Media Mentions

Staggeringly long lines at the nation's airports this spring have led officials in Chicago, New York City, Atlanta and Seattle to discuss turning security over to private contractors, instead of employees of the Transportation Security Administration..."There's this weird belief that if a corporation does something, it's good, but if the government does something it's bad," said security expert Bruce Schneier, a fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center. "There's a lot of things the TSA could do differently, but putting it in private hands will not solve any of the problems." The problems, private or public, include inadequate funding and a tricky mission — trying to stop something horrible but unlikely, said Schneier, who comments frequently on airport security and terrorism. "The thing they're preventing almost never happens, so you're stuck in a world where everything is a false alarm," Schneier said.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Here’s some excellent news on inequality: Measured from birth, the gap in life expectancy between rich and poor in the U.S. has been rapidly narrowing. It appears that a variety of policy initiatives, including those designed to promote children’s health and cut smoking, are actually working. These findings run counter to the widespread view that the economic gap increasingly means that the rich live longer while the poor don’t. That view has some solid research behind it: By some measures, rich people are indeed showing longevity gains, but in many parts of the country, poor people aren’t.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. On Friday, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin vetoed a bill that would have effectively banned abortion in the state. The bill, which would have made performing the procedure a felony, was certainly unconstitutional. But it was unlawful in a very interesting way, because it raised the question of whether the right to abortion belongs to a woman or to her doctor. As it turns out, that question has been an important one ever since Roe v. Wade, a decision that actually emphasizes the rights of the physician.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. What would the Supreme Court look like if ideology didn’t matter? We’re finding out this term. Since Justice Antonin Scalia's death in February, it's impossible for the court to land on its common 5-4 split. Now the justices -- and we -- can pay close attention to cases where the vote breakdown is much harder to explain. A case in point is Thursday’s decision clarifying what kind of “aggravated felony” can get an immigrant deported.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The Supreme Court's decision on attorneys' fees is not really about attorneys' fees. Behind the bland topic lies a deep and interesting philosophical question about the nature of a lawsuit, especially one brought on civil rights grounds: What counts as a win? The Supreme Court answered this question Thursday in a case called CRST Van Expedited v. EEOC. The case involved a $4 million award of fees that the trial court ordered the government to pay the trucking company’s lawyers after the court dismissed more than 150 sex harassment claims brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the company.

...The Gazette asked a handful of Harvard faculty to talk about a book from their student days that has since gained in resonance or meaning...Annette Gordon-Reed, Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History, Harvard Law School...“John A. Williams’ novel ‘The Man Who Cried I Am’ was very important to me when I was at Dartmouth. I loved how Williams presented black characters in a naturalistic way. They sounded like people I knew. They had aspirations that were familiar, which is not always the case with depictions of African-Americans, which are, too often, one- or two-dimensional. It was also a very deft roman á clef. Richard Wright appears, as does James Baldwin — a not very flattering portrayal of my idol, actually. Williams writes with a kind of freedom in this book that was startling to me, very exciting. I looked at it a few years back, and noticed a few problematic gender issues that I missed. I think were I to read it in total again, I might have a slightly different view of it. But it was perfect for me at the time.”

As Alex Whiting told "PirWeli", despite these challenges, here again the past offers some hope, as many persons found themselves in The Hague even though nobody ever expected that they would be arrested. "First, it is important to emphasize that nobody will be charged unless the prosecutor believes that the evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt the participation of that person in war crimes or crimes against humanity. If Russians are charged, then it may be challenging to achieve their arrest or surrender to The Hague if they are living in Russia. But here again the past offers some hope. Many persons ultimately found themselves in The Hague even though nobody ever expected that they would be arrested. So in conclusion I would say that the Georgia investigation presents many challenges and it is important for Georgians to be realistic about what the ICC can and cannot do. But I think it would be wrong to consider the case hopeless and in this field justice has a way of prevailing even when we do not expect it," - Alex Whiting told "PirWeli".

As Alex Whiting told "PirWeli", because of the fact that Russia is not a State Party of the Rome Statute, the investigation will likely take time, probably a few years. The former Prosecution Coordinator in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, who has published numerous articles on the August war-related topic and who is actively observing the progress of the investigation, hopes that despite the difficulties, the investigation will be successfully completed. "The ICC's investigation into the August 2008 war will be extremely challenging because many years have passed and because one of the countries involved, Russia, is not a State Party of the Rome Statute and is not cooperating with the investigation. For these reasons, the investigation will likely take time, probably a few years. However there are also reasons to hope for a successful outcome. First, although the ICC investigation is just beginning now, there have been many investigations in the intervening years and so there is substantial evidence that has been preserved. Second, it can also happen that the passage of time allows for new evidence to emerge. At the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, some of the most significant pieces of evidence emerged only years after the events. Third, international criminal tribunals have succeeded in the past even without full state cooperation, so the fact that Russia is not cooperating will not necessarily be an impediment to a successful investigation," - Alex Whiting told "PirWeli".

Former White House adviser on intelligence and communications technology, professor and founder of the program on behavior economics and public policy at Harvard Law School, and author of many serious books, Cass Sunstein is “as surprised as anyone” about the topic of his latest. “If you’d told me a year ago that I’d write a book about ‘Star Wars,’ ” he said, “I’d say it’s more likely that I’d become an astronaut or a poet.” The book — a wide-ranging and intimate look at the movies and their impact on society — came about after a friend suggested Sunstein introduce his son to the world of George Lucas. “He got completely hooked on the movies,” Sunstein said, “and I got entranced myself.” Enough so, he added, that he began researching them “with the same kind of, let’s say, obsessiveness, with which I had studied behavioral economics and cost-benefit analysis, and the thought of James Madison, and the founding of the US Constitution.”

Brian Leiter has updated his list of the most-cited law faculty. Here is his list of the 10 most-cited law faculty in the United States, 2010-14, led by Harvard’s Cass Sunstein. Following Sunstein are Erwin Chemerinsky (UC Irvine), Richard Epstein (NYU, Chicago), Eric Posner (Chicago), Mark Lemley (Stanford), William Eskridge Jr. (Yale), Mark Tushnet (Harvard), Akhil Amar (Yale), Bruce Ackerman (Yale) and Lawrence Lessig (Harvard). Interestingly, three of the top 10 are in their 70s, three are in their 60s, and four are only in their 50s.

Kingi Snelgar [LLM `16] from Northland is using his skills to help First Nation peoples. The young lawyer and Harvard graduate recently spoke at the United Nations and is imparting words of wisdom to other aspiring Māori lawyers. Just recently Māori lawyer, Snelgar spoke at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to discuss how the UN could better facilitate relations between states and indigenous peoples. Last year, Kingi and partner Kiri Toki, were awarded the Fulbright Scholarship to study at Harvard Law School to complete their Masters of Laws. Snelgar says, “Even better is that Kiri and I did it together, you know we were a team basically so it's never just me doing these things it’s us and it's Kiri's mum as well who is a member of the UN forum that I spoke in.”

The date labels printed on the food we buy — often accompanied by a “best by,” “use by” or even “expires on” stamp — are meant to provide useful advice about when a product is at its best. But some experts are saying these labels not only fail to communicate meaningful information to consumers — they may actually be contributing to a huge environmental problem by inadvertently encouraging people to throw out perfectly good food. A new survey, released last week by the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, found that more than a third of respondents usually or always throw away food that’s past its date label. And 84 percent of respondents reported doing so occasionally...This is a source of confusion for the American public, it turns out. The Harvard survey found that more than a third of respondents believed date labels are federally regulated, and another quarter of them weren’t sure. That’s a big deal, because people may be more likely to take these labels seriously if they believe they’re mandated by the federal government, said Emily Broad Leib, director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic and an assistant professor of law. “If people think that they’re reading something that has standards regulated, then they think that it’s meaningful and communicating something to them,” she said.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. You never actually own a synagogue. You merely take care of it for the next generation. That’s the essence of a 106-page court decision that's transferred control of the historic Touro synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, from a New York City congregation to a local one seeking to revive the institution’s religious life. Seen through the lens of Jewish-American history, the decision is both correct and symbolically important. It emphasizes the future over the past, refusing to treat Jewish spaces and objects as relics and instead making them into investments in the future.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Much criticism of the gradual expansion of the constitutional right to bear arms by U.S. courts has focused on assault weapons and mass shootings. But gun-rights advocates are conquering another frontier: the regulation of handguns in urban space. Yesterday, a federal district court struck down restrictions on carrying concealed handguns imposed by Washington, D.C. As of Wednesday, if you want to carry a concealed handgun in the nation’s capital, that’s your right. Maybe they should change the Wizards’ name back to the Bullets.

Donald Trump’s list of 11 potential Supreme Court nominees seemed intended to reassure some of longtime conservatives still jittery about his populist-fueled candidacy. However, what immediately caught the eye of many legal observers was the absence of many judges considered legal luminaries on the right. While Trump's list pulled in five judges from various state supreme courts, he passed over some of those long considered top contenders for any future Republican Supreme Court pick, like 6th Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton, D.C. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh and former Solicitor General Paul Clement...“The missing names ... are even more interesting than the names on the list,“ said Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, once considered a top Supreme Court possibility for Democrats.

An op-ed by Fellow Delcianna Winders. With more tigers in American backyards, basements and bathrooms than the wild, it's worth pausing on Endangered Species Day, to be commemorated Friday, to consider whether new federal protections for tigers are enough.

Our American colleagues previously reported on the decision by U.S. Commerce Department to hike margins on imports of Chinese-made cold-rolled flat steel. Washington has long opposed granting China market economy status (MES) and the decision is no surprise. This raised some interesting questions for us at Morning Trade: Is this the beginning of a new trade war, as the BBC suggests? Morning Trade brought together experts and lobby groups for a brief roundtable on the issue: Mark Wu of Harvard Law: “While the trade remedy decisions will be welcomed, the U.S. steel industry will still face a major competitive threat, and given the scale of this threat, more action will be required to address the challenge. [Yet, the U.S. decision] should not be misinterpreted as the start of a broader U.S.-China trade war. The timing of Department of Commerce’s decision was set months ago and it does not necessarily reflect the desire to escalate trade tensions in an election year.”

A group of law professors are accusing the civil rights office of the U.S. Education Department of taking “unlawful actions” that have led to “pervasive and severe infringements” of speech rights and due-process protections on college campuses. An open letter signed by Harvard University professor Alan Dershowitz and 20 other legal scholars blasts a series of directives issued by the federal office to schools on dealing with sexual misconduct and harassment complaints from students...Other signers include New York University law professor Richard Epstein, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet, University of Pennsylvania law professor Stephanos Bibas and UPenn history professor Alan Charles Kors, co-founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

An op-ed by Charles J. Ogletree Jr. & Kimberly Jenkins Robinson. Current discussions about K-12 education often highlight the reforms that seek to improve the quality of schooling. Some of these measures—the common-core standards, teacher evaluation, and, most recently, the Every Student Succeeds Act—undoubtedly have the potential to improve educational opportunities for students. However, what is often missing from education reform conversations is how these reforms can create sustainable changes to the education system. We believe the system's very foundations are broken, and school funding is one of the most pressing issues in need of repair.

Passed by Congress 150 years ago (thanks in large part to Maine’s own William Pitt Fessenden), learn about its history and why it is cited in more litigation than any other amendment. Guests: Kenneth W. Mack, Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law and Affiliate Professor of History, Harvard University. Patrick Rael, Professor of History, Bowdoin College.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. There’s a quiet revolution going on in the constitutional law of guns. Since the Supreme Court declared gun ownership a fundamental right less than a decade ago, the lower courts have been expanding upon that landmark ruling. Now they've added heightened constitutional protection for gun sellers, including potential exemption from zoning laws. It’s as though the Second Amendment is on its way to joining the First Amendment in a special, preferred position among the panoply of constitutional rights.