Media Mentions

Investors are getting more pro-active in addressing directors’ lengthy tenures...The number of S&P 500 directors with tenure exceeding 10 years rose 35% to 2013 from 2007, and for those with tenure of over 15 years, the rise was 31% in the same period, according to research by Yaron Nili, a fellow at the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance, based on data collated from RiskMetrics...And there is more than just long-tenure diluting a director’s independence, said Harvard’s Mr. Nili. The rise in the appointment of retired chief executives or other C-suite executives from other firms, combined with the trend of long terms, is giving rise to a new class of director: The “new insider.” “The increasing use of board members who serve for longer periods and come with a predisposed background as corporate insiders elsewhere is not accidental, but is in fact an effort on the part of companies to import the benefits that an “insider” board would have produced,” Mr. Nili wrote in an article accompanying his research.

...After re-examining the seal’s history roughly 80 years later, a Law School committee will likely decide this week whether to recommend changing the school’s shield. After weeks of reviewing documents detailing the seal’s origins and speaking to Law School affiliates, the committee—composed of students, faculty, staff, and alumni—will release its full report in March to the Corporation, which holds final decision-making authority...“The report that we make to the Corporation will be very detailed,” Bruce H. Mann, chair of the committee reviewing the seal, said. “It will include what we know about Isaac Royall, it will include the origins of the shield, the circumstances in which it was adopted, because all of those really are relevant factors in what should be done with the shield going forward.”...Bianca S. Tylek, a Law School student activist, said that based on the committee members’ backgrounds, the group seems favorable to changing the seal. The committee includes activists and legal historians who study civil rights and race in America. “I think we have a pretty good feeling about the shield changing,” Tylek said.

At a time when Harvard finds itself debating the ways controversial history is remembered on campus, Caribbean historian Hilary M. Beckles told a Harvard Law School audience the best way to deal with a thorny past is confronting it head on. “There’s no point in burying the legacy and memories,” Beckles said. “Let us bring everything to the surface and find a way forward through all of this.” Beckles was the keynote speaker at a panel discussion on reparatory justice for Caribbean countries that facilitated the slave trade, and was joined by other Harvard professors on the panel in the Law School’s Ames courtroom..Alexander J. Clayborne, a third-year Law School student who has helped organize protests, attended the event and said he found the talk “powerful,” especially as it pertained to both global and current events at Harvard...Professors Annette Gordon-Reed, Kenneth W. Mack, and Vincent Brown also participated in the panel.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The death of Justice Antonin Scalia and the interbranch dispute about the nomination of his successor draw attention to the U.S. Supreme Court at its most grand and important. But Monday morning, the eight justices sit down for business as usual. One case, about Veterans Affairs Department set-aside contracts, will be decided on the interpretation of a statute. It’s the kind of case that excited Scalia and that most of the other justices consider routine. The other case, Utah v. Strieff, is a little different. It’s about the legal consequences of an illegal police stop. In the era of Ferguson, no topic connected to illegal arrests can be considered unimportant.

The potential outcomes of Texas cases currently before the Supreme Court changed Feb. 13 with the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. But some experts say the fate of several Texas abortion clinics is dependent on a different justice — Anthony Kennedy...Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School, said he believes Kennedy will vote to overturn the 5th Circuit’s decision. “There is no respectable way to treat the challenged Texas regulations as constitutional under the ‘undue burden’ standard,” Tribe said. Tribe, who recently co-authored a book about the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts titled Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution, said Roberts could “conceivably” side with the abortion providers in the Texas case as well, but Kennedy was “more likely” to do so.

The battle over replacing Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court reminds us yet again of how divided we are...But anger and cynicism is where most voters are stuck, uncertain of what needs to be done, and deeply skeptical that a solution even exists. A solution grounded in simple, constitutional, common-sense principles and actions exists, and a brilliant communicator who has spent most of a decade refining and promoting it also happens to be eminently qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. President Obama must nominate him. His name is Lawrence Lessig and he is an author, Harvard Law School professor, married father of three and tireless advocate for citizen equality...Another friend, professor Alex Whiting, said of Lessig’s work ethic: “There’s normal working hard, and then there’s the kind of working hard that he does, which is sustained and comprehensive and driven in a way that I have just never seen in somebody else.”

Researchers in London last year discovered an online jihadi handbook with instructions on sending encrypted instant messages that would be indecipherable to law enforcement. The tools it recommended—ChatSecure and Cryptocat—are popular throughout the Middle East, making them easily available to extremists from that part of the world. They were also developed largely with money from the U.S. government...It didn’t take long for the team to back [Berkman fellow] Nathan Freitas, a technologist and coder. In 2008, he worked on communication security for a group of “Free Tibet” activists traveling to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but a number of people in the group were arrested and interrogated by the Chinese Public Security Bureau. After the Olympics, Mr. Freitas convened a group of like-minded coders to work on an encryption tool, which they called Gibberbot, allowing two people to communicate securely through encrypted text messages. They called themselves the Guardian Project.

Prominent legal theorist Charles Ogletree long ago said that an Obama would become the first African-American president. Though it became reality — Barack Obama is in the final year of his second four-year term — it turns out Ogletree was a bit off in his assumption. The Obama he was referring to is First Lady Michelle Obama...Ogletree talked about his relationship with the first couple and the current presidential election during a Feb. 11 conversation prior to his lecture as part of the University at Buffalo Distinguished Speaker Series at Alumni Arena. A professor and author known for his work related to issues of race, equity and social justice, he was UB’s 40th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration Speaker.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's funeral on Saturday drew more than 3,300 judges, lawyers, political figures and others to celebrate the life and career of the court's most controversial conservative leader...Another former Scalia law clerk who attended the funeral was Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law School professor who briefly ran for president last year. When asked if Scalia would have voted for him if he had become the Democratic candidate, Lessig said with a smile that it was possible. "He was very loyal to his clerks."

In today’s world, a computer can easily become a weapon and cyberspace a battlefield as cyber security becomes a growing national concern...“One immediately noticeable change [that took place at Harvard] is that there are multiple cybersecurity projects, both within Harvard and beyond,” Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, told the HPR. Currently, both Belfer and Berkman hold cyber security projects, in which scholars develop case studies and present research papers in workshops and publications.

As Law School activists continue their occupation of the Caspersen Student Center lounge—along with students from other schools—administrators have publicized a series of efforts to address problems of diversity and inclusion on campus...Third-year Law student and Reclaim Harvard Law member Bianca S. Tylek said the group hopes to expand its reach to other students within and beyond the Law School...Rena T. Karefa-Johnson, a third-year law student...said...“I’m excited that this is something that people are thinking about...“[But] I don’t think those specific initiatives are responsive to what this movement is about.” [Marcia]Sells said that she stands by her work to address problems of diversity and inclusion at the school, emphasizing that change takes time. “I am disappointed that the students think we aren’t working on these things, because we are,” she said in an interview. “I understand that they have their own vision and plan, but I’m just trying to work with what I think works best for all of us, and not expecting things to happen all at once.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. I found the movie "The Hurt Locker" so evocative of Iraq that I saw it six times. Apparently the verisimilitude wasn't an accident. According to a lawsuit brought by U.S. Army Sergeant Jeffrey Sarver, the film’s bomb-defusing lead character was based on him. The film’s screenwriter, Mark Boal, was embedded with Sarver’s company in Iraq and published an article on Sarver’s life and experiences in Playboy magazine in 2005. Sarver sued Boal and the film's producers under a California rule that prohibits appropriating a public figure's likeness for commercial purposes without consent. On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld the dismissal of the bomb-disposal technician’s case on the grounds that the film's First Amendment protections trumped any claim Sarver might have to ownership of his likeness. The holding is dubious under controlling U.S. Supreme Court precedent. But it reflects a trend in appeals courts in which the freedom of speech is being used to defeat a person's claims to their image or story. The law here is changing in favor of Hollywood and against individuals.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Until recently, the sophisticated view about calorie labels in restaurants was one of despair: A series of studies suggested that the practice, required by Obamacare and modeled on what has been done in New York and other cities, just doesn't succeed in promoting healthy food choices and reducing obesity. But comprehensive new research offers a dramatically different picture. It finds that if we divide Americans into subgroups -- the normal, the overweight, and the obese -- we’ll find that calorie labels have had a large and beneficial effect on those who most need them.

...Graduates of Harvard Law School and Yale Law School have dominated the court for the past two decades, and each sitting justice attended one of those schools...Harvard Law professor Charles Fried said that the preoccupation with where the justices attended law school is unhelpful, particularly because Harvard students come from a wide range of ethnicities, educational backgrounds and income levels—each of which are more important factors than the name on a judge’s law degree. “What’s more important [than their law alma matter] is their ability, their knowledge, how much they’ve learned and how good they are,” Fried said...“I certainly won’t say that having a lot of Harvard justices is a bad thing,” said Harvard law professor Richard Lazarus, who attributes the school’s long roster of high court judges to its large size, elite reputation, and commitment to admitting students with from a broad array of backgrounds and states who display leadership qualities.

A book review by Jeannie Suk. Mass incarceration is synonymous with criminal justice in the United States. We are the world’s top jailer, have among the longest sentences, and tolerate shocking racial disparities in imprisonment rates. Baz Dreisinger is an unusual combination of English professor, journalist and documentary producer whose travels to nine countries to meet with their prisoners led to “Incarceration Nations.” This journey into what she calls “global hellholes” sets an earnest American on a quest for insight into American criminal punishment, via structured encounters with foreign prisoners in situ.

...The student lawyers became involved in Ausmer’s case in 2013, while interning at the HLS Veterans Law and Disability Benefits Clinic, within the school’s WilmerHale Legal Services Center (LSC). Each year since 2012, when the clinic was established in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood, dozens of students have assisted veterans with legal cases, winning verdicts of local and national importance... “As we train students, we want to give them the opportunity to understand and appreciate the needs and sacrifices of disabled veterans,” says Daniel Nagin, clinical professor of law, faculty director of the Legal Services Center, and founder of the veterans clinic. “The work is complicated and demanding—it’s an uphill battle, and there are too few resources for people who need help….We are asking students to consider, ‘What is the role of lawyers in responding to this problem?’”

...What kind of patriarch did this American founder wish and imagine himself to be? ask two eminent Jefferson scholars. In their fascinating, subtle, and deeply insightful new book, Annette Gordon-Reed, Warren professor of American legal history at Harvard Law School and professor of history, and Peter S. Onuf, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, seek to understand, as dispassionately as possible, how Jefferson gave meaning to his existence, how he wished to be perceived by others, how he shaped his private and public lives, and how he reconciled in his own mind his status as a slave-owner with his immortal words that “all men are created equal.”

...“Animal welfare and animal rights are two different goals within the field of animal law,” explains law professor Kristen Stilt, who teaches the animal-law survey class—an annual course typically oversubscribed on the first day of registration... A gift from Bradley L. Goldberg, founder and president of the Animal Welfare Trust, has underwritten a new Animal Law & Policy Program intended to expand the animal-law curriculum, establish an academic fellowship program, and foster future academic gatherings and scholarship...That opportunity and responsibility fall largely to Stilt, the faculty director of the new program, and Chris Green, its executive director, who must decide how to design a curriculum that covers a topic intersecting with all other areas of legal study...This past May, Loeb University Professor and constitutional-law scholar Laurence Tribe submitted an amicus letter supporting NhRP’s request for an appeal in one of its first chimpanzee cases.

Medicaid patients in Washington state (a similar suit is underway in Indiana) have sued the state's Medicaid agency claiming they were denied treatment for hepatitis C because of the high cost of the drugs. Litigation director Kevin Costello with the Harvard Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation says his organization has joined the lawsuit. “We really view Washington as a first step in solving a problem in a much broader context," says Costello. "So it’s one small piece of a broader puzzle.”

Harvard Law School has filed a class action lawsuit against the state of Washington’s Medicaid program, challenging a provision that denies expensive Hepatitis C to many patients enrolled in the program. The university also has hinted that its Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation may also take legal action against Medicaid insurers in Massachusetts, where restrictions on using expensive hepatitis C drugs are common...“Washington is in our view a first step in solving a much bigger national problem,” said Kevin Costello, director of litigation for the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School. “It’s a small piece of a large puzzle. There are plenty of other points, both litigation and policy and regulation-based, that have to be worked on at the same time.”

“The proposal that I have seen erects significant and arbitrary barriers for borrowers who are entitled to relief,” said Toby Merrill, the director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard Law School, referring to the Education Department’s proposal. “This would be worse for borrowers.”