.2 trillion in federal education debt. As of May 2014, half of the balance was in deferment, racking up interest at annual rates as high as 7.9 percent. “It’s deeply problematic that the federal government is making relatively high-interest loans without thinking about, much less checking, whether the people they’re lending to will be crippled by this debt,” said Toby Merrill, a Harvard Law School lecturer who has counseled defaulted parents through the school’s Project on Predatory Student Lending. “We’re impoverishing the less-privileged population who are aging. That’s a terrible policy.”

...“We can stay out a little longer,” [Owen] Labrie tells me after lunch. With glasses, an untucked shirt and a sweater, the 20-year-old has the casual mien of a college student, but Labrie is not in school. He was supposed to be a sophomore at Harvard by now. Instead, he’s on a kind of parole, with a strict curfew. The former prep school superstar was convicted earlier this year on misdemeanor and felony sex charges involving a younger girl, and he has to get to his mother’s soon, or he’ll be subject to arrest. ... You can understand prosecutors wanting to use the Internet predator statutes to widen the scope of their investigation of Labrie. It allowed them broader subpoenas. It was a wrench in their toolbox, and they used it. “But that’s a total dodge,” says Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law professor, Democratic appointee to the federal bench and a women’s rights attorney who is not the only feminist troubled by Labrie’s case, especially how it began as a three-week plea deal and ended up as a felony and a lifetime on the sex registry. “They had discretion.”

Ted Cruz and Mike Lee released an interesting bill last week: the RESULTS Act, intended to provide for reciprocal approvals of drugs and devices. (For example, if, say, Canada approves Drug X for sale up north, FDA would have to consider doing so as well.) But Harvard scholar Rachel Sachs believes the law’s title is a bit of a misnomer

Melancholy, upbeat, serene, and infectious are just some of the words that describe Vince Guaraldi’s quintessential holiday soundtrack, “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” whose unforgettable blend of jazz and carols has enchanted listeners for 50 years. The music, many agree, is the backbone of the beloved animated special starring cartoonist George M. Schulz’s “Peanuts” gang. ... For many, including Harvard Law School faculty assistant Brad Conner, the composer’s fusion of Latin rhythms and blues riffs with traditional Christmas music served as an introduction to jazz. As a boy growing up in West Virginia, Conner loved the show’s animation, but it was Guaraldi’s music that captivated him.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Japan's Supreme Court has rejected an equality-based constitutional challenge to a law requiring couples to adopt either the husband’s or the wife’s last name. The decision is fascinating in its own right, reflecting the contemporary moment for feminism in Japan. It also raises a much broader question: How much should a constitution reflect the distinctive values of the society in which it operates, and how much should it express fundamental rights recognized almost universally?

During Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate, frontrunner Donald Trump doubled down on his call for “closing off parts of the Internet” in order to stymie terrorist groups’ online recruitment efforts. “I would certainly be open to closing areas where we are at war with somebody,” Trump said, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria, or ISIS. “I sure as hell don’t want to let people that want to kill us and kill our nation use our Internet.”...“The Internet is designed to be decentralized,” says Andy Sellars, a staff attorney for the Digital Media Law Project housed at Harvard University. “It’s designed to be that no single power could deny its use. That’s served the Internet quite well because it’s allowed it to grow in unexpected ways.”

The Florida postal worker who landed a gyrocopter at the U.S. Capitol on April 15 to protest campaign finance laws is planning to run for Congress, his attorney said in a court filing Wednesday. Douglas Hughes, 62, of Ruskin, Fla., is asking a court for permission to travel to campaign on curbing the influence of money in politics, a job that would include meeting voters, making speeches and soliciting endorsements, his lawyer said. Hughes’s bid might also test whether felons can run for Congress in Florida...To support his bid to travel, Hughes’s attorney included a letter from Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, a respected constitutional scholar who last month ended his own quixotic bid for the Democratic nomination for president as a campaign finance reform advocate. In a letter to the judge dated Nov. 25, Lessig acknowledged that Florida’s constitution might be read to bar any person convicted of a felony to hold office. However, Lessig said, that provision also might be read to apply only to state offices, and, if not, would violate the Constitution, which alone sets requirements for congressional office. “It is my view that Florida law cannot be held to restrict the ability of Mr. Hughes to run for Congress from the state of Florida,” Lessig wrote. “That conclusion thus creates a substantial interest for him to be able to travel throughout Florida to pursue the work of his campaign.”

Walter J. Leonard, the chief architect of an admissions process at Harvard that has been emulated across the United States, opening colleges and universities to more women and minorities, died on Dec. 8 in Kensington, Md. He was 86...Martha L. Minow, the Harvard Law School dean, said the plan “had a ripple effect across the nation” as other institutions, facing demands for greater diversity, adopted similar ones of their own.

An op-ed by Albert W. Alschuler and Laurence H. Tribe (corrected version). Federal law bars billionaire Robert Mercer from giving as much as $6,000 to Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign. Thirty-nine years ago, in Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court upheld limits on contributions to candidates. But federal law did not block Mercer from giving $11 million to a super PAC whose mission is to urge voters to support Cruz. A federal statute formerly limited contributions to super PACs to $5,000, but in 2010 a federal court held this statute unconstitutional.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. These days, Americans don’t think a lot about Taiwan. That’s a shame. A thriving democracy in a region with too few of them, Taiwan also faces unique challenges, not least because of its ambiguous legal status and the possibility that it will eventually be absorbed into China -- perhaps by force. Elections next month, which a pro-independence party is expected to win, could mark a turning point. Americans have plenty of reason to pay attention.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl deserted his post in Afghanistan in 2009 -- there isn’t much doubt about that. But the charge of desertion isn't the reason he faces life imprisonment in his court-martial, announced Monday by the commanding officer at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the maximum punishment for desertion is five years. The potential life sentence comes from a now-obscure charge with origins in the articles of war enacted by the Continental Congress on Sept. 20, 1776: the charge of misbehavior before the enemy.

He may no longer be running for President, but he still has plenty to say about the American political system. Lawrence Lessig is a Harvard Law professor and author of “Republic Lost, The Corruption of Equality and the Steps to End It.” He is a former candidate for the 2016 democratic nomination and ran on a platform of eliminating the influence of money in politics.

As the growth of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” transforms more rural landscapes across the heartland into industrial zones, companies are less willing to disclose the chemicals they inject into the ground, Harvard researchers have found...But the amount of information withheld has increased the past three years, according to a study by Kate Konschnik, a lecturer and director of Harvard Environmental Law Policy Initiative, and Archana Dayalu, a Ph.D. candidate in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences...“A lot of oil and gas activity is happening close to cities, communities, and schools,” said Konschnik. “People are seeing this industrial activity right outside their door, they see trucks come up with chemicals, and that concerns them. They want to know what chemicals are being used in their communities. There is so much we don’t know about this activity.”

The number of death sentences imposed in U.S. courts have dropped precipitously this year, representing the leading edge of a continuing decline in capital punishment nationwide. Only 49 death sentences have been handed down, a 33% drop from the 73 imposed in 2014. Only 28 prisoners were executed, the fewest since 1991 -- and only six states were involved, the fewest since 1988...A separate report out Wednesday claimed that 19 of the 28 prisoners executed suffered from severe mental disabilities or experienced extreme childhood trauma and abuse. The report from Harvard Law School's Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice said many of the condemned had multiple mental impairments.

With the semester coming to a close, some Harvard Law School students are continuing their push for changes they say will improve the school’s treatment of minority students, about a month after a high-profile racially charged incident shook campus...On Friday, more than a dozen students hosted a “teach-in” in the lobby of the office of Law School Dean Martha L. Minow, on whom students have called to do more to address their concerns. For roughly an hour, students sat in the office and discussed the possibility of creating a critical race theory program at the school, according to Alexander J. Clayborne, one of the students organizing the protests. Clayborne said they spoke with Minow...In an emailed statement, Minow wrote that she has been meeting with students and faculty members to “ensure inclusive and fair consideration of any ideas for change,” adding that she met with students for several hours last week and again Monday. Law School Dean of Students Marcia L. Sells, too, wrote in a statement that she and Minow have been working closely with students to discuss “what processes can work to achieve change at HLS.”...Law School professor Laurence H. Tribe argued in an email that changing the seal of a school is very different from changing a title. “Renaming the position of ‘House Master’ to something less problematic like ‘Dean of the House’ is a lot easier than changing the school’s seal, which isn’t within the control of any dean or even the university president,” Tribe wrote.

A conservative-leaning Harvard Law School student who recently criticized racial protests on his campus and elsewhere for using fascist tactics to silence dissent has become the target of vicious online attacks that do not address his intellectual arguments, but rather his looks. But that has not stopped third-year Harvard Law School student Bill Barlow from speaking out in defense of the First Amendment. Barlow’s recent column in the Harvard Law Record critiqued leftist students for their extreme and totalitarian protest tactics, and Barlow’s subsequent appearance on Fox Business focused on his concerns that free speech is under assault on universities, prompted the barrage of insults. One critic wrote, “this is literally the most punchable face I’ve ever seen. He looks like a political cartoon character of what somebody with those beliefs looks like.”

In the wake of the shooting in San Bernardino, California, prominent conservative politicians have again squashed momentum to step up gun regulation, using the Second Amendment to make their case for maintaining the status quo....Mic spoke with several top constitutional lawyers who reject outright the notion that the Second Amendment prohibits increased limitations on access to guns. Instead, they argue that the Constitution actually allows for a number of gun regulations which have been proposed in Congress, including universal background checks and bans on assault weapons..."The right to bear arms was thought to ensure well-regulated state militias," Harvard constitutional law professor Richard J. Fallon told Mic. "Regulation of firearms was permissible as long as it did not interfere with state militias."...Other constitutional lawyers go even further, saying that although conservatives may not want to admit it, Heller actually paved the way for more gun control restrictions. "I believe 'assault weapons' are indeed what the court had in mind when it wrote in Heller about 'dangerous and unusual weapons," Harvard Law professor and renowned legal scholar Laurence Tribe told Mic. "I believe military-style assault weapons will never be protected by the court in the name of the Second Amendment."

Anne Scott entered St. George’s School as a 10th-grader in 1977, just a few years after the prestigious prep school first admitted girls at its campus in Middletown, R.I. She was a good student, and a three-sport athlete, from the suburbs of Wilmington, Del. But a month after she arrived, a field hockey injury brought her into the orbit of the school’s longtime athletic trainer. He molested and raped her, and threatened to come after her if she told anyone. For years, terrified and ashamed, she did not. Finally, in her mid-20s, her life a shambles of diagnoses and hospitalizations, she told her parents, who took her to see Eric MacLeish, an attorney who would later gain renown representing abuse victims of Catholic priests...Harvard Law professor Larry Lessig, who has known Scott since they were students at Penn, has signed on as co-counsel to MacLeish. Lessig, who was abused by the choir director as a student at the American Boychoir School in Princeton, N.J., said St. George’s needs to make therapy support “immediately available and not filtered through a lawyer.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. You might think Donald Trump could use a crash course in Islam, but there's no way to make him take it. A Massachusetts judge, however, faced with a convicted defendant who demonstrated anti-Muslim views, ordered her to take a class on Islam as part of her probation. Now the commonwealth’s Supreme Judicial Court will have to decide whether the sentence was an unconstitutional infringement of religious liberty or a common-sense, measure-for-measure matter of justice. The facts grow out of that most brutal of human interactions, the landlord-tenant dispute.