Media Mentions

An op-ed by Samuel Moyn. Pope Francis has been called a great champion for the downtrodden. Yet unlike many progressives throughout the West who admire him, he rarely expresses his concerns about the plight of the poor in terms of human rights. This silence is significant. In the 1930s and ’40s, Popes Pius XI and XII proclaimed human rights as humanity’s highest values. Their defense decisively influenced the authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. During his own storied visit to America in 1979, the newly elected Pope John Paul II insisted on the importance of human rights, especially freedom, and was lionized for facing down the communist empire of his Eastern European homeland. No one interested in how human rights became the idea of our time can ignore how Christians learned to champion them. But they changed their meaning in the process. This is changing under Francis, and that might be a good thing.

Last year, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, known for defending high-profile clients such as O.J. Simpson, Michael Milken and Claus von Bulow, won an unusual case: He successfully argued that the biblical Abraham was not guilty of the attempted murder of his son, Isaac. “It got Abraham off,” he jokes. His argument was part of a mock trial at a synagogue in Manhattan, and it inspired him to write his latest book, “Abraham: The World’s First (But Certainly Not Last) Jewish Lawyer.” Coming out Oct. 6, the book offers a history of Jewish lawyers, from Abraham through figures like the French jurist and law professor René Cassin and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. This week, Pope Francis is expected to implore both the U.S. Congress and the UN General Assembly to take aggressive steps to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. His thinking on this issue is not simple alarm over climate change. It involves an extraordinary combination of passionate environmentalism, concern for the poor, skepticism about economics and apparent hostility to "profits." All this makes for an impressive but occasionally awkward argument.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. If you're as cynical as I am about Europe's impulse to control migration from Arab lands, you might have the same question I did: Why don't European navies interdict the refugees at sea, and send them back to Libya or Turkey or wherever they're coming from? It might seem cruel, but after all, that's what the U.S. did with Haitian boat people in the 1990s and what Australia still does with asylum-seekers. You might think the answer is that the Europeans are just more softhearted than the Americans or Australians, but it turns out the answer isn't that simple. Behind Europe’s policy of saving refugees at sea and bringing them in for processing and asylum lies a controversial 2012 decision by the European Court of Human Rights.

China and the United States could work together to improve the global financial system in order to achieve a stable and sustainable economic development for the world, officials and experts said at a recent symposium....The US and China have different interests and experiences, so mutual understanding of each other is important, said Hal Scott, director of the program on international financial systems at the Law School of Harvard University. "The cooperation between the US and China over economic issues will affect the world. I think we need to strengthen them by a mechanism for further cooperation," he added.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. My friend Shahab Ahmed, who died Thursday night at 48, was the most brilliant and creative scholar of Islam in his generation. Master of perhaps 15 languages -- he was too modest to name a number -- Ahmed led a remarkable, fascinating life that took him from Kuala Lumpur to Cambridge and seemingly everywhere in between. He was as comfortable chatting with mujahedeen in Afghanistan (where he was pretty sure he played soccer with pre-terrorist Osama bin Laden) and madrassa teachers in rural Pakistan as he was in the seminar rooms of Princeton and Harvard. And he left behind a 600-page magnum opus, called “What Is Islam?” that is scheduled to be published in December.

Christopher Berry’s troubles started long before he killed his infant son in 2013. After surviving a suicide bombing and returning from Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress in 2011, Berry racked up arrests for allegedly shoving his teenage girlfriend, deliberately running over pigeons, and stealing from his employer. Yet, when state social workers got a report that the Lowell couple was neglecting month-old William James Berry in the spring of 2013, records show they assigned the family to the “lower risk” category of state protection for children they believe are not in immediate danger...Elizabeth Bartholet, a Harvard law professor and national critic of the two-track program, said the Hardwick report “screams out” that social workers involved with the family were more concerned with keeping the family together than ensuring the boy’s safety. Especially for children in the lower risk category, Bartholet said, “Best interest of the child is clearly not the standard.”

If Joe Biden gets into the presidential race, allies and supporters of Hillary Clinton say there are just two words that will make a difference as he seeks support among women and African-Americans: Anita Hill...Charles Ogletree, the Harvard Law School professor who represented Hill (and once had President Barack Obama as a student), said he's still mad about how Biden handled himself back then. “I was shocked and dismayed that Joe Biden was asking questions that didn't seem appropriate and was not in her corner as a Democrat,” Ogletree said. “The point is that he's supposed to be neutral, but his questions to Anita Hill were as piercing as anyone's.” Ogletree said he's brought up the hearings with Biden in the years since, but hasn't been satisfied with the response. “He's said that this job was to control the hearing, that he was surprised by the result as well,” Ogletree said.

Today, when people want information on the Internet, they turn to Google...All of this is good news for Google and anyone with money for a computer and Internet connection. But it's not great for libraries, the go-to for information in the pre-Google days, says John Palfrey, a director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and founder of the Digital Public Library of America. In his new book, "Bibliotech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google," Palfrey argues that society still needs libraries for many reasons, including that the Internet doesn't provide free access to information for anyone as libraries do.

Kim Dotcom and three colleagues face an extradition hearing that began Monday in an Auckland courtroom. Dotcom is the colorful German-born entrepreneur who started the Internet site Megaupload, which was shut down by federal authorities in 2012...In an affidavit for the defense, Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig argues that criminal copyright infringement applies only to people who directly download or steal something and not to secondary parties like website operators. The defense also plans to argue the hearing should be delayed.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. There’s a White House visit in the offing for Ahmed Mohamed, the Sudanese-American teenager whose homemade alarm clock was taken for a bomb at school. But it seems unlikely that the White House will be rushing to make public amends for the now-abandoned prosecution of Xi Xiaoxing, the Chinese-American physics professor at Temple University who was mistakenly charged with sending secret plans for sophisticated research machinery to colleagues in China. That's unfortunate -- because targeting Chinese-American scientists for investigation as the cool war between the U.S. and China heats up is extremely dangerous.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Sometimes the name of a case says it all. Pennsylvania v. 2,447 Bottles of Wine is such an instance. After a county judge’s ruling, the state is poised to pour more than 1,300 bottles of fine wine down the drain -- all because of a misinterpretation of an obsolete, arcane law. The court got this one wrong. In fact, it doesn’t matter which approach to statutory interpretation you prefer: Justice Antonin Scalia’s textualism or Justice Stephen Breyer’s purposivism. Either way, the wine shouldn’t be wasted.

An essay by Randall Kennedy. My parents inculcated in me and my two siblings a particular sense of racial kinship: in our dealings with the white world, we were encouraged to think of ourselves as ambassadors of blackness. Our achievements would advance the race, and our failures would hinder it. The fulfillment of our racial obligations required that we speak well, dress suitably, and mind our manners. In our household we felt tremendous pride in the attainments of blacks, and we took personally their disgrace. My father and mother loved to regale us with stories about the accomplishments of Jackie Robinson and Wilma Rudolph, Thurgood Marshall and Charles Drew, Paul Robeson and Mary McLeod Bethune. At the same time, when scandal ensnared a prominent black person, we all felt ashamed, diminished. We were also embarrassed when blacks with poor diction and sloppy comportment appeared on television...Is it wrong for black parents to deliver to their children the sort of talks that my parents gave to me?

Harvard Law School professor Jeannie C. Suk argued at a forum in New York this week that the criminal court system, not campus resources, should investigate and adjudicate cases of alleged sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape. At the forum—hosted by Intelligence Squared Debates and titled “Courts, Not Campuses, Should Decide Sexual Assault Cases”—Suk and Yale Law School professor Jeb Rubenfeld argued in favor of the motion..."What campuses are doing under pressure from the Department of Education is hurting the cause of gender equality,” Suk argued during an opening statement. “Campus tribunals use procedures that lack basic fairness and often reach inaccurate outcomes.”

Former Govs. Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger and constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe joined the legal attack on California’s teacher tenure laws Wednesday, telling a state appeals court the job-security and seniority statutes leave some of the state’s neediest students in the hands of incompetent teachers...No other state allows “such lopsided school laws which favor teacher interests over the rights of students,” said a second brief coauthored by Tribe, a Harvard law professor with liberal leanings whose students have included future President Barack Obama and U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts. Other academics who signed the brief included Rachel Moran, a UCLA law school professor and former dean.

When it comes to federal taxes, there is a fundamental reason we should protect religious organizations — even those we disagree with. Functionally, the federal tax exemption is akin to a public forum: a government-provided resource that welcomes and encourages a diversity of viewpoints...As Harvard Law School dean Martha Minow writes, [Robert] Cover critiqued “the power and practice of a government that rules by displacing, suppressing, or exterminating values that run counter to its own...Minow notes that Cover recognized that in a pluralistic society, some norms would “be at odds with his own notions of human equality and liberty.”

With a new process for responding to cases of alleged sexual harassment now in place at Harvard Law School, a new group of administrators are overseeing the beginning stages of integrating the new system and informing students about it...According to Catherine Claypoole, the Law School's interim chief Title IX officer, she is the only member of the original Title IX unit still at the school. Jeffrey C. McNaught, the acting dean of students, and Kathryn Beaudry, the acting assistant dean of human resources, are now interim Title IX officers. “We will revisit composition of the Title IX Unit and roles after our new Dean of Students and our new Chief Human Resources Officer settle into their jobs. For the time being the current coordinators will remain in place,” Claypoole wrote in an email.

The world’s largest brewer wanted to keep the biggest deal of the year under wraps. Market chatter and the U.K.’s unique takeover rules got in the way. The Takeover Panel forced SABMiller Plc to release a statement about an approach from larger rival Anheuser-Busch InBev NV after speculation on Tuesday sent London-based SABMiller’s shares up as much as 4.1 percent, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is private...“Media attention following disclosure of deal negotiations can be disruptive to the companies, and can kill an otherwise valuable deal” said John Coates, professor of law and economics at Harvard University.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The mother who posted a video to YouTube of her baby dancing to a Prince song may not have had to take it down after all, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled Monday, because the company hadn’t considered whether the video was fair use under copyright law before ordering her to remove it. But don’t go thinking the decision was a big victory for free information or fair use or even just moms who let their babies dance to Prince.

One of the world's leading experts on copyright has reviewed the Kim Dotcom case and says there is no basis for extradition. Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig has weighed into the Megaupload prosecution with a legal opinion which condemns the prosecution case against the filesharing website. In an opinion released by Dotcom's lawyers, Professor Lessig said the allegations and evidence made public by the US Department of Justice "do not meet the requirements necessary to support a prima facie case that would be recognised by United States federal law."

A new attempt by Democrats to boost worker bargaining power has a lot of failure behind it. The American workplace has changed a whole lot over the past half century. But the major law that governs how workers and employees interact — the National Labor Relations Act — has been essentially frozen since 1947, when the law was reformed to constrain worker power...“There’s a sense that this is about workers, not about unions,” says Harvard Law professor Benjamin Sachs of the new proposal. "EFCA, that’s a union bill. If you think about the Fight for $15 [an hour], this would apply to those workers.” That’s important, he says, because it could draw a larger base of support. “When unions succeed politically is when they push for things that are for all workers,” Sachs says, "and do poorly when they push for things that are just for unions.”