Media Mentions

In a standoff with Apple Inc. over access to a terrorist’s smartphone, the federal government is favoring a technological workaround over a court clash it risked losing. The U.S. Justice Department, which had sued to force Apple to help it gain access to data locked in the iPhone used by an attacker who killed 14 people last year in San Bernardino, California, abruptly switched tack late Monday. It asked a magistrate judge to cancel a court hearing in the case scheduled for Tuesday, instead saying it would test another way of accessing the information...“There’s a lot of people right now who are curious who this third party is,” said David O’Brien, a senior researcher with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. “It appears the FBI turned away from the opportunity to test its case in court and get a ruling that could have set a precedent.”

...Various Harvard departments and Schools have long embraced efforts to help surrounding communities. The Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, for instance, has provided free legal representation to poor defendants since 1913...Every year at Harvard Law School (HLS), 50 student attorneys help local residents with legal matters, from child custody to evictions to unemployment problems to Social Security benefits. The students do so through the Legal Aid Bureau, the nation’s oldest student-run organization offering free legal services to residents struggling to make ends meet. The students commit to at least 20 hours of work per week during two years, and handled 300 cases last year. The bureau, which is funded by Harvard, is the second-largest provider of free civic legal aid locally, after the nonprofit Greater Boston Legal Services. “It’s really like having 50 full-time lawyers that Harvard is contributing to civic legal aid per year,” said Esme Caramello, clinical professor of law and the bureau’s deputy director. The bureau strives to mirror the community it serves. The participating students select the next class of student lawyers, and they promote diversity because it encourages inclusion, said Amanda Morejon, current president of the bureau. Morejon graduated from the College in 2013 and will receive her degree from the Law School in May. “We don’t want to be so far removed from our clients,” said Morejon. “Our clients are a racially and ethnically diverse population, all low-income. I had a client who was a Hispanic woman, and my being a Hispanic woman was extremely important to her.”

A week after Harvard Law School’s seal change became final, a group of faculty members are publicly speaking out in support of Law School Dean Martha L. Minow, charging that student activists at the school have not given her due credit for her efforts to address racial issues on campus. Seven Law School faculty members—Glenn Cohen, Randall L. Kennedy, Richard J. Lazarus, Todd D. Rakoff, Carol S. Steiker, Kristen A. Stilt, and David B. Wilkins—published an open letter in the Harvard Law Record Monday defending Minow. They wrote, “Our goal here is… to express our support and deep appreciation for Dean Minow and all that she has done during this difficult and important process, and to advance the cause of justice throughout her long and distinguished career.”

An op-ed by Martha Minow and Deanell Tacha. Sometimes you don’t value what you have until you experience its absence close up. We each are deans of law schools; we each have seen, close up, nations without courts independent of political or partisan control. Plagued by conflict and distrust, countries without operating independent judiciaries struggle to earn local and international confidence. In the United States, we see how a fair, impartial, unbiased, and nonpolitical judiciary is central to American justice, permitting economic exchange and peaceful solutions to disagreements. This treasure depends upon the aspiration to maintain a government of laws, not men, focused on each case decided in light of the factual record and not political winds or personal preferences. And this treasure is in jeopardy at the highest level if the Senate refuses even to consider the president’s nominee to be the next associate justice of the Supreme Court.

One of the U.K.’s — and the world’s — biggest grocery store chains announced big news on the food waste front this month. In the coming months, Tesco, which boasts some 6,800 stores worldwide but is headquartered in England, will expand its 14-store trial run of an initiative that saved the equivalent of 50,000 meals worth of food from heading to a landfill, donating that food, instead, to charity groups...Emily Broad Leib, director of Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic, says that is because the U.S. has arrived at the issue later than countries like France and the U.K., where efforts to address the issue have gotten a significant head start on the U.S. and are, just now, coming to fruition. Still, Leib noted, Americans are making significant progress. “I do think it’s on the radar of more and more stores,” Leib told The Huffington Post.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. In recent years, the Supreme Court has been loath to apply U.S. law abroad, fearing that becoming an international sheriff would alienate other nations and interfere with foreign policy. But what if foreign countries ask U.S. courts to step in? That's what is happening in European Community v. RJR Nabisco, a case that was argued Monday. The European states that are plaintiffs in the underlying case want the Supreme Court to apply the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law to a drug enterprise that took place outside the U.S. and caused injury in Europe. The basis of their argument is that RJR participated in money laundering within the U.S. -- and that they, America’s loyal allies, want the law to apply in this case.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Last week I had to defend Donald Trump’s free-speech rights. Now that a Florida jury has awarded Hulk Hogan $115 million in his suit against Gawker, I have to defend the original snark-site’s free-press right to have shown a sex tape of the retired wrestler and his erstwhile best friend’s wife. This First Amendment stuff is sometimes a serious drag.

Is Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland a judicial progressive or a moderate? One way to judge is to look at his many opinions that defer to administrative agencies and that are a hallmark of his jurisprudence during his nearly 20 years on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. In disputes over union power, his opinions nearly always benefit unions. According to the onlabor.org website, which is run by Harvard Law professors Benjamin Sachs and Jack Goldsmith, Judge Garland wrote the majority opinion in 22 cases that considered appeals of decisions made by the National Labor Relations Board. In 18 of these decisions, Judge Garland sided with the NLRB’s judgment against a company for unfair labor practices. In all of those cases, the blog notes, “deference to the NLRB has had favorable consequences for labor and unions.”

Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor and former teacher of Merrick Garland, discusses Garland’s record and his nomination to the Supreme Court by President Obama. He spoke with June Grasso and Michael Best on Bloomberg Radio’s “Bloomberg Law.”

The once-pervasive Harvard Law School seal, criticized for its ties to slavery, is quickly disappearing...Quickly is exactly how Law School Dean for Administration Francis X. McCrossan—who is leading the effort to coordinate the seal’s removal—is approaching the process, he wrote in an email sent to school affiliates Friday. [Robb] London estimates there are about 200 places on campus that display the seal, a figure that does not include its online manifestations and the printed materials and letterhead departments and administrators use...A new seal will be designed in time for the school’s bicentennial in 2017, which London called an opportunity for reflection. “There's a natural synergy between that kind of reflection and the process of designing a new symbol for the school,” he wrote.

An op-ed by Charles Nesson. Jamaica has a remarkable opportunity to lead the world in cannabis reform, but to do so it will have to get its act together pretty damn quick. The Colorado model of wide, open recreational use of all forms of cannabis in any concentration is a loser. Governor Charlie Baker in my state of Massachusetts, after investigation in Colorado, has just come out against it because of the bad effect such unrestricted recreational use could have on kids. Jamaica has the opportunity to reframe the world’s understanding of cannabis by putting focus on spiritual use of the natural herb. Jamaica’s great success so far has been its recognition of Rastafari, and the legal celebrations of the Negril Cannabis Cup and Rebel Salute.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Tennessee State Representative Martin Daniel stirred up some outrage when he said this week that the First Amendment should give Islamic State the right to recruit on state campuses. He's wrong about the First Amendment, which doesn't prevent bans on coordinated recruitment. But the bill he was defending, which would create designated zones for free speech at state-funded Tennessee universities, isn't such a bad idea. The law governing free speech on campuses is much more restrictive than the law that applies on a street corner or in a park. We may be approaching a time where there would be a benefit to designating safe spaces for free speech, protected from the regulatory requirements of the Department of Education and the norms of campus life.

An op-ed by Jack Goldsmith. One unmistakable sign of the stellar reputation of Merrick Garland, President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, is the praise he received from the President’s most conservative critics. Ed Whelan, an influential opponent of President Obama’s judicial nominees, expressed “very high regard” for Garland, whose “intellect and decency” he admires. His National Review colleague Andrew McCarthy, another sharp critic of the President’s judicial choices, thinks “very highly” of Garland and says “there is no doubting Garland’s intellect and integrity.” Both men, however, oppose Garland and urge the Senate not to consider the nomination. And Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell announced that Garland would not in fact receive a hearing.

Judge Merrick B. Garland, President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, has achieved a rare distinction in a polarized era. He has sat on a prominent appeals court for almost two decades, participated in thousands of cases, and yet earned praise from across the political spectrum...Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, said Judge Garland’s dissenting opinion was “particularly admirable.” “That dissent is a fine example of an opinion that combines impeccable legal analysis with a deep sense of humanity,” he said.

From municipalities to the White House, governments are launching open data projects—but the judicial branch is falling behind. Such was the opening, frustrated message of “Public Service Legal Technology in the Data.Gov Era,” a Thursday-morning panel at ABA Techshow. Adam Ziegler of Harvard Law School’s Library Innovation Lab hammered home the message with a quick tour of government data projects. The federal government has data.gov, a website that offers publicly available data on many topics related to executive branch agencies; 18F: a series of projects from the General Services Administration; and the U.S. Digital Service, a White House project seeking to streamline government services. The White House even has a page on GitHub, a website that allows programmers to post and collaborate on their work. “We are in an era of amazing progress in access to government data,” said Ziegler, a programmer and former attorney. But “where are we with the law? Almost nowhere, unfortunately.” The nonprofit U.S. Open Data assessed publicly accessible legal information in every state—and found poor accessibility almost everywhere. Ziegler’s lab is doing its best to change that with its ambitious “Free the Law” project with Ravel Law, which will scan Harvard’s entire 40,000-volume collection of U.S. case law.

The successful fight to retire Harvard Law School’s controversial shield emblem, which has ties to a slaveholding benefactor, has ignited a new battle over equality and racism on the Cambridge campus...Now, the school has several more changes on the way, including bringing a visiting critical race theory professor to the school, hiring more faculty of color, revamping school orientations to make them more inclusive and making plans to hire a director for community engagement and equity to focuses on diversity inclusion issues, according to Marcia Sells, the law school’s associate dean and dean of students. “I really do want to have some quality things come out of this,” Sells said...A.J. Clayborne, a spokesman for Royall Must Fall, said taking the shield down was only the first step. “We’re quite pleased with that decision, although we do believe there’s much more work to be done to address systemic racism in the law school,” Clayborne said.

At intensely competitive Harvard Law School, Merrick Garland was known for explaining complex topics to classmates. Later, as a member of Harvard’s Board of Overseers, he led an initiative to improve the quality of life in the college’s residential houses...“It was evident he was enormously intelligent, but he is also a very decent person, a very generous, kind, thoughtful person,” said Bill Alford, a Harvard Law School professor who attended the school with Garland. Both graduated in 1977.Garland still calls Alford when he wants to know about students who have applied to clerk for him, Alford said. Garland takes time to ask about students’ personalities, in addition to their analytical skills, he said....Charles Ogletree, a Harvard Law School professor, also knew Garland in law school. He recalled the two sharing meals in the dining hall and at each other’s homes and discussing Supreme Court decisions — but never the idea that Garland might one day sit on that bench. Ogletree said Garland likes to fish and draw, and although he loves his family, was never afraid to work tirelessly. “Even though people hate nominees by President Obama, I think that Merrick Garland is the kind of person who has all the qualifications one needs,” Ogletree said.

Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland is a graduate of both Harvard University and Harvard Law School. Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman spoke with WGBH All Things Considered host Barbara Howard about Garland's reputation at Harvard and the chances of his nomination to the nation's highest court being confirmed.

President Obama announced his nomination to the high court is Merrick Garland, currently the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals...Judge Nancy Gertner, senior lecturer at Harvard Law School and former Massachusetts federal judge.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. In the current era, it’s probably impossible to find a nonpartisan choice for the Supreme Court. But if you did a national search for one, hoping to find a judge’s judge, known above all for caution and humility, there’s a good chance that you’d settle on Merrick Garland...No one should doubt that in terms of the future arc of the law, replacing Antonin Scalia with Garland would greatly matter. But it’s important to see exactly why. Above all, he would be a stabilizing force on the court, promoting continuity rather than large-scale change.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Can a judicial decision be both tragic and correct? Yes, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit showed yesterday when it upheld the dismissal of claims by underage girls who were victims of sex trafficking facilitated by the website Backpage.com. The court acknowledged that the young women had made “a persuasive case” that the company “tailored its website to make sex trafficking easier.” Yet it applied the federal Communications Decency Act that essentially shields apps or websites from liability for third-party material published using their platforms. The court concluded that the suit against Backpage couldn’t continue.