Media Mentions

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who refused a federal judge's direct order to issue marriage licenses, was freed from jail Tuesday. But some conservatives have questioned why she was there in the first place, comparing her stand with that of President Barack Obama, who says he won’t deport some immigrants in the U.S. without legal authority; with the noncooperation of "sanctuary city" mayors with federal immigration authorities; and with the refusal of California Governor Jerry Brown to defend Proposition 8 when it was challenged in federal court. These public officials, the conservatives point out, refused to follow the law. Yet they are not only free, but also lauded by liberals. This charge of hypocrisy requires a serious response.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Talk about mixed signals. Last week, Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced a 300,000-man reduction in the size of the People’s Liberation Army -- a decision at least partly calculated to look like China has no aggressive intentions toward the rest of the world. Yet at almost the same time, he sent five Chinese ships into the Bering Sea near Alaska, in an unprecedented maneuver timed to coincide with the last day of President Barack Obama’s visit to the state. This sort of symbolism is pretty close to the textbook definition of muscle-flexing aggression.

Next week, Apple is expected to make a long-awaited update to its Apple TV set-top box, which hasn't been refreshed since 2012...Security experts, however, believe this could cause trouble. There are a lot of unanswered questions around these "always listening" devices that have yet to be answered, such as how they can use the data, who they can share it with, and whether or not they're using the data for alternative purposes. "[The license agreements] have an extraordinarily wide latitude," Bruce Schneier, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law, said to Business Insider. "And that's a huge worry."

...The organization that Adam and Don work for, Food for Free, is one of a few in Boston seeking to solve two of America’s major problems at once: We have a lot of unwanted food that goes to waste, and a lot of people who go hungry...This law seems like it should be a fantastic opportunity for food rescue operations like Food for Free. But it might not work out that way. “I think the one weakness is the laws don’t really incentivize you donating the food as opposed to, say, composting it or sending it to the anaerobic digester,” says Emily Broad Leib, an assistant professor of law at Harvard who directs the university’s Food Law and Policy Clinic. While composting food is a better option than throwing it out, it too has a significant carbon footprint.

Work is becoming a much less pleasant place. From Uber drivers without job security to salesmen whose every move is electronically tracked to accountants expected to answer e-mails at all hours of the day and night, the nature of work is evolving — often in worker- unfriendly ways...“We’re living in an era of real uncertainty and dislocation when it comes to the world of work,” said Benjamin Sachs, a Harvard Law School professor who studies labor issues. “It’s a moment where we need to think carefully and reevaluate the policies we have governing the labor market.”

Following a months-long search to replace Ellen M. Cosgrove as Harvard Law School's dean of students, Marcia Sells, an administrator at Columbia, will assume the post on Sept. 21...Students from affinity groups and student government played a role in formulating a job description for the position, and they helped interview finalists, according to students involved in the process and Jeffrey C. McNaught, the acting dean of students. Faye E. Maison, a student leader of Students for Inclusion—a student group at the Law School that focuses on the common concerns of different affinity groups—said questions focused on issues of mental health and diversity...Students from affinity groups said they are optimistic about the administrative change. Leland S. Shelton, the president of the Harvard Black Law Students Association, said he hopes Sells will help change the environment at the Law School. “In an ideal world a new dean of students would look to address issue of intersectionality and microaggression both at the Law School and at the classroom and helping minority students acclimate to the Law School environment and helping them feel comfortable,” Shelton said.

Does the Constitution protect people who feel that the law requires them to act contrary to their beliefs? NPR's Linda Wertheimer speaks with Harvard law professor Noah Feldman about the Kentucky case.

Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig met his self-imposed goal of crowd-funding $1 million by Labor Day, and Sunday on ABC announced he's running for the Democratic nomination for President. Lessig, an activist with a grassroots following among some progressives, says he's running on a singular platform — the Citizen Equality Act of 2017. It would expand voting access, ban gerrymandering and institute campaign finance reform. "I think I'm running to get people to acknowledge the elephant in the room," Lessig said Sunday on ABC. "This stalemate, partisan platform of American politics in Washington right now doesn't work. And we have to find a way to elevate the debate to focus on the changes that would actually get us a government that could work again, that is not captured by the tiniest fraction of the one percent who fund campaigns."

Students who claim they were defrauded by for-profit schools owned by Corinthian Colleges Inc. into taking out federal student loans will have to wait several more months before the Obama administration decides whether to cancel their debts, the Department of Education said Thursday...The department has a conflict of interest in deciding whether to cancel borrowers' debts because of its role in making the loans and overseeing schools, said Toby Merrill, the director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard Law School. Its surveillance of Corinthian represents "a massive failure in terms of oversight of federal funds and programs funded by [taxpayers]," she said.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Black Lives Matter, the activist movement that began in 2013, focuses on violence against African-Americans -- perpetrated not only by the police but also by private vigilantes. Its central goals are to prevent such violence and to hold people accountable when it occurs. Its supporters proclaim that this is something new, “not your grandmamma’s civil rights movement.” Maybe so. But it may well be your grandmamma’s grandmamma’s civil rights movement. Black Lives Matter taps into an often forgotten, but nevertheless defining, element of our constitutional heritage.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Tom Brady is, of course, the greatest quarterback who ever lived. Anyone who questions that, or accuses him of the slightest wrongdoing, is biased and untrustworthy. OK, I'm a New England Patriots fan, and inclined to celebrate Thursday's ruling by Judge Richard Berman, which vacated NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's decision to suspend Brady for four games. But football aside, the decision offers a general lesson that even Brady-haters should celebrate. It involves the rule of law.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. What’s in an oath? That fascinating question arose as part of a crusade by Rowan County, Kentucky, Clerk Kim Davis to seek a religious exemption from issuing marriage licenses to gay couples. Before the U.S. Supreme Court put the kibosh on her claim, Davis in her legal brief argued that she understood her oath of office “to mean that, in upholding the federal and state constitutions and laws, she would not act in contradiction to the moral law of God.” Why? Because her oath included the words, “So help me God.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Think affirmative action is controversial in the U.S.? The American debate is nothing compared with the fight over caste-based preferences in India, where police smashed heads in the aftermath of last week's 500,000 strong anti-preference rally in Gujarat.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. What’s so special about religion? When it comes to exemptions from general laws, whether regulating gay marriage or contraception, no question is more important -- or more complicated. The federal district court in Washington answered that question Monday by saying religion is nothing special. The court held that the Department of Health and Human Services is obligated to give the same exemption to a nonreligious group that has a principled reason to deny its employees contraceptive health-care coverage that the department already gave to religious groups with analogous views. This conclusion was almost certainly correct as a matter of moral logic. But it’s far from clear that it was correct as a matter of law.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. There’s no free speech in front of the U.S. Supreme Court -- or so says the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which on Friday upheld a 1949 law that says you can’t assemble or display signs on the plaza in front of the courthouse. The decision contradicted a 2002 ruling by the same court that allowed free speech on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, just across the street from the court. It rested on a combination of architectural analysis and insistence that judges and courts should be more insulated from the public than politicians and legislators. With all due respect to the D.C. Circuit, architecture is beside the point.

As Harvard moves into the new academic year, it faces mounting scrutiny into an aspect of its admission process that administrators have long held is central to fostering diversity in its student body—race-based affirmative action...“What Harvard stands to lose...is the most efficient and direct route to achieving racial diversity,” said Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a professor at Harvard Law School and expert in education law and policy. Other methods universities can use to foster campus diversity, such as ramping up recruiting efforts to high schools with many minority applicants, are much less time- and cost-effective, she said.

An op-ed by Ronald Sullivan Jr. The meme “All Lives Matter” is yet another effort to undermine legitimate calls to end antiblack police practices that characterize far too many interactions between police and citizens of color. Covered with a veneer of neutral and inclusive language, this mantra cleverly hides an intent to silence those who insist that police treat black citizens justly. Perhaps the cry “All Lives Matter’’ would register as genuine if police unions expressed the same opprobrium when a fellow officer kills a person of color as they do when an officer is killed. But this rarely happens. Instead, police unions tend either to support or remain deafeningly silent when their own misbehave.

...This year’s list of Legal Rebels continues our tradition of celebrating those men and women who are remaking their corners of the legal profession–finding new ways to practice law, represent their clients, adjudicate matters and train the next generation. This year’s Rebels–nominated by our readers and staff–are a diverse group tackling many different challenges, but all using smarts and commitment to accomplish goals for practitioners and clients...Sure, it’s annoying when you click on a link and get that “404” message or an automatic redirect to the homepage. But when it comes to legal research, dead links aren’t just annoying; they can undermine the entire premise of an opinion, article or treatise. Hoping to end this type of “link rot,” Harvard University Law School came up with Perma.cc—an archival tool that allows users to submit their links to Harvard’s library to be permanently preserved. The idea was the brainchild of Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of international law who became director of the Harvard Law School Library two years ago.

The “Deflategate” scandal comes to a head in federal court on Monday as lawyers for Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and the NFL commissioner square off one more time before the judge deciding whether to uphold the star’s four-game suspension for underinflated footballs. ... Legal experts, though, say that despite judge’s stern words, Mr. Brady faces long odds. That’s because courts generally are very reluctant to undo a final, binding arbitration decision, even one they view as seriously flawed. “It’s an extremely high bar,” said Peter Carfagna, a former outside counsel to the Cleveland Browns who directs Harvard Law School’s sports law clinic.

The night out on Martha’s Vineyard in July 2014 probably seemed innocuous at the time — a gathering over lobster rolls, a documentary screening at the local film society, followed by a panel discussion about the film. But a year later, concerns about US Senior District Judge Mark L. Wolf’s interactions that night have disrupted perhaps the most high-stakes case pending in federal court in Boston: Wolf is weighing whether his involvement as the film panel moderator, and his interactions with a panelist who may now be a witness in the death penalty trial of serial killer Gary Lee Sampson, have created an appearance of a conflict of interest so strong that he should recuse himself from the case. ... Nancy Gertner, a retired US District Court Judge who now teaches law at Harvard University, said that “the rules of recusal have to be reasonable.” “Judges don’t live in a vacuum, and there are a range of issues that come up, and where does this sit on that range?” she said. “If appearance is interpreted as anyone might see a problem, that’s a standard that is way too big. It has to be a standard of reasonableness.”  

With little fanfare, the Obama administration has been pursuing an aggressive campaign to restore protections for workers that have been eroded by business activism, conservative governance and the evolution of the economy in recent decades. In the last two months alone, the administration has introduced a series of regulatory changes. Among them: a rule that would make millions more Americans eligible for extra overtime pay, and a guidance suggesting that many employers are misclassifying workers as contractors and therefore depriving them of basic workplace protections. That is an issue central to the growth of so-called gig economy companies like Uber. ...“These moves constitute the most impressive and, in my view, laudable attempt to update labor and employment law in many decades,” said Benjamin I. Sachs, a professor at Harvard Law School and a former assistant general counsel for the Service Employees International Union. The goal, he said, is to “keep pace with changes in the structure of the labor market and the way work is organized. That’s a theme that runs through all of this.”