Media Mentions

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Your credit card company can make you agree to arbitrate disputes as a condition of getting the card. But can an employer require workers to arbitrate rather than suing collectively as a condition of employment? In recent years, all the federal courts of appeals to address the question have said there’s no difference between your credit card issuer and your employer: Both can make you give up legal remedies. This week that changed, when for the first time an appeals court said an employer can’t require employees to waive collective legal action. By creating a circuit split, this important opinion will almost certainly push the Supreme Court to consider the issue, and soon.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Can the police detain and search you on the suspicion that your car might be parked illegally? A federal appeals court has said yes, upholding a felon-in-possession conviction for a man who was searched after Milwaukee police surrounded the parked car he was sitting in and handcuffed its four occupants -- because the car was parked within 15 feet of a crosswalk. The outraged dissenting judge said that the defendant had been stopped for “parking while black,” and insisted that the holding went beyond anything the Supreme Court ever authorized.

The Pew Research Center reported this week that 62 percent of U.S. adults get news on social media, including 18 percent who do so often – that's up sharply from just four years ago when the figure was 49 percent...Suppose Facebook decided that it would be a good idea to help demographic groups which turn out in numbers that are lower than their share of the population, like, say, Latinos. Such targeted voter motivation, dubbed "digital gerrymandering" by Harvard Law School's Jonathan Zittrain, would have the salutary effect – if you're a Clinton supporter (and in case you're wondering, Facebook officials have given far more money to Clinton than anyone else this cycle) – of turning out more strongly Democratic voters.

The excruciating wait times at Chicago's O'Hare and Midway airports the past couple of weeks have travelers fuming and some city officials looking for other options. Chicago Alderman Ed Burke is calling on the city to do airport security the way it's done in Kansas City, San Francisco and several smaller airports around the country. He wants to hire a private company to staff the screening checkpoints..."Privatization doesn't actually solve any of the problems we have," says Bruce Schneier, a security expert with Harvard University's Berkman Center. "The problem with the TSA right now is there aren't enough people for the demand and that's a function of budget. It is not a function of who signs the paychecks of agents — it's how many agents there are."

Earlier this month, when Louisiana’s New Iberia Research Center, the world’s largest chimpanzee research facility, announced it was moving all 220 of its chimps to a sanctuary in Georgia, it’s a safe bet the news made attorney Steven Wise the happiest man on the planet. That’s because two of the chimps, Hercules and Leo, had been the subjects in an ongoing legal battle about the rights of chimps, a legal case brought by Wise, president of the Nonhuman Rights Project, and the subject of D.A. Pennebaker a Chris Hegedus’s Unlocking the Cage, a documentary out now in New York, followed by a national rollout and an HBO broadcast early next year...“It’s a very novel approach and [Wise] is pushing the envelope,” says Chris Green, Executive Director of Harvard Law School’s Animal Law and Policy Program. “As far as acceptance goes, the jury is still out. And there is concern that the animal protection community might get too far in front of itself that if they find a judge who is too far ahead of public sentiment, there might be some sort of backlash.”

Doaa Abu Elyounes believes that law can change people’s lives. After all, it was the law that changed hers. A blind Israeli of Arab descent, she attended a Jewish school. Israeli law mandates that schools accommodate students with disabilities, regardless of their origin. Now, set to graduate with an LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School (HLS), Abu Elyounes plans to become a public service lawyer to ensure that everybody has access to the law.

A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled that companies cannot force their employees to sign away their right to band together in legal actions, delivering a major victory for American workers and opening an opportunity for the Supreme Court to weigh in. The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago struck down an arbitration clause that banned employees from joining together as a class and required workers to battle the employer one by one outside of court...“The increasing use of mandatory arbitration agreements and the prohibition on workers proceeding as a class has been one of the most major developments in employment the last decade,” said Benjamin Sachs, a professor of labor law at Harvard Law School. “Most of the court decisions have facilitated this development. This is a major move in the opposite direction.”

A federal lawsuit brought by states against the Obama administration marks the first major court test of its new policy that transgender students should be allowed to use the bathroom of their choice. On one level, the case is about whether civil rights laws that Congress enacted decades ago envisioned such protections of transgender rights. But underlying the complaint are also fundamental questions about the discretionary power of federal agencies, checks and balances and the difference between clarifying laws and rules and writing new ones...In a recent op-ed, Harvard law professor Jacob E. Gersen described it as an example of stealth regulation. “[T]his letter was one of those nonbinding documents. Yet it contains obligations that exist nowhere else in federal law,” the professor wrote.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Democrats pride themselves on their commitment to science. Citing climate change, they contend that they are the party of truth, while Republicans are “denialists.” But with respect to genetically modified organisms, many Democrats seem indifferent to science, and to be practicing a denialism of their own -- perhaps more so than Republicans. What’s going on here?

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Chicago squared off against the First Amendment this week -- at Wrigley Field, of all places. An appeals court upheld a city ordinance that bans all peddling, including printed matter, on the blocks immediately around the stadium. But at the same time, the court insisted that the rules must apply to everybody, including the Cubs. The home team is accustomed to selling team merchandise in this area. The First Amendment is as American as baseball, and it was at the heart of this interesting and important case.

“Know that listening is your secret weapon,” award-winning actor and humanitarian Sarah Jessica Parker told imminent Harvard Law School (HLS) graduates and their families on Class Day...Parker shared the dais with professor of law Jeannie C. Suk, recipient of the Albert M. Sacks-Paul A. Freund Award for Teaching Excellence, and Gabriela Follett, HLS program assistant in the Human Rights Program, who has been a strong supporter of the student movement on campus, Reclaim Harvard Law. She received the Suzanne L. Richardson Staff Appreciation Award. Both Suk and Follett talked openly about campus activism.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Historians of the future will want to know why almost no one went to jail in connection with the collapse of mortgage-backed securities that triggered the 2007-8 financial crisis. Monday’s appeals court decision reversing a $1.2 billion fraud judgment against Bank of America will be an important part of the answer. To put it bluntly, the law failed -- because the law as it existed didn’t properly anticipate or cover the events that occurred.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. On a sunny day in Warsaw, it’s difficult to understand why the city’s well-kept streets simmer with anger and discontent over the European vision. The economy has been growing at 3.6 percent, roughly twice the overall European rate. And there’s little or no influx of Syrian or Afghan refugees: Warsaw must be whiter than any other major city in Europe, including Budapest. Yet the far-right Law & Justice Party, led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski and known as PiS, bitterly denounces the European Union for invading Polish “sovereignty” -- language reminiscent of the advocates of British exit from the EU.

An op-ed by Jeannie Suk. This month, regional battles over the right of transgender people to access public bathrooms were elevated to national legal theatre. First, the Justice Department told North Carolina that its recent law, requiring education boards and public agencies to limit the use of sex-segregated bathrooms to people of the corresponding biological sex, violated federal civil-rights laws. Governor Pat McCrory responded with a lawsuit, asking a court to declare that the state’s law doesn’t violate those federal laws. Meanwhile, in a suit filed on the same day, the Justice Department asked a court to say that it does. To top it off, on May 13th the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (O.C.R.) and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division issued a Dear Colleague letter announcing to the nation’s schools that, under Title IX—the 1972 law banning sex discrimination by schools that receive federal funding—transgender students must be allowed to use rest rooms that are “consistent with their gender identity.” The threat was clear: schools that failed to comply could lose federal funding. Protests of federal overreach immediately ensued, including from parents citing safety and privacy as reasons for children and teen-agers to share bathrooms and locker rooms only with students of the same biological sex.

Growing up in the South, Tommy Tobin was part of a family that loved food. “We liked to eat a lot,” said Tobin, who graduates this month with degrees from Harvard Law School (HLS) and Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and a plan to build his career around food law and policy. When a severe speech impediment left him struggling to be understood, food became a way for Tobin to connect with others. In high school, he volunteered at a food bank and with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and watched his actions speak volumes. “I didn’t need to speak, I could just do,” said Tobin. “And speaking through service became a theme for me.”

Two years ago, James Luongo was thrilled to hear about the first new drugs that could rid his body of hepatitis C. The virus had been silently circulating in his blood for years and would likely cause liver disease, perhaps cancer. But he still felt fine. The drugs seemed like a good thing until his Medicaid insurer denied coverage of the treatment. Twice...And they hope, critics say, that they can get away with neglecting a stigmatized population. Hepatitis C can strike anyone - more than one percent of the U.S. population is infected - but is more frequent among low-income people who have injected drugs. "A disenfranchised, vulnerable community was one where they could draw the line," said Robert Greenwald, a Harvard law professor and coauthor of a study last year that found most states were rationing hepatitis C treatment. "A person with Alzheimer's on Medicaid would have family who would not tolerate not getting the cure," he said, if one became available.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. As law professors go, I’m pretty sympathetic to Clarence Thomas’s constitutional jurisprudence. It’s not that I agree with him, which I almost never do. But I think he genuinely tries to apply originalism using historical methods. And when it comes to the law of race, where again I disagree with Thomas, I respect his effort to give voice to a distinctive form of conservative black nationalism that insists on colorblindness because it’s better for blacks.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. It's complicated to sue for discriminatory firing when you haven't actually been fired. But it's doable. The lesson from the Supreme Court on Monday is that timing matters. The justices weighed in on the important question of when the clock starts for plaintiffs who have been “constructively discharged” -- that is, effectively fired because of discriminatory treatment. Seven of the eight justices agreed that if someone quit a job and alleges discrimination was the reason, his claim starts when he quit, not when the discriminatory treatment against him is said to have occurred.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. At the moment, Europe’s attention is focused on Austria’s presidential election, where a far-rightist was defeated by a razor-thin margin on Monday. But in Poland, where I spent the last several days, the consequences of a far-right government can already be felt. The European Union has given the ruling Law and Justice Party, known as PiS, until Monday to repeal its effort to hamstring Poland’s constitutional court. PiS has answered with a resounding “No.” A full-blown domestic constitutional crisis is brewing, which could have major implications for democracy in Europe.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a Georgia man sentenced to death is entitled to a new trial because prosecutors deliberately excluded all African Americans from the jury based on their race. The 7-to-1 ruling was one of three high court decisions issued Monday involving racial discrimination...Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson, an expert on jury selection, says peremptory strikes invite discrimination. Striking a qualified juror by saying "Sorry, you're gone," is "an insult, and yet, it's perfectly tolerated," Nesson said.

An op-ed by Lecturer Thomas Rubin. When the story broke earlier this month that Facebook might be manipulating its “trending” news section to suppress conservative news, the reaction was quick and predictable. There was an outcry from the right and some users. The site then issued a flurry of posts explaining its editorial position and released its internal guidelines. Finally, a meeting was held between Facebook leaders and 17 leading conservatives to quell the controversy. In short, it was democracy (political fairness) and business (damage control) in action. But action is also taking place on another stage, one that should be much more worrisome to Facebook, its users, the public, and even the right. The day after the story broke, Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota—chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation—sent a pointed letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In it, he demanded answers to a series of questions, including: the identification of individuals responsible for the trending section; how Facebook will hold those individuals accountable; whether any stories with conservative views were targeted for exclusion; and a list of all stories ever removed from or put into the trending section.